The same chorus of white noise from the brook not 10 feet from our tent that had played us a lullaby last night played us back into consciousness this morning. Leaving our campsite deep within the forest, it was time to make our way up onto a vast plateau and the blast zone that constitutes the entire northern half of the mountain.
Favorites
Some of my favorite freelance articles and posts from past long-distance trails.
The Great Range
I wasn’t always this soft. Age and a career in front of a computer has a way of doing that, slowly obscuring who we really are underneath. Some people go to church to be renewed. I come here.
Canyoneering 101
The 5:30am alarm came as early as ever, this time with the added realization of just how cold a night it had been. Each bundled in our warm layers, we broke camp as quickly as we could to start moving and even then still kept on down jackets and wind shirts longer than usual. It’s the easily forgotten dichotomy of the desert—sweltering days matched by equally chilling nights.
No Country For Old Men
The sweltering oppressiveness of a Deep South summer in To Kill a Mockingbird that hangs in the air with the same suffocation as that of the story’s racial injustice. The silent and hopeless expansiveness of the Texas desert that is nearly as menacing as its villain in No Country For Old Men.
Wonderland
“This is the part I hate.” I can still hear him saying it. The smile on his face minutes later, waving goodbye from the front door, is the truly indelible part. The sweeter half of an otherwise bittersweet memory, as Emily and I pulled down the street heading home to Vermont from our Thanksgiving visit. It was the last time I saw him alive.
Persistence of Memory
Up the stairs to the fifth floor, a collection of Impressionism, surrealism, and cubism masterpieces adorns the starkly white walls of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Nestled among Monet’s famous Water Lilies triptych and Pollock’s massive drip painting canvases hangs a work of a very different kind, scarcely larger than a piece of paper.
46
Sleep has never come easily to me. Years after the Appalachian Trail I’d still occasionally turn over in the middle of the night and reach bleary-eyed for the headphones on my nightstand to plug them in and listen to one of the few sounds that would bring an end to my rising anxiety if not to my sleeplessness: rain on a tent.
Roots
Nearly one year ago, I arrived at an unassuming stripe of cleared forest that would never have been identifiable as an international border had it not been for the small silver obelisk marking precisely that. A few feet away, a collection of square wooden posts also declared this the end of a Pacific Crest Trail adventure that had begun 2,650 miles and…
O Canada
It began like any other day: morning coffee from the warmth of my sleeping bag followed by deflating and rolling up my sleeping pad, and stuffing my few belongings one by one into my pack before emerging from my tent to take it down once more. The only difference was the air of finality that surrounded each of the mundane daily tasks.
Confessions of a Chacoholic
I love Chacos. True story: I own 8 pairs of them. Two pairs hiked the Appalachian Trail, two have hiked the John Muir Trail and the Wonderland Trail twice, and three have now hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Combined they've been my companions for well north of 5,000 trail miles. The 8th pair? I got married to my best friend in those.
The American Alps
The clear skies that we'd fallen asleep to were the same ones we woke to, but somewhere in between we had yet another dose of overnight rain. Fortunately, it was the last we would see of the wet stuff for the rest of the day. Under the newfound sun, steam was quietly rising off of the damp understory like smoke from a smoldering fire…
Irrational Fear
Lions. Tigers. Bears. Oh my. Like Dorothy setting off alone on the yellow brick road, I sometimes wonder whether people to whom thru-hiking is a completely foreign undertaking have an image that this journey is one rife with peril at every turn.
Sins of the Virgin Voyage
Early this morning, just before leaving Olallie Lake I stepped out onto the dock to enjoy the view over the lake to Mount Jefferson bathed in the early light of the day. There wasn't a soul stirring anywhere and the lake was glassy with calm. I can't think of a better way to start a day.
Crater Lake
As recently as 8 days ago, today would never have happened. With yet another wildfire burning along the PCT, the trail was closed for several days where it travels through the western portion of Crater Lake National Park. Though the official PCT gets not a single glimpse of Crater Lake itself, inexplicably routing through lower forests…
Ice Chutes of Certain Death
There's a social phenomena that occurs on every long distance trail with a decent amount of foot traffic, and though it's referred to by many names my personal favorite is "the vortex of fear." In a sense, it is one giant version of the telephone game where news of conditions, weather, or terrain further up the trail becomes filtered through the minds and perspectives of dozens, if not hundreds, of hikers before making its way to your ear.
Stone and Sky
Now this is the Sierra I remember. Gone were the storm clouds and back was the sapphire blue sky that sets the backdrop for some of the world's most dramatic mountain landscapes. Today would mark the trail's first major pass so we decided to sleep in, start a bit later than usual, and keep a leisurely pace through the morning to allow the snow up on the pass to melt and soften as much as possible.
A Raisin in the Sun
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."
Katahdin
After a night of restless anticipation, morning came early. I strolled away from The Birches for an early reunion with my Mom and Dad who’d driven all the way from home to meet me, but even before I made it to the parking lot my hometown friend Shauna, herself having travelled to meet her brother NY Mule, came running down the trail towards me.