I left the CDT near the Colorado/New Mexico border and headed into Chama. Tired of the constant wind that felt like hungry ghosts demanding to be acknowledged. Worn out from what that does to my nervous system. I not-so-stealth camped in front of the senior center in the middle of town, long past the point […]
I’d walked away from myself just as much as I’d walked away from society. After a month of silence, alone in the mountains, it was time to mingle with the other apes. I travelled south, from Breckenridge to Fairplay and beyond by connecting local buses, to end up stealth camping in Salida. Then hitchhiking from […]
Around mile 100 on the Colorado Trail I stopped hiking completely. Just outside of Breckenridge, where I’d quit hiking two years prior for a different sort of adventure. And yet here I was again, having lost faith in humanity somewhere in between. I camped there in the mountains for almost a month. Laying with mountain […]
The midnight train to Boston cost $11 and I only had $7 in my pocket. “How much is it?” I asked the conductor who looked like he needed a nap. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. And with that, the impossible just became possible. A last minute decision, a cheap flight, and I arrive in […]
I have been blessed with multiple families. Family is the only reason I exist between trails. The Arizona crew on the homestead. The Attleboro/Pawtucket people. And my Chinese family, who just closed the restaurant that brought me back to New England one last time. The restaurant opened the year I was born. It’s the place […]
There’s a book I’m supposed to be writing… Instead, I stealth camp outside of town after riding the dog into Flagstaff. The deal was that I’d take time off-trail to finish writing the second book in my hiker trash romance series. Sit still. Write. Pay for the future. But to my body, writing felt like […]
The transition between trails is the hardest part of life, where dips into society are the fading norm, and life outside is becoming the foundation. Forty days. Forty nights. Done. The Catalina Highway unspooling below me, down into Tucson, and with it the slow return of everything I’d left behind… the noise of traffic, the […]
The end is important in all things. I took the shuttle to the bottom of Sabino Canyon, spending way too much time charging my phone and drinking milk at the closest supermarket. I packed out another half gallon like it was the source of life, and climbed Sabino Canyon on foot. Cyclists lined up at […]
Mileage that took three hours to run in, took four days to retrace on the way out of Oro Valley. The first night I’d slipped behind the glow of In-N-Out and disappeared into Big Wash, cowboy camped in the quiet of a place not meant for staying. Then somewhere above Catalina State Park, I stopped […]
Having fasted for the last 24 hours, I descended from the mountains, through Romero Pass, down into Catalina State Park and into In-N-Out. Three weeks, 400 miles, and in the end all that remained was a three hour run. My empty water bottles collapsed from the pressure change of the descent and I had salt […]