The Mary Badass

This blog is going to be different than most. There’s so much I want to say and write but I’ve been putting off the writing until I felt I had the brain power and focus. Unfortunately that never works with writing. Writing really is work of some sort and like any other work, putting it…

I view the time I spent when I first got home, staring for way too many hours at the computer screen, as a kind of percolating, waiting for my internal system to catch up with my external body in the major transition it had to make from thru hiking to relative inactivity. It was the…

This wasn’t the first time I was dealing with injury in duplicate. Once before I had injured both of my knees at the same time and as my sports medicine, doctor said I didn’t “have a leg to stand on.” Back then I had resorted to swimming to keep myself moving. But now, it didn’t…

I find transition times difficult. Going from a known entity into a lesser known one can provoke some anxiety. I often feel a bit uneasy even leaving my house. Once I’m in my car and on the way, I’m usually fine. But in this case, I was transitioning from being quite active to being relatively…

In some ways I was relieved to find out my foot was broken and I had to get off the Pacific Northwest Trail. If I hadn’t done the MRI and had just gone with the x-ray results, I would have kept hiking on that painful foot. I hadn’t been enjoying myself for much of the…

When I was at Corinna’s I realized I was missing the small digital recorder I carry with me when I hike. Rather than keeping a written journal, I speak into the recorder during the day. Besides providing a record of my trip, it helps me remember what I want to later blog about. I am…

After confirming that I had at least one broken foot, I planed to stay at the church in Havillah for a few days. Since I often find that transitions to be difficult, I wanted to give myself time to make this very unexpected one. Sometimes I feel anxiety before I leave one place to go…

I’ve talked often of hiking one’s own hike. When I was driving up to Glacier in June, I stopped to see Barb, my friend and CDT Trail Angel, who lives in Helena, Montana. She talked about hiking the hike you’ve been given. I thought of that a lot as I was hiking, and I’m definitely…