March 21 Mileage: 22 65 miles hiked We’re sitting in the dust next to the jeep road we’ve been following all morning as it contours around great cracks in the earth called canyons, eating second breakfast, when a jeep rumbles up to us and stops. “Doin alright?” Says the driver. “Yeah,” we say. “Where ya … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 4: we’re never gonna make it

March 20 Mileage: 19 43 miles hiked It’s freezing at the trailhead where we parked the van so I get up early, start the engine, turn on the heat and crawl back into bed. Now we’ll never get up. All the other vandwellers have left, the dirtbag climbers we saw at the grocery store buying … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 3: spirals, whorls, piles and stacks

March 19 Mileage: 18? 24 miles hiked Sand: an introduction If the hayduke trail was a college course with a textbook, that’s what I’d call the first chapter. The night is cold! An icy angry wind blows and reaches its arms into my sleeping bag and tries to steal my warmth. Coyotes how and the … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 2: Sand: an Introduction

March 18 Mileage: 6? Winter is an apartment in Sedona, Arizona that costs half my income but is cheap, still, for Sedona; a couple of rooms filled with light, already furnished with old leather couches and a bed; I find a card table to eat on and some simple dishes to boil my sweet potatoes … Continue reading Hayduke trail day one: lumpkins

So much has happened and I feel like I haven't updated this blog in forever. I wrote seventy thousand words towards the first draft of my second book- not as many words as I'd hoped for but at the same time instead of drivel they were actually pretty good, so even though my first draft … Continue reading T-minus one week until the Hayduke Trail

To say that the American desert southwest is an enchanted land with a rich ecological and cultural history is an understatement. I am only vaguely aware of its wonders, however, so I've set out to read some books on the area before my Hayduke hike. Here's my reading list, lifted mostly from the reading list … Continue reading My reading list for the Hayduke trail/updated gear list/other neat things

HELLO! Planning for the Hayduke trail is really fun. There are all these little bits of information all over the internet on things like water/resupply/caching/routes/alternates and one must gather them up and make some sort of sense of them/choose one's own adventure. Basically I am going to get to walk through/sleep in/look at/take pictures off/eat … Continue reading “Nothing is as good as the Hayduke” GETTING EXCITED

Readers! I'm going to hike the Hayduke trail. The "trail" part is actually sort of a misnomer, as the Hayduke is a backcountry route- an 800-ish mile traverse of the Colorado plateau in Utah and Arizona via sandy washes, old jeep roads, slickrock, slot canyons, bits of existing trail, etc. The Hayduke is the creation … Continue reading Planning for the Hayduke Trail! And other exciting things

Happy Wal-Mart Stampede Day! I hope you got to eat some pie yesterday, and that you feel loved. My book is now available in paperback! I was initially hesitant to release it in paperback (as opposed to just an ebook) because actual physical books cost more to print and so I have to charge more … Continue reading My book, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart, is now available in paperback

Southern Oregon fall is cold clear nights and days of fire-yellow big-leaf maples wrapped in fog and the grounding reassuring rhythms of harvest; living and working in the dirt on a friend's farm and sleeping each night in my camper van floating in deep starry blackness, buried beneath the old zero-degree sleeping bag from my … Continue reading Wherein I try and catch you up on everything