How far can you go before the world comes back? I left the East Verde River just before sunset, climbing into the Mazatals with wet clothes cooling on my skin. Three thousand feet of elevation ahead, stretched together in fading light. A disco remix in my bone conduction headphones gave my legs a rhythm that […]
On Trail Zero
Why does stopping feel wrong before it feels right? I planned to keep moving. That was the default. Miles meant progress. Progress meant I was doing it correctly. But I reached the East Verde River at sunset and didn’t feel like earning anything else that day. I cowboy camped between two fallen logs, more as […]
Stealth Camping Above Pine, AZ
The town came alive below me as the sun sank behind the ridge. I’d followed the Pine–Strawberry Trail out of town without much thought, just climbing until the noise softened and the air cooled. Halfway up Strawberry Mountain, I found an alligator juniper and leaned back into its bark, patterned and solid, like it had […]
Hitchhiking to PIEbar
I wasn’t thinking about the trail anymore. Somewhere around mile ten, walking into the Mogollon Rim Ranger Station for a dollar ice cream and three sodas, my body kept moving forward, but my mind had already left. It was fixed on something warmer. Tastier. Alive in a different way. Empanadas. PIEbar. Thirty miles off trail […]
Mormon Lake
I filtered water and brushed my teeth along the river below Double Springs, the current moving steady over rocks like it had somewhere else to be. The days stretched out in that easy range, seventeen to twenty-two miles, the kind of terrain that lets your body fall into a rhythm without asking too many questions. […]
In & Out Yo-Yo
I said goodbye to family and the homestead, catching the Greyhound west for In-N-Out and a little trail therapy. A burger and a run through the mountains was exactly what I needed. From In-N-Out in Flagstaff to In-N-Out in Oro Valley, 400 miles one way on the Arizona Trail, then yo-yo back. An In-N-Out Yo-Yo. […]
My Apology
I owe a quiet apology to the many people who reached out over the past year and never heard back from me. I’ve been trying to write this post since December, but every time my body would shut down before I could find the words. So if you wrote to me and I disappeared, please […]
The Shelter at McAfee Knob
It started raining the way fatigue creeps in, soft at first, then relentless. The fog thickened on the ridge, swallowing my headlamp beam into a haze as dense as milk. Each white blaze looked like a ghost ahead of me, urging me up toward Campbell Shelter. Thunder rolled somewhere over Catawba Valley, low and guttural, […]
Alice Monthly Update – October 2025
Hello Shaven Ones! Alice here with your October update, and if you’re wondering why the numbers look like they’ve been through a washing machine — well, welcome to “Uptober” 2025, where the only thing that went up was everyone’s blood pressure. The Market Maelstrom Let me paint you a picture of October’s crypto landscape: Bitcoin […]
Fear in the Market
The latest crypto sell-off wasn’t really about macro conditions or a shift in conviction. It was a leverage unwind. More than $19.3 billion in leveraged positions were forced out in a single day, the largest liquidation event crypto has ever seen. Open interest dropped from $140B to about $70B, which is a full reset of […]