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, […]
Tag: Florida
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 […]
Eglin Air Force Base, Florida Trail
Eglin Air Force Base, a sanctuary of rolling hills, serene boardwalks, and quiet streams that soothe the soul, is one of my favorite sections of the Florida Trail. It was here, amidst this tranquil landscape, that we reached two significant milestones: the 1,000-mile marker and the high point of the trail, a lofty Florida mountain […]
Hillcrest Baptist Church, Altha, FL
I’d done everything that I came to do on the Florida Trail. Maybe I’d skipped some miles, but I intended on hiking those miles in the opposite direction in order to catch a flight to Las Vegas. A little flip-flop instead of hiking straight through. Because of the rain, I said goodbye to the bayview […]
Panama City Beach, Florida
It didn’t take us long to reach Navarre Beach once we realized that we couldn’t cut across the beach from Okaloosa Island. We had a few cocktails at Juana’s Pagodas, chased by several shots of tequila before we pressed on. Though it was a road walk, this was the part of the trail I’d been […]
Waffle House, Jacksonville, Florida
Long before sunrise I sat in a Waffle House just outside of the Jacksonville airport, feeling like I had just been released from a pressurized capsule, the hatch swinging open to reveal the vast expanse of the cosmos beyond. I was drifting into the cold vacuum of deep, black space, weightless and untethered… alone. I’d […]
Florida Trail Flip-Flop
My end-to-end hike of the Florida Trail turned into a flip-flop soon after St Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge. I caught a boat ride across the river, where I found Longshot, Nana Man, and Gas Monkey trying to win prize money by playing Cornhole against locals. The first place cash prize was suggested as going towards […]
Jr’s Aucilla Store, Perry, Florida
I hike every day until I pass out. I haven’t done any writing in over a month. The words for social media posts escape me. I was pushing hard because I didn’t have enough time to finish the Florida Trail, and that kept weighing on my mind. I split from the group after we’d gotten […]
Keystone Heights, Florida
We were on an abandoned forest road, drying out gear from the overnight condensation, listening to the whisper of the wind through the trees, when I realized that I hadn’t posted anything to social media in a while. Usually that meant that I wasn’t having fun, that I had zero desire to share the boring […]
Rodman Dam, Palatka, Florida
My plan had been to go into the town of Palatka to resupply, but everyone else had a mail drop at Rodman Dam, and they had more than they could eat. I ended up with some hand me down peanut butter and Pop Tarts, more than enough to make it two days to the next […]