Five Hundred Miles in Deep Wild

 I'm pleased to share that my essay "Five Hundred Miles" appears in the 2022 issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry.

My 15-year-old son Milo and I are hiking along the backbone of a ridge. The land drops away on both sides to deep, green valleys. Beyond the valleys, jagged peaks rise up, red and gray dusted with green. Farther in the distance, more mountains stretch hazy and blue to the edge of the sky. 

We climb up sharply, heading toward a rocky knob—the high point mentioned in the guidebook, I hope. I lift one foot after the other, repeating a mantra I found in a book on walking meditation: I have arrived. I have arrived. Looking down, I notice the track of a mountain bike between rocks. 

“What a stupid place to ride a bike,” I say.

“What a stupid place to do anything,” Milo replies.

It tells a little bit of our Colorado Trail story, although it's not a direct excerpt from Uphill Both Ways (though you might recognize a phrase here or there. . . I'm a strong believer in recycling). 

I'm notoriously bad about keeping up with reading the literary journals and anthologies that come my way, even when my own writing is included. But I've read the two previous issues of Deep Wild and have started in on this one, and the writing is really good. If you love reading about nature and wild places, you'll love this journal. You can order your copy here.

And if you enjoy my essay, you'll definitely love my book, which you can order from one of the links listed here.

Where the Buffalo Roam

 I made an unexpected trip to Colorado this month. My parents were in a car accident in late September, and while I wasn't able to go out in the immediate aftermath, I was able to squeeze a trip in between the end of one kid's cross-country running season and another kid's wisdom teeth removal (my first nibble on the Sandwich Generation). It turned out that delaying my trip allowed me to be more useful than I might otherwise have been, fretting outside a hospital room. Instead I was able to help around the house and take my mom to medical appointments and get out and about. Useful is what we most want to be when someone we love is hurting. Visiting after they were home also allowed me to spend two weeks with both my parents, whom I hadn't seen in three years.

I chose to drive there, due to the pandemic, the rental car shortage, and the illusion that I could control the situation by not being beholden to an airline's timeline. Curry and I made this trip many times before kids and a few times with them, and I did it once with just the kids, when Milo had his driver's permit and was keen to take on as much of the driving duties as he was allowed (his favorite, Wyoming--"Speed limit eighty!"). But I'd never done it alone, and oh, was it a long trip. I listened to many audiobooks. I saw many miles of corn. I developed a Pavlovian response to highway interchanges wherein my palms immediately began to sweat, even if there was little traffic and clear signage.

I also saw many strange things going down the highway: An entire molded fiberglass swimming pool. Several windmill blades, each far longer than its truck and trailer. Fedex trucks towing three trailers (the only sign of a trucker shortage; there was no sign of a supply chain shortage as I passed by millions of tractor-trailer trucks each day). A truck that appeared to be full, if the signage on the outside was to be believed, of ice-cream tubs filled with bacon grease.

I found that in the states where the billboards for Jesus were the largest, so too were the billboards for strip clubs and sex toy shops. In Iowa a farm had mounted satellite dishes on every fence post along miles of highway, each painted in a different brightly colored design, a drive-by art installation. In Kansas, I hit a tumbleweed almost as big as my car. It splintered into a million tiny shards like a dandelion clock blown in the wind.

And in Colorado, on my way out of town, I stopped and visited the bison. My first year out of college I spent as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Aurora, and for one of our projects we worked on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, a chemical-weapons-facility-turned-nature-preserve in one of those particularly 20th-century ironies where the only undeveloped land is that which is too toxic for people. My team spent our days there digging up Russian thistle and planting American plum (oh, the Cold War symbolism). The place was pretty much a windswept plain of grass and weeds, with roaming mule deer, burrowing prairie dogs, and a few settling ponds that had been recently remediated for organochlorine pesticides, dioxin, PCBs, and other terrible things under Superfund. Sometime in the twenty-five years since I worked there, bison have been introduced, and I hadn't had a chance to see them yet.

So despite the lateness of the hour when I finally rousted myself from the embrace of family for the long trip home, I stopped by on my way out of town, and walked along a trail until I cam within sight of my quarry: the American bison, a herd of at least 60 or 70 animals, beyond a very tall fence. Most of them were lying in the grass, enjoying the view of some strange-looking clouds and the mountains beyond the brown haze of Denver. A few wandered from clump to clump of fellow bison, and the young ones pranced around, and every time one moved, a thin column of dust rose, and you could imagine the dust cloud a great herd might have generated when migrating across the plains. I stood for a long time, sketching and feeling a mixture of awe at this magnificent remnant of our continent's past and melancholy that this is it--this small herd, penned in by a very tall fence and developments encroaching from every direction (despite the Superfund site and the nearby dog-food factory and feed lots). Yet, despite their diminished prairie, despite their limited range, I'm glad they're there, and I'm glad I took the time to stop and say hello.

