Hailstorm on Tuesday, Turquoise on Wednesday
An hour into a hailstorm at 11,000 feet, four strangers stood under a sagging green tarp and laughed. Five days in the Rockies — cold-water plunges, a ninja squirrel, turquoise Crystal Lake, a forest of standing dead pine, and the one animal the park refused to show me.
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Learning to Do Nothing
There is a phrase the Italians use, dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. It turns out I had to hike into the Virginia backcountry, run out of distractions, and get taught the lesson by an insect before it actually landed.
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The Blue Dot That Kept Me Walking
No marked trail, no water, 23 miles of Badlands prairie. My first solo backpacking trip nearly ended on day one, on a shortcut into the washes with a dead stove and a useless compass, until a blue dot on an offline map showed me I was fifty meters from the route.
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