If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There’s this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking.
My concept of an advice giver had been a therapist or a know-it-all, and then I realized nobody listens to the know-it-alls. You turn to the people you know, the friend who has been in the thick of it or messed up – and I’m that person for sure.
My mother’s death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I’ve grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don’t exist materially.
My mom said there’s a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there or not. You can put yourself in the way of beauty.
But if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?
I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.
My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.
You can’t replicate walking 94 days through the wilderness by yourself with a really heavy pack until you do it.
I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.
I taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it’s how I earned a living.
I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.
There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you’re doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
Every time I set foot on that trail, I feel grateful for the PCTA for doing the work it does to protect and preserve it.
I’d walk and think about my entire life. I’d find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.
Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.
I’ve learned so much as both a writer and a human.
My mother saved hundreds of animals in her life. Wherever she encountered and injured or needy or abandoned animal, she brought it home.
One thing any backpacker will tell you is that it’s tedious and monotonous. You’re bored sometimes, so you really have to make the fun in your head.
It’s still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant.
In my perception, the world wasn’t a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.