This post went out recently to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. Subscribe here and receive a free PDF of my illustrated short essay "Eleven Ways to Raise a Wild Child" and also be entered in a monthly drawing to win a print of one of the illustrations from Uphill Both Ways.

Thru-Hiking en Famille

The last (for now) of the short pieces I've been writing over the last year about our Colorado Trail hike last summer has just been published in TrailGroove Magazine, Issue #35. My piece, Thru-Hiking en Famille is less of a how-to than a how-we-did, but if you're looking looking for tips on getting your family out on the trail, or are just curious about the nitty gritty details of our trek, or if you just want to see more pictures of Colorado's scenery, please check it out!

The Long Road

19 days
17 states
5 national parks/monuments/memorials
6,271 miles



We had so much fun driving across country the last two summers in a row, I decided why not do it again this year?



Just kidding. My parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this summer, so we had no choice.



And to be honest, I was kinda dreading the whole prospect. But once we got past the anticipation stage of the trip and on to the actual trip, we had a great time.

C did not join us (his exact words: "I hope when people ask me why I didn't come along, you say somebody had to work to pay for this trip."). Which meant a lot more driving for me. He usually does somewhere between most and all of the driving, while I knit, read, nap, and entertain the kinder.



M, however, has his learners permit and did a fair amount of driving in the states which honor other states' permits (which is most of them). This was a terrifying experience in many ways. But, as I reminded myself over and over (and over and over) again, better he get his first road trip/multi-lane freeway/80 mph highway driving experience with me in the passenger's seat, rather than in a college buddy's near broken-down jalopy. I remember my first road trips and I'm lucky I and my friends are still alive. He did great, but still I nearly wore out my imaginary brake pedal. Needless to say, I did not get any knitting/reading/napping/entertaining the kinder done.



Because C wasn't with us and because I didn't have to worry about fitting the trip in between work obligations or within limited vacation time, I aimed for a bit more of a relaxed pace than usual, and left the return trip open-ended.


On the way out, we took the long way through Missouri to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder's Rocky Ridge Farm, and stopped by Mushroom Rock State Park in Kansas, a side trip C and I took when we drove out with a three-year-old M.



In Colorado, we attended two big family events and hung out with various relatives, doing city/suburb stuff like going to the pool and the climbing gym, eating out, and window shopping. We also went for a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, hiked the first 6.5 miles of the Colorado Trail, which we missed last summer because we'd begun at an alternative start point, and visited a glacier.



I thought for a while about heading up to Yellowstone on the "way" home, but decided that would be too rushed (and, no doubt, crowded). Instead we headed west to the top corner of Utah, and spent a couple of days in Dinosaur National Monument, then drove diagonally across Wyoming to see Devils Tower. From there, we hit the requisite sites of Crazy Horse, Mount Rushmore, and The Badlands.



We were the ultimate tin can tourists, popping into parks for a few hours. My twenty-something self would be horrified by our rushed sight-seeing, but it poured rain while we were at Devils Tower (which, by the way, is incredible, despite the crowds), so more than the shortest hike around the base would have been miserable.

And there's really not much to see at either Crazy Horse or Mt. Rushmore (in truth, I'm conflicted about both of these sites; on the one hand, amazing human ingenuity and artistry, on the other, is it ever right to desecrate a mountain, whether for a coal mine, a ski resort, or a giant sculpture of a dead guy/guys?). My only regret is that we didn't have more time to spend at Badlands, like a couple of days. We went on two short hikes, and despite the kids being tired and cranky and determined to get out of South Dakota by the time we got there, it ended up being one of their favorite places.

I have to give the National Park Service credit for establishing very efficient sight-seeing tours of their parks. We had a full day, two nights, and an afternoon in Dinosaur, where took two driving tours, stopping off at all of the overlooks, and went on two short, beautiful hikes. The actual dinosaur bones were almost anticlimactic after all of the incredible scenery we took in. I have a super secret plan to go back there and raft the Green River in two summers, after the boys graduate 8th grade/high school. I may even get a job in order to pay for it.

