Glassels

As I've done readings and interviews for Uphill Both Ways over the last few months, one question has come up again and again: what's your next big adventure? And I've been chagrined to not have an answer. Since our big hike in 2016, the boys and I went on a road trip to Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and points in between. I went on a solo road trip to Colorado last fall. We traveled as a family to Washington, DC, the summer before the pandemic. And I went to Mexico with friends last winter. We've also gone on our sort-of-annual camping trip, with a couple of missed years due to work and pandemic. But none of those have been adventure adventures like hiking 500 miles through Colorado. And since the book came out in March, I haven't had even a little adventure, other than a weekend of car camping, on my agenda.

I needed to do something to remedy that situation, stat, so I began thinking about a hiking trip along the coast in Downeast Maine, a trip we'd planned to take the fall after we returned from the Colorado Trail, until both the weather and the children threatened mutiny. I thought it might be my opportunity to give solo hiking a try, for the first time in 25 years. But as I thought about our gear--tents and stoves designed for groups, not singles--and the fact that I'd have to carry all my water, I decided to invite C along, even though I swore I'd never backpack with him again after our Colorado Trail hike (if you've read the book, you'll know why).

He agreed, and we gathered gear and food for two days and hit the road very early in the morning on the last Friday in July. C loaded his pack with most of the essentials, and with the weight I saved by not carrying anything vital, I brought along two books, a journal kit, a camera, binoculars, and an extra sleep pad for lounging on the beach. After a very long drive, we made the hot, sweaty hike in. On the five miles of up-and-down, rooty, rocky, brushy trail, with six liters of water on my back, I was very, very grateful to not also be carrying our 6-pound, five(ish)-person tent or our not-so-light Whisper-Lite stove.

Once we arrived at our campsite, the apltly named Fairy Head, we spent the afternoon and all the next day moving from rock to rock as we lounged on the beach, cooking, snacking, reading, birdwatching, and swimming, I was again very, very grateful to have company. I'm very good at entertaining myself, but it was nice to have someone to chat with and share camp chores with. Although we wished we'd brought a mini deck of cards, we caught up on about 20 years' worth of conversation. C, for his part, redeemed himself, and he only got a little bit antsy. As a remedy, I proposed a walk to the headland (and ended up slipping on seaweed and acquiring a collection of big, purple bruises). 

Our beach was made up of pebbles ranging in size from marble to potato. Most of them were a slaty gray, but several had blue, red, pink, or green in them, and they glistened like gems when wet from the outgoing tide. I was reminded of the book Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, where he quotes The Meaning of Liffby Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, which MacFarlane describes as "a genius catalogue of nonce words. . . in which British place names are used as nouns for the 'hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all recognize, but for which no word exists.'" One example he quotes is " 'Glassel (n.): A seaside pebble which was shiny and interesting when wet, and which now is a lump of rock, but which children nevertheless insist on filling their suitcases with after a holiday.' "

C filled his pockets with glassels, several of which now sit on our coffee table. They've been polished enough by eons of being washed and tumbled by the sea that they are a bit more interesting than lumps of rock, and even the least shiny ones are silent reminders of a our adventure.

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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.

Become a Trail Naturalist

I have a piece in the latest issue of TrailGroove Magazine called "Becoming a Trail Naturalist," in which I give tips for hikers and backpackers to incorporate a study of natural history into their trips. Please check it out, and while you're there, explore the rest of the magazine and let the lovely, lush photography inspire you to hit the trail.

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!

Those Heavy Heavy Packs

Maybe you've noticed that I have a slight obsession with the weight of the gear we'll be taking on the trail. There's a very good reason for that. When we hiked the trail in 1996, back before the lightweight backpacking revolution (or at least before that revolution became known to the likes of me), I had no idea there was any other way to hike than crushed under a heavy load. Back before the internet was a daily part of our lives, I only had library books as resources for how to pack for a backpacking trip--library books that were at least 10 to 20 years old, even then, with gear photos that included shiny nylon external frame packs and waffle-soled suede hiking boots with red laces, flannel shirts and fishing poles.

I have no idea how much our packs, which you can see but perhaps not entirely appreciate in this picture, weighed--we didn't even have a bathroom scale on which to weigh them. The packs themselves were internal framed, made of heavy cordura pack cloth, with lots of zippers and buckles and straps. Inside we carried: a four-season tent (which, to be fair, possibly saved our lives when we got buried under a foot-and-a-half of snow in a blizzard our last night on the trail); a stove and bottles of white gas, a two-pot stainless steel cook set; plus an extra stainless steel smaller pot/bow; a water filter; nalgene bottles; a water bag; candle lanterns and extra candles; town clothes; camp sandals; boot grease and a brush; books and field guides and a hard-cover journal; mini binoculars; a sleeping bag that I'd bought at army surplus before I went away to college (it was an improvement over the old flannel coleman bag I'd once had, but still quite heavy) in a compression stuff sack with no fewer than four straps and buckles; a fanny pack for side trips; C had his Thermarest, me a Z-rest, which may be the only lightweight thing I took along (but also not that comfortable). My pack was like Cheryl Strayed's Monster, only I never adjusted to its weight. I hurt the whole hike. Just thinking about that pack (which I think is still in our barn somewhere) makes my hipbones ache.

