The Mary Badass

Aaron carried my pack to the road and waited with me until Roger arrived. I had connected with Roger through the North Country trail angel page and was looking forward to meeting him in person. When Roger and his wife, April, arrived, he loaded my pack into his truck and handed me some cold orange…

By the time I reached the two campsites at Hernando De Soto Lake in Itasca State Park, I was limping, but I still didn’t know how badly I was hurting. After pushing through some of the worst blow downs I’ve ever done, I came to a few miles of better trail, There were still some…

Not long after leaving the lake, I entered Lake Itasca State Park. This is known as a beautiful park, hosting the headwaters of the Mississippi River. I had been told the trail had been cleared and was looking forward to hiking there. Even though my foot was hurting, I still had hopes of making it…

After I left Jan and Jim, I was happy to see that my body felt better. My foot wasn’t screaming in pain and hiking was finally feeling pleasurable. Unfortunately that only lasted a day and a half. By the middle of my second day out, my foot was again starting to hurt. I remembered my…

I learned a long time ago that making assumptions can cause a lot of erroneous thinking. I also knew the importance of checking my facts, yet as I was walking in an area with quite a few blow downs, I was thinking this trail is too long for the number of people they have to…

I was surprised to feel self doubt as I pedaled the last miles of the long road walk. The next section of trail consisted of about 190 miles of hiking before I hit the next town. This would take me close to two weeks of hiking. Luckily, a trail angel named Ellen agreed to hold…

More posts are coming about the North Country Trail but I interrupt them to let you know my first book, Meeting Mary Badass is now available, published through Enso Press and the hard work of Sean Hickman. As much as I hate to use them, it is available on amazon. I would greatly appreciate it…

As I rode my borrowed bike the 41 miles from Abercrombie, North Dakota into Fergus Falls, Minnesota, I found myself singing. One of the songs I sang over and over was “Happiness runs in a circular motion…” I realized that for much of this hike, I hadn’t been able to sing because it took too…

I have often talked about the need to hike your own hike. That is a hiker motto reminding people not to compare oneself to others in terms of speed and so many other factors. When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, both times in the 1980s, I was kind of a purist, following every blaze. On…

I was as close to giving up on the North Country Trail as I have ever been on any of my 21,500 miles of backpacking, except for when I had three broken bones in my foot on the Pacific Northwest Trail. My foot was excruciatingly painful. Temperatures were in the nineties, made worse by a…