Reading the news is a small daily horror. We are currently in the longest government shutdown of the modern era, and people and places are suffering. The institutions we have built this country upon are failing us. The national parks are staying open despite being understaffed and unable to handle the influx of visitors. Restroom …
Ohio on Fire
Forget what they say the year started in March when a girl offered you a cigarette leaning against her blue beater. The match was lit. Still you stayed. Did you know fingers can smell of cigarettes? Fingers that point and pluck and love perfumed with a past no memory of you. You're not sure how …
Paper Worries
“I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.” --Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts I have many hobbies and one of them is worrying. I worry about getting my heart broken, being stuck in an unfulfilling life, and money, often money. My money worries come suddenly and with …
What Blossoms From Anger
When I was eleven, I wrote a strongly worded email to General Mills arguing that gymnast Paul Hamm should be on a Wheaties box. I didn’t regularly eat Wheaties and I didn’t do gymnastics, but I thought that the red-headed gymnast was adorable and talented and totally deserved to be smiling up at frazzled grocery …
A Year
One year ago, I was sitting at a desk. It was a nice desk. The chair was padded and it swiveled; I had an entire drawer dedicated to colored paper, glue sticks, and craft foam; a painted alligator made of egg cartons and cardboard boxes watched me work. It was a lovely desk. Fifty-two weeks …
Wild Child(ren)
"What's this tree's name? C'mon, we just went over it." I point to a slender tree with gray bark peeling off like wallpaper. The kids look at it uncertainly. "I know it!" A girl exclaims, tugging on her braid. Her eyes widen in revelation. "A shaggy hickey!" …
To Disappear
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. …
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 …
Putting Price Tags on Parks
Once upon a time, a man named Gutenberg invented the printing press. Before that books were copied by hand, making them expensive and rare, available only to the societal elite. And then along came Gutenberg and everything changed. There were more books in circulation. More people began to read. The worlds of ink and paper …
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. …
People in Parks 