I barely get any sleep – my mind’s constantly bouncing from one incidental to another, and it’s hard to get it to calm down. I know it’s really just avoiding the real start of my journey – leaving Colorado, leaving Spesh, leaving home. Another thought crosses: maybe if I never go to sleep, then tonight will last forever! But I don’t want that, I want to go, want to hike, even if it’s throwing my life into a shambles to do so. Or, at least, the state of my apartment, all a-covered in gear.
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Never Alone
When I first started this blog in the fall of 2014, planning to hike the PCT in the spring of 2015, I did so partly because I love to write and my mother I wanted a place where I could prove I hadn’t been eaten by a bear share my experiences, being human and a woman and brown and hiking.
I also did so partly after having inquired around the PCT community and scouted around and done quite a bit of Googling, finding that there seemed to be no place, no person that would tell me, as a black woman, about what to expect re: socio-racial relations on the trail. At least, not that I could find. Continue reading
Last-Minute Necessities
It’s nearly a week from my departure date, and my apartment has exploded in gear and resupply food and ziplocs, more ziplocs than any human should ever need. I’ve spent evenings surrounded by the pages of Yogi’s Guide, figuring out where to stop, where to shop, where to mail and when; squinting to interpret the initially-arcane PCT Water Report; making sure I’ve got maps in both hard copy and soft copy. I’ve also tended to a dozen more real-world things than I’ve cared to – what are taxes and car registrations and employer meetings in comparison to hiking? – but I’m not there yet, I’m here, and even though I’ve taken care of business in every instance that’s come up, I still feel as though I’m forgetting something.
Like, after getting this amazing, entirely-unexpected opportunity, paying it forward.
So I’ve decided to fundraise for Big City Mountaineers again. Big City Mountaineers is an organization devoted to mentoring under-served urban youth in the outdoors, offering over 1,000 teens per year the opportunity to participate in single day, overnight, and week-long expeditions in the backcountry. These trips are given free of charge to participants in hopes they will foster new connections with themselves, with their peers, with volunteer mentors, and with the environment. As urban youth are preponderantly youth of color, I thought it appropriate that a hiker encouraging folks of all colors to get outside support an organization with a similar cause.
So if you’d like to help me spread the outdoorsy love, please consider donating. Even a $5 donation supports a teen’s full day in the backcountry; every little effort counts. And to sweeten the pot a little, any donation of $30 or more will see a postcard from the trail in return!
…starting in about a week.
So it’ s buying smartwater bottles for their lids and buying a pack of trash compactor bags for a single one and turning local places upside down for leukotape, and then… walking.
And hoping that, with your help, I can help others experience the challenge, the escape, and the solace there is to be found in exploring the great outdoors.
To and ‘Fro
It seems weird that, of all the things I have to do before I hike the PCT in a few weeks, doing something with my hair is one of my top priorities. I’ve been pretty broke too lazy to actually do something with it all winter – stuffing it into a Buff whenever it got out of hand – but when I’m potentially not going to have access to someone who even knows that black hair is different from white hair for five months of my life1, now’s the time to figure out how I’m going to deal.
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Waking Dreams
I’ve been having a lot of vivid dreams recently – the type of dreams that you feel, the ones that are hard to distinguish from reality. I mean, not the suddenly changing scenery or the odd situations, but these days I often find myself wondering whether I actually did something or whether it just happened in a dream. It’s made for some interesting scenarios in the waking world, where I swear I’ve done something but haven’t quite actually managed it while conscious.
I think the exuberant activity of my slumbering mind’s a combination of the weather getting warmer and my workload ramping up and me actually getting occasional exercise and and and – life’s waking up after a long, weird winter1, and my dreams are echoing the sentiment. All my friends are waking up, too – going on adventures, doing lots of hiking, taking lots of pictures. And as soon as I get through this last hard push, I’ll be doing the same thing.
I’m not kidding. I start the Pacific Crest Trail in less than a month. Continue reading
Training: Chautauqua + First Flatiron
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve gotten any exercise – I started a primarily outdoors exercise routine and then there was a blizzard and then work picked up and since then I’ve been struggling to find a moment to breathe – so I promise myself that I’m going to do something this weekend, if only to appease my pitiful whiny muscles. Saturday, I don’t have anywhere to be at all(!), so I spend the day in an amalgamation of lounging in the sun/reading Carolyn Finney’s Black Faces, White Spaces1/doing household chores I’ve been neglecting. Once Sunday rolls around, though, I haul all of my gear out of the closet, strap on my not-quite-broken-in Altra hiking shoes, stuff most of everything into my pack, and head out to climb the first Flatiron in Boulder. Continue reading
The Long and Winding Road
So I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection lately, particularly about the meanings ascribed to brownness and ladyness and intersectionality and hiking, and what I see as the tension among those things and between those things and the space I’ve carved out for myself on this blog. It’s complicated – like most things worth understanding are – so bear with me. Continue reading
Training – Little Manatee River
We’re in Florida over the holidays, Spesh and I, visiting my family, and while the family cars are mostly preoccupied with driving my parents to and from work, we managed to persuade one to take us to Little Manatee River State Park twice – the first time, to peek around (and see a wild tortoise!1), the second, to hike the 6.4-mile stacked loop just north of the river. As Florida is not known for its strenuous terrain so much as its humidity, mosquitos, and more toothy fauna, I figure this hike’ll be perfect for stretching our legs. Continue reading
Diff’rent Strokes
While it’s pretty cool to look back and see all the stats and improvements and things that went well with a hike, I think it’s also super useful to take a look at the things that didn’t work as well. If I’ve learned anything from reading other blogs, it’s that a long-distance backpacking kit is an ever-evolving thing, changing from hike to hike (or even day to day) based on the climate you’re expecting, the length of your hike, and your goals for the trip. I learned a lot on the Colorado Trail, not only about myself, but also about the way I thruhike; knowing what I know now, I’m thinking about making some adjustments that’ll work better for the way I don’t eat, oh god why don’t I eat do things and which’ll hopefully get some weight off my hips. Continue reading
TL;DR Colorado Trail Thruhike
For future thruhikers, here’s the Too Long; Didn’t Read version of my Colorado Trail thruhike. Your mileage, pun absolutely intended, may vary. Continue reading
Brown Girl on the NST 