Did I mention that rain followed us almost everywhere we went? 

I discovered that there's no way to get across the country without looking at a LOT of corn. But I did enjoy the fields of sunflowers in South Dakota and appreciated that Minnesota leaves a swath of tall grass prairie growing alongside the highway.

Having done this trip several times and several ways, I've found that the nicest way across the country is to cross Pennsylvania on I-80, then zig-zag down Ohio to I-70.



This way you avoid most of the yucky industrial junk, in the northern parts of the vowel states, avoid most of usurious tolls in those same states (plus NY and PA), have to endure less tractor-trailer-truck traffic, and get better scenery. You still get some sketchy interstate pretzels and multi-lane traffic, in almost all of CT and MA, as well as some midwestern cities, but having taken the long way on I-90 through the heart of Chicago, I'll take Hartford.




As for the kids, this was their third year in a row of driving to Colorado and back, so they did pretty well, sitting in the car all day and helping out at campsites (except when we stayed with relatives in CO and visited my aunt in Missouri, we camped every night).



We had very long days (either C is a faster driver than M and I are, or he's less judicious with rest breaks) and they kept it together really well. M acted as second adult, taking on a fair amount of driving, and bossing people around. We listened to audiobooks on the way out (a challenge in my rather noisy car), as well as music.

On the way home, I had E and Z take turns reading out loud from their respective books (they'd both finished the books they wanted to read and were stuck with books I'd brought along from the bookshelves at home). In each state, they read from their travel atlas. And they got to play a lot more video games than I allow at home, although whenever we went somewhere with a view, I made them put them down ("scenery not screenery" became the mantra).

I don't know what the boys will remember from this trip. The deluge in Utah that nearly washed away our tent? The kind neighbors in Pennsylvania who shared some white gas so we could cook our last night's meal of macaroni and cheese? The glacier? The lizards? The mountains? The desert? The buffalo we barely caught a glimpse of as M zoomed by at 70 mph? The endless seas of cows? The rabbits? deer? pronghorn? lizards? Nearly unlimited Asphalt 8 on their iPads? The dozens of relatives they met for the first, and possibly last, time? Endless corn fields?

Colorado Trail Redux ~ Part II

In today's post, I answer some of the most common questions I get about our trip.

How far did you hike?

The official length of the Colorado Trail is 486.4 miles. But there is a keyhole in the middle, where you can choose one of two routes. We took the Collegiate West route, which is 5.1 miles longer than the East, making our official trail distance 489.5 miles. This does not include any extra off-trail or in-town miles.

Where does the CT begin and end?
The CT starts in Denver and ends in Durango (or vice-versa) and follows a roughly S-shaped route (you can see a map of it here).

How long did it take you to hike it?It took us 42 days, or exactly six weeks, to hike the trail.

How many miles did you average per day?
Averaged over the 42 days, we hiked 11.7 miles per day. If you don't count the two days on which we hiked no on-trail miles (one "zero" day, which was a complete rest day and one day on which we attempted to hike Mt. Elbert), we averaged 12.2 miles per day. We also had several "nearo" (i.e. near-zero) days, on which we hiked a anywhere from 2 1/2 to 9 miles on trail before or after going into town.

What is the greatest distance you hiked in a day?
Our biggest mileage day was 18.8 miles. It was supposed to be a 19-mile day, but I developed shin splints halfway through and was perfectly happy to skip those last two-tenths of a mile. We toyed with hiking a 20, but it never worked out.

What did you eat?
Ugh. Probably the worst part of the trip was the food. We decided to go stove-less to save weight (and no, cooking over a fire was not an option, because it's dirty, takes a lot of time, we didn't travel with a saw or axe, and there were fire restrictions—meaning no building fires outside of official Forest Service fire rings—throughout most if not all of our hiking area), and so we had cold reconstituted oatmeal for breakfast and cold reconstituted beans and rice, couscous, and ramen noodles for dinner. Everyone liked lunch—cheese, crackers, nut butter, instant hummus, and candy—the best. We also had various bars and trail mix for snacks. I chose the most nutritionally dense items I could find—putting freeze-dried fruit, chia seeds, protein powder, and milk powder in the oatmeal and freeze dried veggies in dinner, and avoiding sugar and other empty calories. My kids (and husband) dreamed of and talked about food—greasy, salty, sugary, junky food—nonstop, and bought and ate as much of the same as they could every time we went to town. I longed for salad and grilled cheese sandwiches.


