Stealth camping in Great Barrington under a sky that threatened rain but never delivered. I laid out my sleeping pad and bag directly on the grass, no tent, just open air and the possibility of getting soaked. A half gallon of milk, and a flashlight that probably gave away my position to anyone who cared […]
Category: Hiking Journal
Jenny’s Cabin
I’d been depressed for almost a year when I arrived at Jenny’s Cabin. Normally I tuck that away, but it has a tendency to resurface in quiet moments. In the empty Airbnb at the start of this hike, and now in the quiet solitude of an off grid cabin where I stopped running from my […]
Milk Run on the AT
The Sawyer water filter had been hidden in my backpack since February, when I got off the Florida Trail and disappeared into the digital exile of Cancun. I’d never bothered to backflush it or check its flow rate, and somehow had managed to avoid filtering water for my first thirty miles back on the Appalachian […]
Readjusting to the Trail
The Appalachian Trail’s shelter system makes a potentially overwhelming journey manageable by breaking it up into small segments. Each day becomes simple, just make it to the next shelter. One after another. Until you reach your destination, whatever or wherever that might actually be. Wiley Shelter surprised me with its nonexistent mice population, hosting only […]
NYC to the Appalachian Trail
Seventeen dollars and a train ride out of New York City left me in Pawling, New York. My backpack felt light, and I floated out of town, feet barely skimming the asphalt. After too many months sedentary in Mexico, staring at a laptop and trying to build a future, it felt good to be moving […]
Feet in the Fire
I woke up in an empty Airbnb ready to do something else, booking the cheapest flight I could find. 24 hours later I landed in Newark, with the vague plan of hiking the Appalachian Trail north into Massachusetts. With no definite plan, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. I drifted, taking the AirTrain in […]
I Quit Drinking on the Appalachian Trail
In 2010, I stood at the edge of a truth I couldn’t ignore. Alcohol was taking away pieces of my life, leaving behind a landscape I barely recognized. The morning light filtered through my apartment window, illuminating empty bottles and broken dreams that had become unwelcome companions. I knew then that without change, I wouldn’t […]
Florida to Cancun
Hiking across Florida was everything I’d hoped, good people, endless sky, and a life spent outside. But beneath the ease of it all, a nagging thought filled me with subtle dread. A goal left unfinished. Something that felt beyond my capabilities, beyond what I could take on while living out of a backpack. And yet, […]
The Winter Pilgrimage
The winter pilgrimage begins on New Year’s Day at the Southernmost Point of the United States in Key West, but I was already a day behind, and had only made it as far south as Marathon when I saw the first familiar faces hiking north. Longshot, hiking with Peg Leg on her audacious border-to-border calendar […]
Finishing the Pinhoti
I finished the Pinhoti Trail before the end of 2024, spending my last night in the shelter on Weogufka Creek, listening to the water slip over rocks, the sound as familiar as my own breath. At the base of Flagg Mountain, I contemplated my need for significant alone time in order to process emotions and […]