Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t been posting very much on here. I’ve been working so hard this winter on my second book, the manuscript I’ve been chipping away at for thirteen years. And a month ago I finally sold it!

Focusing entirely on the second draft of this manuscript for the past five months, here in my house in southern arizona with my wonderful partner and our dogs has been… incredible. I’ve learned so much about myself as a writer, about what I’m capable of and what I need and the stories I tell myself vs. reality and what I’m afraid of etc etc etc. The biggest thing I’ve learned that maybe isn’t always true but I’m sort of trying it out as a theory and has definitely been true for me this winter? Is that creativity is a muscle- when I stick to a work schedule, even if it feels SO hard at first and I get really discouraged- if I STICK to it, like don’t give up, and keep showing up no matter what, over a long enough time period I WILL build up strength and endurance, and then one day I wake up and it’s finally, FINALLY not a struggle anymore. This is also what happens, for me, on a several-month thru hike. In the beginning I’m in so much fucking pain and everything feels so hard and I increase my distance and speed slowly, and then around day 30 I wake up and my tendons are made of titanium and no amount of walking can kill me and I’m just like, really strong, man. (And by strong I mean I can hike 30 miles a day on good tread without pain. I don’t mean FKT strong- that’s not the way my body works.)

I’ll let yall know when I have more deets on when The Sunset Route will come out. In the meantime, I’m really excited- to do more trail blogging! Because I’m about to hike a new route!!

The Mogollon Rim Trail is a nascent 500ish mile route that was created by Brett “Blisterfree” Tucker and Melissa “Tree” Spencer, and you can find their info about the route here. The Mogollon Rim is a feature in Arizona that defines the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau, and the MRT more or less follows this feature. The MRT makes use of old overgrown trails, new trails, jeep roads and cross country to traverse the plateau as well as climb and descend off the rim. The MRT manages to stay, for the most part, above six thousand feet, climbs as high as eleven thousand feet (if you want) and contains “the largest stretch of ponderosa forest in the world”. Brett and Tree have compiled a brilliant amount of information on this route, and along with some other hikers we’ll be field testing it to help them gather more beta so they can hammer out the kinks (altho tbh it seems perfect as it is) before they release the route to the public.

My partner Muffy and I start the route next week. It’s been a wet winter in the southwest; all seasonal water sources should be running, and between that and the cow water, water should be chill. The desert is heating up fast and snow in the mountains is melting, so the rim should be just about perfect. I’ll be blogging every day. I’m so excited!! The first blog posts from the MRT should come out in a few weeks.

I can’t wait to write about the MRT for yall. Thanks for continuing to follow along!