the other fork in the road
navigating life via acute corners, wrong turns and dead ends.
Tag: Outdoors
rain is a good thing
I can’t remember when I started pretending Mother Nature and I were BFFs, but I truly started believing it on the Appalachian Trail. The moment we stepped out of my friend Erin’s car to hike the first 400 strenuous steps of the Approach Trail,…
riding the wave
I was staring that blank Monday morning stare, silently waiting for my coffee to brew when I noticed the sign, tucked in a box labeled Pick me ups. Stenciled on a bright yellow background, in mismatched lettering, it said: Do What You Love. I looked around…
the day i became hiker trash
A few years back, my good friend Christina took one of those major life leaps so many people only dream of making. Trying to figure out her place in this crowded world, she loaded up the Honda with boxes of essentials, drove cross country…
and that’s just the beginning
A year ago today, I starting hiking the AT. A year from today, I’ll be hiking the PCT.
human books
Two years ago this week, I boarded a one-way plane to the Arctic Circle, filled with excitement, drowning in the Unknown. Over the next 20 months, I would acquire more valuable knowledge than six years of college and a decade of real world employment…
tiny moving dots
So I received a depressing email last week: Dogg – how’s consulting life treating you? Looks like it’s killing your blog post game. Still living the dream? Just my boss’s way of checking up, wondering if going back to work had sucked the soul…
ticky tacky
We were sitting at the Heritage in Waynesboro, Virginia, drinking beer, playing cribbage, fully enjoying the much deserved fourth Zero day of our 58 day (so far) hike through Appalachia when two thru-hikers placed a blank sheet of paper and a pen at our…
creature fear
After spending 40+ nights with your tent, you begin to think of it as a permanent home, with homelike qualities. Four crooked walls, a place to lay your weary head, a tiny, smelly bubble, protecting you from the outside world. You start to…
i smell like an onion
I worked at a lively campus sports bar back in college. As part of opening the bar every Sunday, I’d set up the condiment bar with the usual Wisconsin suspects: giant tubs of horseradish, relish, pickles, mayo, onions, spicy mustard, etc. I’d carry…
my human catalyst
If one person can completely change the course of your life twice with only ten words and one question, my human catalyst is Emily. The same relatively-a-stranger-friend/coworker Emily who recounted magical tales of dog-sledding adventures, packed with dancing northern lights, snow-drenched trees and the…
