Category: Pontifications

Dockside Haze

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I walk the tenth of a mile to the end of the dock, a desire to be in this moment peeking like the sun over my horizons. I’m trying to feel the slight breeze on my skin, to feel vulnerable, to revel in the very strange feeling of being alone. I’ve had Spesh by my side for nearly seven months now, and I’m unsure I know what it is to truly be alone anymore. To be alone-with-him is a daily occurrence; to be alone-alone… it happens sometimes. But not like this.

It’s 7:30am, I’m sitting by myself above a saltwater channel, and today, I finish my 30th journey around the sun.

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Interlude: Credit Where Credit is Due

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So I’ve got a post-post for you tomorrow, but some things in the meantime:

  • Roy Moore, he who “allegedly” hit on actual children as a grown man, he who is totes cool with slavery as long as America is “great”, he who maybe doesn’t understand the swearing in process enough to explain it to his campaign staff, was narrowly defeated by Doug Jones a lot of determined men and women of color who got out the vote in spite of active voter suppression at the polls. Black men and women made up nearly 30% of the voting population, and overwhelmingly cast votes for Jones (92-ish% and 97-ish%, respectively). Black women in particular showed up, and were 17% of voters on Tuesday. If you want to thank them with more than just words, this article suggests ways you can do so. 
  • The Federal Communications Commission just overturned the net neutrality rules in place to keep a fair and open internet. While there is a slim, slim chance that this could be overturned by Congressional Review – and you should definitely do something to encourage that – there is a preliminary list of all the Congresspeople who 100% sold us out at the very end, and for how much. As a person on the internet who likes writing for y’all, and who can’t afford to pay more than she already is for the privilege of doing so, feel free to contact any of your representatives you find on the list and let them know how you feel about their chances in 2018 and 2020.

More travel-related writing tomorrow; I hope you spend some time talking about these issues today. 

Inside and In-Between

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We’ve slept inside been doing a lot of sleeping inside in the last couple of weeks. It’s not that we haven’t wanted to enjoy the dregs of summer, but I’ve got friends all over, and given that tomorrow could apparently bring nuclear war isn’t promised, I’ve been making it a point to see them where I can. I haven’t been too worried about it, mostly because I know that our trip to Isle Royale National Park is fast approaching. This’ll be the second time in as many weeks that I’ll have gotten out to hike, and while we’re trying to do 50-odd miles on this latter trip, any amount of time sucking wind and enjoying the outside feels good these days. Continue reading →

Camping Quandaries

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Arriving to camp after six hours in the car is always a relaxing experience. It’s three minutes to nine o’clock on the eastern edge of Missouri, and I’m looking forward to stretching, eating, and getting horizontal post-haste. After a requisite full-body exhale of relief, I crack the car door – and am instantly assaulted by a cacophony of sound. I reel, and it takes me a few seconds to realize what the hubbub’s all about. Cicadas. Many, many decibels’ worth of cicadas.  Continue reading →

Heart and Matter

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I’ve been incredibly sick and warring with myself a lot these days, about what I want the blog to look like while I’m on this hiking-hiatus-turned-driving-extravaganza, about what I want the blog as a whole to accomplish. I’ve been writing and writing the last few months, and I can’t help but feel that, in a sense, I’ve lost my way. It’s not that I don’t feel some connection to place and space and movement through this amazing opportunity I’ve been given; it’s not even that I’m unhappy, or that I don’t want to talk about what I’m doing or how I’m feeling. It’s just that I only have so much energy in a given day, and I think that energy would be better put to use in different ways.

So I’m going to change it up a little bit.

Some weeks, that energy is going to be best used talking about the cool trips I’m taking – for example, we’re going to get the chance to do three nights and four days of hiking on Isle Royale, and that is gonna be epic, and I’m already excited to share the experience. Other weeks – well, you know all those things that I’ve said I want to get back to, but haven’t? I think those things are important, and particularly important to me as a black woman outdoors, and I think that having my documentation of my week take precedence leaves me little and less energy for those important things. So I’m going to talk about being outdoors, and about myself in a tangential way – about what I see in the outdoors world and the outdoors community, and about what these things mean to me as a black female once and future thruhiker who wants everyone to get outdoors and care for our wild spaces.

I’m still going to (try to) post once a week. I’ll still be documenting mileage and talking about the cool stuff that’s happened in a Notable Accomplishments format, one that those of you who’ve joined me on my PCT and CT thruhikes will be familiar with. And of course I’ll still be posting rad pictures from the week, because I hope they speak to you as much as they speak to me. But I’m tired of skimming the surface. This format is going to let me go deeper into issues and events and occurrences that I think are important. It’s going to let me skip the things that are less-formative and cut to the heart of a matter, laugh about happenstance, or show you something awesome that happened.

So here goes. First one up later this weekend.

Interlude: Consumption

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I’ve been consuming a lot lately. Well, maybe not food, like I probably should be – I’m doing a surprising number of miles for living out of a Subaru, and I’ve likely spent the last week sore as a result of not eating enough. I’m not good with food. But I have a really hard time keeping myself from gorging on social media, mainly to keep up with people I care about, but also to indulge in that singular masochism that is reading the news.

And there has been so much news of late. Too much news to really recount. Continue reading →

Going Home

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One of the bonuses about my upcoming foray into more teaching and professional road-tripping as a Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer is that the region we’ve been assigned is the region where I spent my formative years. It’s so strange to think that after all this traveling, after living on two other continents and in a boatload of other states to boot, I’m gonna wind up right back where I started. Kind of. Sort of.  Continue reading →

Interlude: Well, That Happened.

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It seems that Donald Trump was just sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.

Well then.

I’ve seen a lot of posts to the tune of “this can’t be happening”/”this can’t be real”/”this must be a bad dream” after the election and in the weeks since, particularly given the influx of cabinet appointments of people who are either unqualified or have incredible conflicts of interest.

Y’all. This is happening. This is real. This is not a bad dream.

But you’re right in feeling that something’s not right. It’s not right that Congress has made it easier to transfer public lands to states, and easier for states to sell those public lands to private interests. It’s not right that Congress wants to make it harder for federal agencies to do anything about climate change or to classify species as endangered, regardless of what scientists have to say about either matter. It’s not right that Congress wants to gut the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and make it harder for similar laws – that protect all of us and our public spaces – to get on the books. As people who enjoy our outdoor public spaces, none of this should feel right.

But as today and tomorrow are days of action around the country, today I’m going to focus on concrete action. Here are some things you can do to try to protect our wild spaces:

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Interlude: BCM is Hiring!

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Big City Mountaineers – whose mission is to get urban youth from around the country outdoors, and who I did fundraising for on the Pacific Crest Trail and Colorado Trail – is hiring for the summer of 2017! So if you’re looking for a way to get outside and help the younglings get outside while still making money (saving up for a trail in 2018?), take a look and see if your resume and their requirements are a match! Their employment page is here, and, if last year is any indication, they’ll start doing volunteer info sessions in a few months, too.

(Also, that fundraising page is still open – think we can get to a nice, round $2000 for them by the end of the year?)

Next post is a’comin!