CARROT QUINN

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I have a new piece up on The Toast right now

June 9, 2015 / carrot quinn

You Think You Have Time: Hiking the Lowest to Highest Trail

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← CDT day 31: ch ch ch chama
CDT day 32, 33, 34, 35: WTF are we even doing →

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Today I got to see Laura, my best friend from when I was a kid. Laura and I used to shoplift books on Wicca from Barnes and Noble and do spells with citronella candles and culinary spices. We memorized all the lyrics to Meatloaf songs. We made up our own sign language. We sewed medieval clothing for our barbie dolls. We had a seance on the lawn of our junior high when Kurt Cobain died. Laura had two moms who ate tofu and recycled, and I wanted them to adopt me. Instead, my grandparents in Colorado adopted me when I was in highschool and after I moved away Laura and I would talk on the phone for hours, weeping. We met up in Seattle when we were both 18 and got these matching tattoos, straight from the walls of flash. ✨ Today I met a man who knows my mother. He's the executive director of a community mental health org here in Anchorage, and we were sitting in his cluttered office on worn chairs. "I know Barbara," he said. "I used to see her often. Tiny, frail lady, always had her little suitcase with her. A bit of a loaner." He smiled, as though at a fond memory. "I haven't seen her in, oh... five years." ✨ That was the dead end of my leads for the day. I'd followed various ribbons as they unfurled until this bonanza, a man who knew her- but he hadn't seen her in a very long time. "Try to get support while you're doing this," he said, looking across his chipped desk at me. "Talk to someone who knows about grief. Don't white knuckle your way through this." I started crying in his office. I felt like he could see right through me. ✨ On my way to Laura's, my friend Tara texted me more leads. Homeless camps in Anchorage. Where to look. There are so many. To heck with reality TV shows about Alaskans hunting and fishing, I thought. There should be a show about homeless people in Anchorage. That would be the most real Alaskan reality TV. Maybe a little too real. (Cont in comments!)
PCT trail days is this weekend, and I want to talk abt a problematic behavior I see in the PCT community. ✨ Being in the outdoors community is HARD. It is a nonstop mysogynist heteronormative abelist brofest competitive pissing contest and you must fight against this dynamic with every fiber of your being if you want to have an experience that is anything other than this. It's a lot of effort to create a different experience, but the effort is WORTH IT. And this effort creates spaces in which other folks who also want something different can join together, which makes the most beautiful sort of outdoors community. ✨ Sometimes I see long distant hikers from marginalized communities take a different road, tho. It's too hard to struggle against the current, and so they want to assimilate into the brofest. They want to assimilate so bad they will throw other marginalized folks under the bus if it helps them do so. There was a time when I wanted to assimilate into the brofest. Things could be so easy! I thought. But it wasn't easy. I learned my lesson in 2014, when I hiked the PCT fast in an arrogant way with a group of bros, a few of which were incredibly misogynist (And a few who were super great!). I wanted to assimilate so badly I stayed silent around terrible behavior, thereby enabling it, and I am still ashamed of that to this day. I learned a LOT of lessons during that hike, which have deeply informed my outdoors experience since. ✨ The point of this post is- if you're a member of a marginalized community and a long distance hiker, and you not only refuse to stand up to bullshit on the trail but also work to tear down other marginalized hikers who do stand up, all in hopes that this will allow you to assimilate- stop. It's not going to work. Not only will u never truly be welcome in that world but trust me, you don't want to be. That world sucks, even for the straight white cis bros who are in it! It is a vapid, empty world devoid of meaning, where everyone always ultimately fails. Even the bros want out! We ALL want an outdoors community that is different than the one we currently have. So go towards the light! You'll be glad you did. ✨ 📍This is Yakama land
✨ The Machine endangers all we have made. We allow it to rule instead of obey. To build a house, cut the stone sharp and fast: the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way. ✨ The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape and its factories subside into silence. It thinks it's alive and does everything better. With equal resolve it creates and destroys. ✨ But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers that—when you feel it—brings you to your knees. ✨ There are yet words that come near the unsayable, and, from crumbling stones, a new music to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own. -Rilke ✨ (I just saw this Rilke poem in @queernature 's stories and it like, moved me, man. So I had to put it here.) 📍 This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land
Once I did this with dall sheep horns I found in ANWR and they were full of rotten horn juice that poured all over my hat, that's what I get. These are from caribou, caribou are cool, they make their huge strong animal bodies from just lichen and live outdoors in a place w rly brutal winters, makes humans seem like wusses when u rly think abt it ✨ This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land
Tbh I go to nature so I can spend 12 hrs in my sleeping bag at night, drifting in and out of sleep waking from strange dreams to the driving wind or, even eerier, the complete lack of wind; to the splatter of rain or a world buried in fog. The sleep I get when it's terrible outside and only a thin layer of fabric protects me from the elements is the best sleep of my life. ✨ This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land
"You are neither as terrible or as important as you think you are"- something I heard on a podcast once ✨ These little friends are cotton grass. This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land.

u can also find me on my public facebook page

u can also find me on my public facebook page

Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: the book

recent posts

  • Mogollon Rim Trail day 36: Fin June 2, 2019
  • Mogollon Rim Trail day 35: narrows June 2, 2019
  • Mogollon Rim Trail day 34: Blue May 31, 2019
  • Mogollon Rim Trail day 33: Raspberry Creek and Blue River May 30, 2019
  • Mogollon Rim Trail day 32: Alpine May 30, 2019

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