There’s a particular kind of panic that hits when your phone drops below 5% and you’re twelve miles into a hike with nothing but trees and questionable cell service around you. I know that panic intimately. It happened to me on the North Cascades loop last summer, and it’s exactly why I stopped treating portable … Read more
The roof of a campervan is the most contested real estate on the entire vehicle. Every square inch has to earn its keep. Solar panels need sun. Vent fans need clearance. Starlink dishes need an unobstructed view of the sky. And somehow, all of it has to coexist on a metal surface that might be … Read more
I pulled into Leadville, Colorado, at 10:152 feet above sea level, windows down, and my phone read 63 degrees. That was in the middle of July. Six hours earlier, I’d been sweating through my shirt in Denver at 97. The temperature drop didn’t make sense to my body — I’d driven straight uphill into what … Read more
I spent three months living out of a cooler and a single-burner butane stove before I finally broke down and built a real kitchen in my van. Not a “real kitchen” by apartment standards — I’m talking about a 32-inch galley counter, a drawer fridge that runs on 12 volts, and a sink the size … Read more
There I was, thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic, staring at the seatback screen in front of me. The movie selection was legitimately good — three films I’d been meaning to watch for months. But the free earbuds the airline handed out had the audio quality of a tin can telephone, and the $3 adapter … Read more
There’s something that happens to your brain when a thousand-pound animal surfaces three feet from where you’re standing. Time slows down. Your breathing changes. You become acutely aware that you’re in the presence of something ancient, something patient, something that has been swimming in these waters since before humans figured out how to write. I’m … Read more
I’ll say this about Lassen Volcanic National Park: it’s the only place in America where I stood next to a boiling mud pot, looked up at a glacier-carved peak, and watched a deer graze in a wildflower meadow — all within a 20-minute drive. And I had the trail mostly to myself. While the rest … Read more
The first time I got caught in a desert monsoon, I thought the world was ending. I was hiking outside Tucson in 108-degree heat when the sky turned the color of a bruised plum. Wind hit me so hard I staggered sideways. Ten minutes later, rain came in sheets so thick I couldn’t see the … Read more
I’m standing at the base of Mount Marathon in Seward, Alaska, watching people sprint up a mountain that most sane humans would prefer to climb slowly. It’s the Fourth of July, and this grueling 3.5-mile race — straight up 3,022 feet of scree, shale, and suffering, then straight back down — has been a Kenai … Read more
I almost didn’t write about North Cascades. There’s a selfish part of me that wanted to keep quiet about the one national park where you can show up on a Friday in July and still find an empty trailhead. But that’s exactly why more people need to know — because this park is too extraordinary … Read more