I Look at Screenshots of Old Memes When I Don't Have Service

Don't put on dry socks if you know you're going to hike in the rain.

If you wake up and put damp socks on expecting dry feet, you're going to be disappointed.

Don't look too hard for a moose, or else you'll plunge your foot into the mud.

If you don't eat enough protein, your muscles will cry.

If you make a mistake, pause to see if there is a better path forward than just undoing the mistake.

Your own sweat is the best temporary lubricant for chaffing.

The trail teaches. 
(peep the beaver dam)

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Two Ansel Adams prints of Half Dome are collecting dust in my storage unit. They're two of my favorite pieces. Gifts from my sister Saraphina, before I had any sense of what looks nice on an apartment wall. I'm told it was never frameless maps or Will Ferrell movie posters. Or was it?

Adams photographed the shit out of the American West. His ability to capture scale and tone has inspired my adventures and my extremely amateur photography. The Tetons and the Snake River could be the cover of a fantasy novel, but it's here in America for us all to enjoy in real life. You can literally go to this place and lose yourself in the indifferent beauty of nature. 


I was dismayed to learn that Ansel Adams is a West Coast Supremacist. This unfortunate discovery led me to Google "east coast Ansel Adams" which led me to the fortunate discovery of renowned photographer, George Masa. Do your eyes ever widen while reading a Wikipedia page?

Born in Tokyo in 1885, George Masa tried to emigrate to San Francisco. He was turned away because of an eye infection and ended up in Seattle before settling in Asheville, North Carolina. It was smooth sailing from there. Just kidding, the ku klux klan came after him. Masa started several successful photography businesses despite active prejudice and the tumbling economy of 1920s America. He counted the Vanderbilts among his exclusive clientele.

But his life's work was conservancy. Masa championed the preservation of the Great Smoky Mountains into a National Park, and contributed to regional mapping and trailblazing of a little footpath called the Appalachian Trail. I walked right over Masa Knob on my way through the Smokies. I bet he had maps on the walls of his dwellings and nobody said shit!

(one of Masa's)


He's in a Ken Burns documentary which I plan on watching when I'm done with this long walk (The National Parks: Americas Best Idea). Unfortunately his prints aren't available for purchase but I'm still so glad I learned about George Masa. It really is this deep. The more you look, the more you find. Breaking through the surface tension into more wonder is so simple but so easy to neglect, and that's still been a challenge for me on the trail. I want to make miles, reach destinations, or quickly find my way to where I think I should be. These impulses things take me away from taking another second, and the seconds are getting more and more valuable. Every time I slow down and long press on the moment or something interesting, I'm rewarded in ways I expect and don't expect. Pema Chodron (heard of her?) reminds us that while we have positive and negative expectations assigned to the future, we never truly know what anything will bring us. Slowing down to learn and appreciate brings unexpected interactions and circumstances that fork my path, and so does rushing, but that leaves me empty.

I'm connected to Japan and the Appalachian Trail, and George Masa is right there in the middle. He was there the whole time and all it took to make my life a little more rich was a stupid Google search. Indulge your stupid questions and curiosities. I've long said there are no stupid questions, only stupid people who stay stupid by not asking their questions.

So when the opportunity arises to tack on several side trails to summit a few extra 4,000+ foot peaks, I'm in there like swimwear. I'm not going to bag all 48 of them in New Hampshire, but I'll climb the ones within arms reach, because I don't know when I'll be in the neighborhood again.

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I have developed a minestrone soup intolerance. It's my fault. 

I late-night-batch-cooked a bunch of recipies in February and I failed to taste and properly season a monstrous pot of minestrone soup before vacuum sealing thirty servings. Even though it tastes like a bland yawn, I still rehydrate and eat it because it's nutritious and I was raised to not waste food.

My friend from Herbert Hoover Middle School, Dan, shared an article about agency that echoed some of the smart stuff from my last post. Nate Silver interviewed Cate Hill, author of a new book and great substack. She talks about being more honest with others, similar to how I talked about being honest with yourself, and how tension is only useful in movies to make a juicer plot.