Not long after we finished our CT hike, I learned that there is this thing called lightweight backpacking. C and I watched a video about it and immediately started putting the principles into place (primarily leaving stuff behind) and I've been reading about and researching it all these years, even during our 13-year backpacking hiatus. My primary resource has been Ray Jardine, godfather of lightweight backpacking (and manufacturer of my quilt kits). He can be a bit over-the-top, but his books have a lot of good information and he doesn't sacrifice good nutrition or enjoyment of the wilderness in favor of the pursuit of gear. I also recently picked up the shorter and amusingly illustrated Lightweight Backpackin' Tips. From this book I found the idea for dehydrating toothpaste to make "toothpaste dots." So far mine hasn't dried out too well at room temperature, so I'll stick it in the solar oven this weekend and see what happens.

I haven't quite reached the purist level of either Jardine or Clelland. I like stuff sacks. I like having a well-stocked first-aid kit and a pocket knife. I prefer a non-chemical water treatment. I want more than one "luxury"--for me it's my phone (which I wasn't going to take but changed my mind mostly so I can check email in town to see if I've had any writing accepted; I also downloaded books to read to E and Z on it so it can do double duty), my journal (still deciding what drawing implements I'll take) a camera (just got a new one which, compared to my DSLR, is wicked light), and a couple of laminated field guides. We did a dry-run packing our packs this weekend, to see how all the gear fit and how much they weighed. I still haven't finished C and M's sleeping bags, I didn't have my camera yet and somehow forgot to include Z and E's cameras, there are a few small first-aid items I need to get, and I've also decanted soap and sunblock into smaller containers, so these weights aren't the final numbers, but here's how it came out, base pack weight (i.e., without food and water):

C: 13.5 lbs (pre-sleeping bag and I'm not sure if he had all his video-making stuff in there)
A: 11.5 lbs (pre-camera)
M: 7.5 lbs (pre-sleeping bag)
Z and E: 8.5 lbs (pre-camera)

I'm pretty psyched that we came out this low. Not quite the 10-lb holy grail of the lightweight backpacking crowd (and that's for people who carry all their gear--stove, shelter, water treatment--and don't share it around!!), but not bad. With food for five, for up to eight days at a time, C and I are going to have a serious amount of extra weight on top of the base, so any further trimming we can do would be fantastic (I'm sure there are some more tags I can cut off somewhere!!).

DIY Gear ~ Sleeping Quilts

Over the weekend, I finished sleeping quilts for E and Z for this summer's Colorado Trail hike.

The idea behind the sleeping quilt is that it's lighter than a sleeping bag, allows for ventilation, so you don't sweat and then get cold during the night, and you don't lie on top of any of the insulation, smashing it down. I made one for myself last summer and tested it out on our two-week Colorado camping trip. It worked really well, mostly. The two drawbacks were that there's nothing between you and your sleeping mat, so if it's too warm to wear sleeping clothes with long sleeves and legs, you stick to the mat, which is not that pleasant. Also, I was cold when we camped at Sand Dunes, where it got down to the 30s at night.

I'm a little nervous about being cold on our trip, and even more nervous about our kids being cold. Lightweight backpacking philosophy is to have a lighter bag and wear your warm layers while you sleep. I hope that works. Ray Jardine, the godfather of lightweight backpacking and the manufacturer of these sleep quilt kits, claims to have used this same bag on a trip across Antarctica, so...it should be warm enough. Just to be on the safe side, I added a layer of insulation that I had cut off the make the bag the right length to the torso area of E and Z's bags.


The quilts are not difficult to make, just fussy. And I don't do that well with fussy. Making them does give me a great appreciation for the workers in sweatshops who manufacture our clothes and gear. Now I just have two more to make and the countdown is on!

First Family Backpacking Trip--Success!

Our backpacking trip was really amazing. Four days of wilderness and peace and quiet, freedom from all things noisy and mechanical and electronic. The boys were troupers. They did fantastic hiking and packing. I'm a little achey and sore around the knees and calves, but chomping at the bit (straining at the pack straps?) to get out and do it again, rain, mosquitoes and all. 

Gearing Up

We've been gearing up--literally--for our first family backpacking trip

Over the past few months, I've been amassing backpacks (new lightweight ones, all around; I could not bear the thought of shouldering my old, heavy, cordura internal frame pack ever again) and sleeping mats and titanium bowls and bamboo spoons and miscellaneous pieces of long underwear and rain gear.

Last week, I loaded up on macaroni and cheese, crackers, loaves of bread the size and density of bricks, trail mix, freeze dried berries, fig bars, chocolate and sun butter.

And then Sunday morning, the kids all away at friends' houses, I sat down at my sewing machine and fired off a dozen or so stuff sacks out of super lightweight silicon-impregnated nylon, and then spent the rest of the day (happily it was a rather dreary, rainy one, so I didn't miss much outside) sorting, stuffing, arranging, loading, squeezing and strapping.

Here are our packs, fully loaded (almost, except for a few last-minute items) and ready to go:

This will be our first overnight hiking trip in thirteen years (the last being when M was four months old!!). Coincidentally, this story and this response about "The Death of Backpacking" just came out in the last week, about young people no longer backpacking. One factor neither author seems to have considered for why it seems (based on anecdotal evidence, no less) few people under the age of 50 backpack anymore is--kids. Perhaps there are plenty of people in their 20s out there backpacking, but then a lull among those in their 30s and 40s because all those people are busy with little kids and don't have it in them to haul both the kids and all the extra gear kids entail into the backcountry. This is the first year that we have felt like the kids are ready to handle their own packs and that we're ready--mentally--to handle the kids seven miles from the nearest road.

In any case, I'm ridiculously excited for this trip. I didn't realize how much I missed travelling on my own two feet into the woods. But I'm under no illusion that it will be easy. I've loaded the first aid kit with ibuprofen and muscle rub (to keep me happy ) and stocked up on cards, comic books, little treats and lollipops (to keep the kids happy). Wish us luck!