“If I was a mostly blind pig, trundling my way down a dark canyon, I’d likely stick to the path most familiar to me…”

“I wrestled with the rawness of my vulnerability for months. I was angry and sad and hopeless and afraid. I went to a dark place and stayed there wrapped in a cloak of uncertainty until inspiration struck and I envisioned—not a way out—but a path forward…”

“Why do I backpack? It reminds me to let go and love who I am, it reminds me to live…”

The first 31 one days after my ACL reconstruction—what surgery was like, major milestones, important takeaways—plus some great pictures of my knee (inside and out), you don’t want to miss this.

“I began barking like a dog, a rabid one, and yelling, while flinging my arms wildly into the sides of my tent. At some point amid the chaos that was unfolding within the four walls of my REI Quarter Dome, I flicked my headlamp on and began waving that about too. Now, not only was my tent barking and gyrating in the dark of the night, it was also strobing like some kind of mad disco tech...”

“And I missed horses. I missed them like there was a vein in my body that ran with blood redder and darker than all the others combined, a vein that connected me to the very creature that woke me up in the first place, which taught me how to love so fiercely I never wondered about why or how…”

“In that safe, carefully cultivated office space, it dawned on me that I had a choice. I could hold onto my heavy shame, my merciless inner critic, my brutal values that did not leave space for me to be human or for life to just happen; I could continue to run myself into the ground, fleeing from the invisible adversary, or I could choose another path…”

“I crossed a line at the start of my journey, a line I remembered being a blurry one, a soft one; however, when I turned to look over my shoulder, after so many miles of trudging, I saw in its place an impenetrable wall, one I surely must have climbed. But how? It was clear there was no going back, my only option now was to move forward…”

“Moderation. It used to be a dirty word—the He Who Must Not Be Named of my vocabulary—today, though, it isn’t so much a foul word, as it is a confounding one. Restraint is the exhibit in a museum that I visit occasionally to marvel at, like a Van Gogh painting that I enjoy ogling but could never replicate, not even remotely…”  

“In a past life I remember—more poignantly than anything else—being afraid and going anyways. Every time…”

“I soak in every vivid moment of the world unfolding around me. I believe I can become an integral part of the landscape if I conduct a thorough enough study of it; perhaps one day I can, but for now, I am no more than a passer through, a quiet observer, a walker bearing witness…”

“I have this feeling, deep in my gut, that I am going to find the answers to my questions out there, in the mountains and in the desert, and I believe I will recognize what it is I am searching for when I see it…”

“I felt something green and fragile and small sprout with in me as I hiked through the snow that day. Perhaps I had planted a tiny seed in the soil of my heart on the summit of Springer; perhaps when my fingertips had brushed the metal placard marking the start of a journey yet inconceivable to me, my heart, emboldened by the impossibility of what I had set out to do, dared to whisper its intention to the Universe…”

“It was October 31st, and I was shivering, alone, in Greenwall Shelter, south of where the Appalachian Trail split from the Long Trail... I had come out here to process my sobriety and all I could process was the cold, miserable aloneness I was currently enduring”

“I think the hardest part about staring into the unknown, is remaining present for every uncomfortable moment of it, and taking it one day at a time—or one minute at a time when the day feels too long…”

“ I opened the crushed bag of potato chips that flew with me to Santiago and sighed, shoving one into my mouth and gazing around, I began to notice hoards of people who appeared to be missing the bottom halves of their faces; in place of their mouths, all I saw was white.”