"It feels extremely not allowed at first to just make a bunch of subterranean dynamics explicit, but once you start getting in the habit of it, it feels so liberating."

"So I encourage people not to try to build dramatic tension in their own lives, but to just simplify things by making dynamics as explicit as possible."

First of all, Subterranean Dynamics is a great band name. Second, if the goal is to get what you want, make it known and clear. Both internally and externally. With that, I'm taking another one of Cate's ideas.

She says If you're not "trying to get real feedback from people who know you, you’re cooking without tasting."

I know what cooking without tasting tastes like. It fucking sucks.

Multiple people have offered to give me feedback on my blog. I've asked for it a bunch of times. I haven't gotten any. I am going to test one hypothesis as to why I haven't gotten any criticism, constructive or otherwise. Maybe people think that if they are honest with me, I will not like it and say something mean or act different towards them. Fair.

I'm officially asking for anonymous feedback in the pursuit of self improvement. This can be personal, professional, or blog related. Anything that comes to mind.

Is this cringe? Yes. 

Is it awkward and uncomfortable for me to write this and send it to people I respect, whose respect I want? Also yes. 

Does it feel robotic and tech-y? Devoid of social awareness? A third and fourth "yes." 

This is the price I'm willing to pay to make myself a better friend/professional/communicator/writer. I'm mainlining free will out here, so why not?


If you are concerned about me figuring out who you are, here's how you can further anonymize:

1) Write your honest unfiltered feedback

2) Paste it at the end of the prompt below

3) Paste the whole thing in Google or chat gpt

Prompt:

Here is some feedback I am writing for someone I know. Please rewrite it to be more anonymous and less my "style." I don't want this to sound like [a friend/coworker/acquaintance] he would recognize. Give me both a corporate and casual version to choose from: [paste the feedback here]

I will include the link on my site eventually but for now it only lives in this post. Lucky you.
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Many sections have been described as the hardest on the trail. Moosolauke. Franconia Ridge. The Kinsmans, the Presidential range. Mt Washington, the wildcats, and the Mahoosics.

I just completed all of those sections, and can confirm that the "hardest" section is different for everyone. Difficulty is measured by incline over distance and sketchiness, but mostly by lived experience and how several factors were situated at the time of the hike. These factors include weather, what the hiker had for breakfast, and the condition of the tread on their mental or literal shoes. If someone says it's the hardest section of the trail, it just means it's hard. The finer details of rankings are always up to the individual, like if you ask a Buffalonian which place has the best wings (Duff's).

Luckily for me, the Whites (White mountains of New Hampshire) and Southern Maine are jaw dropping. It's the best hiking of the whole trail, and I'm determined to soak it all in as this journey wraps up in the next three ish weeks. 

Words can describe the beauty and challenge of these past few hundred miles, but they gotta be good ones. Expansive. Lord of the Ringsy. Alpine. 

The terrain brutalized my new trail runners and I got sunburn because it was so nice out. Clear skies for this section are rare. These mountains are foggy over 300 days a year. Easily one of the best gifts I've been given on trail.

Just see for yourself.
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Progress: 1930 miles: I'm in Maine. My mileage has dropped because the hiking is hard.

Right ankle is much better, almost 100%. My new chaffing however...is being dealt with. Rolled my left ankle coming out of Mahoosic Notch. Not on the "hardest mile of the trail" I just completed, but the soft flat section after. Go figure, guess I'll get more practice slowing down.

Red Rising was terrific, on to book 2.

Updates on Gear: The tread on my trail runners was stolen by the jagged metamorphic boulders of the whites. The uppers began to separate from the sole up at the toe, so I slathered on some Shoe Goo from a hostel with an official applicator. Okay, a small cardboard stick I ripped off a box. It's holding up.

Reader request: Here's my request, click on my anonymous feedback form.