Last summer I thru-hiked the Northville Placid Trail with my father. It was 133 miles of mud and mosquitoes, storm-ravaged bridges and swollen lakes. The trail only crossed four major roads (except for a several mile road walk at the end), and my dad and I could walk an entire day without seeing another soul. …
/arrival/
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. --C.S. Lewis There are things that bring you comfort. The familiar weight of your backpack hanging from your shoulders. The peppermint scent of Dr. Bronner's soap. Curled pages of poetry that have kept you company around the globe. These are the things that you …
Leaving/Left/Gone
Bilbo: I'll be alright. Just let me sit quietly for a moment. Gandalf: You've been sitting quietly for far too long! Tell me, when did doilies and your mother's dishes become so important to you? I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of Elves in the woods. He'd stay out …
What You Share With The World
What you share with the world is what it keeps of you. --Noah and the Whale Situated on the northern coast of the Big Island overlooking the Maui Strait is Moʻokini Heiau, said to be the first temple built on the Hawaiian Islands. Legend says that the temple was built in a single …
Memories Are Stronger Than Bone
I met a guy in Moab, and I can't remember his name. He told me about how he was airlifted off Mount Whitney along with the body of a dead girl, a girl who went hiking with her fiancé and came down with AMS, but instead of following her down, her fiancé chased the summit …
Of Mice and Mountaintops
I am writing this at 10:09 PM on a Thursday night in a Walmart parking lot. My car smells overwhelmingly of curry. My car does not normally smell of curry. When I committed myself to a solo road trip—a mini foray into the shallows of vanlife—I was ready for the Big Stuff. Mountaintop vistas. …
Women of the Wild
"Where's your boyfriend?" a man asked me on the summit of Slide Mountain, the highest peak in the Catskills. It'd been a bad week, so I'd left work early that Friday and escaped to the mountains, my go-to move when the world's feeling extra heavy. This was my third summit of the day, and I …
Medicine Wheel, Wyoming
You may have heard the word "yoga" before. "Meditation," too. Maybe "chakra" even, if you've participated in any of the two aforementioned words. In the past ten years or so, Westerners have become enthralled with connecting more intimately with their bodies and the world around them. They do this by tapping into Eastern practices, which …
Farewell, Pennsylvania
I never wanted to live in Pennsylvania. The cities weren't big enough and the land wasn't wild enough. To me, Pennsylvania was the Liberty Bell on one end and the Steelers' stadium on the other, with the strange groundhog that rivets the nation for one lone day in February somewhere in between. Everything about it …
We, the People. We, the Rocks.
It can be difficult to love rock. Bioerosion, glauconite, miogeosyncline, they aren’t words that inspire. Even cleavage becomes a sigh when it’s all slate and dust. But build it a backbone, give it a story, and that piece of sandstone that remembers the weight of dinosaurs 150 million years ago—as well as Jenny + Sean …
People in Parks 