How did you get this food?
We were very lucky to have our own personal Trail Angels, in the form of my parents, who met us at two campgrounds, in tricky resupply areas, and brought us not only our box of dried food, but also coolers full of cold drinks, fried chicken, homemade cookies, and other delights. They also met us at the end of the trail, with our car. Two of my aunts happened to be vacationing in another tricky resupply area and brought us our food box, took us out to lunch, and let us use their shower. The other three times, we hitchhiked into the nearest town and picked up our resupply box at the post office (and, no, people aren't any better at picking up hitchhikers when three of them are adorable, helpless children).




Did you all share one tent?
Yes we did. You can read more about our tent here. It was very, very cozy. The zippers started to fail about halfway through, C and Z accidentally put the center pole right though the nylon one day (I did a beautiful fix with nylon tape, if I don't say so myself). Otherwise, I think it held up well and did a really good job keeping out the weather (and we did not get struck by lightning that time we camped on top of a mesa and the lighting was coming down all around us).

How was the weather?
The day we started hiking it was 98 degrees F. By the last week, we woke up with 1/4 inch of ice in our water bottles every morning. We had several days of pretty steady rain in about the middle of the trip, and I was immensely grateful that it came at a time when most of our hiking was below tree line (the week before we had at least one major pass to climb every day and spent much of the time in the alpine zone; not only would rain have made this section more difficult and dangerous, it would have obscured the amazing vistas). In short, the weather was Colorado.



What was the best part of the trip?
The views. The wildflowers. Walking through the landscape and noticing the communities of trees and plants shift with changes in altitude, direction of slope, proximity to water. Seeing my kids take on responsibility and challenges and be independent. Watching my kids be silly and childish. Observing them getting along, telling stories, making jokes, inventing games, listing their dream foods. Snuggling together in the tent at night, reading Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn. Noticing the way time slows down when we have nothing to do but place one foot in front of the other and nowhere to go but the next campsite.

What was the worst part of the trip?The hiking. No, not really the hiking, since that's what it was all about, but I'm not gonna lie to you, the hiking was really, really hard. I am a slow hiker to begin with, and I was sore, tired, and out of breath much of the time. Developing near-crippling shin splints halfway through. Being blamed for anything that didn't live up to anyone's expectations (but getting no credit for the fabulous stuff), since I was the instigator and planner of the whole trip. Not having enough time to simply sit and take in and enjoy the places we say. Not enough time to read or draw or write or cloud-collect, or daydream. Too many people. The mountains were crawling with them—backpackers, day hikers, trail runners, mountain bikers, hunters. Any sense of solitude that once existed in these so-called wildernesses is no more. Would you do it again?Yes. No. I don't know. Some days I thought "I am never backpacking again." Other days, I daydreamed about my next trail—finish the rest of the Colorado section of the Continental Divide Trail (the CT and CDT overlap for ~300 miles) with the whole family, hike the Arizona Trail all by myself. I don't think I'll go back and hike the CT again when I'm 62, but you never know...

Colorado Trail Redux ~ Part I

I finally got my computer's hard drive cleaned off enough that I could upload *most* of the photos from our trip (and doing so filled the drive back up again, putting me right back where I started).

So I thought I'd share a few with you here.

I couldn't settle on just a handful of pictures (out of the 1500+), so I've spread  two handfuls out over two posts.

Hopefully these two rather large handfuls won't be too much!

I don't have much to say about the trip when people ask me, except amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring, overwhelming, exhausting, and other such meaningless adjectives.

And I'm supposed to be writing a book about  it.

A friend of mine asked me the other day to tell some stories from the trail and I froze…I couldn't think of anything.

Maybe I'm just not a natural storyteller (let's repeat that earlier question, shall we: And I'm supposed to be writing a book about it???).

Or maybe I just haven't processed it yet.

It's been a month. You'd think that would be enough time to wrap my brain around the experience, but perhaps not.

I've been trying to get as much of it down on paper (or screen, as it were), while the memories are still fresh, but I keep running into roadblocks, both technological (that darn overstuffed hard drive and a suddenly dysfunctional charge cable) and mental (such as an overwhelming desire to lie around rereading old mystery novels all day and night).

So while I work on getting the bones of the book down and writing some shorter pieces that hopefully will be out there in the world for you to read soon, I'll share some photos.

And in the next installment, I'll answer some of the most common questions I get about the hike. I hope that will do until I'm in a more storytelling place.