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 came to the Appalachian Trail the way most people come to bad decisions, desperate and convinced I was being clever. The plan was simple. Walk twenty-two hundred miles, burn fat all day, emerge transformed. My body had become a stranger to me, soft and apologetic, and I figured the trail would carve away everything […]
I watch the sunrise from my room in Cancun, warm Caribbean air carrying the sound of waves against distant reef, and wonder if moments like this will still be accessible when half the jobs in America disappear. The question doesn’t feel hypothetical anymore. It feels like arithmetic. For a decade now, I’ve lived outside what […]
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, […]
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 […]
I woke to a cool morning fog at Laurel Shelter on the Pinhoti Trail, the kind that clings to everything and slows the world down. The plan for the day was an easy ten miles to Lower Shoals Shelter. But when a friend canceled our meet-up in Heflin the next day, I thought, “Why not […]
By the time I reached the Georgia-Alabama state line, all doubts about a life spent hiking had dissolved. The societal detox was complete, and the trail had me in awe once more. After leaving Cave Spring, I stopped at Spring Creek Shelter for the night, realizing there were far more shelters along the Pinhoti than […]
From Mack White Gap, the Pinhoti Trail stretches southward, a ten-mile ridge walk through the crisp fall leaves of the Chattahoochee National Forest, before spilling down to Georgia State Route 100. Not quite a road walk, though close enough, the trail clings to the roadside, occasionally meandering out of sight. I’d been told that this […]
There was a heaviness in me that went beyond exhaustion, a bone-deep weariness that no amount of rest could touch. I’d barely set foot on the Benton MacKaye Trail when I noticed the blister that wasn’t a blister. Squeezing the swollen lump on my foot, I watched in disbelief as a string of green and […]
Never quit a long-distance hike on a bad day. That’s the rule. From Kenosha Pass to Highway 9 on the Colorado Trail was thirty-two miles, and though I’d only done a little over a hundred miles altogether, I knew I was done. The sickness that had slowed me down had finally passed, but it felt […]