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I'm Sorry #oldjournals

I’m Sorry #oldjournals

Dear God, where did all the questions go. Was eight hundred miles, two months outside, enough. Couldn’t be. I still feel small. Proud. I argue. Too loud. Some part of me must still be in darkness. I thought enlightenment was different than this.

I need the confidence of my own conclusions. I need to stop saying I’m sorry so much. When I’m not.

I have been on the mountaintop. And you suffer there.…

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I Wonder

Hiking changes real estate. I remember house hunting with my family when my siblings and I were kids. No. Under a metal spiral stair case. Trapped between two thick yellow paint strips slicing the road in half. No in the yard. No that doesn’t fit in the yard. In the closet of a bedroom big enough for two, no, no more kids sharing bedrooms. 

I would describe it as exactly the opposite on a hike. I…

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BLTN

Every east coast lick lapped by thick silver mist. Rain light as snow might be easier to manage if it had froze. Whipped jets from eighteen wheels in tread-shredding hurry. People who play games with their brake lights and cruise control don’t believe in negative prayers offered around them about them. No car quick enough can outrun karma. Slick black skeletal mountains

vomit white cascades of…

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New York: By Way of Storm

New York: By Way of Storm

They were waiting on me to get here. The wind. The rain. Soggy footsteps in dented grass. Soldering tools. Beer fridge. Great lake licking shades that open by remote control. An ambush. A trap. Set up in series like dominoes. One begets the next and sets up the collapse of all the rest. In good time. Dog plastic clicks and floor rattles in battles against the inevitability we call gravity. Laid…

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My Ministry

People out for the weekend were worse off than me. Struggling. Sweat rosaries and strap stains draped like stoles on their shoulders. Leaned out hands together in the shelter. Listen. They love to complain about the weather. It is all about contrast. Where you were yesterday gets in the way. Sets you up for a betrayal of expectations. And I had none. Not at that point. Not after two months. I was…

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Surprised Still

Perched like an eagle on top of a ski hill. Who would not have thought. Eight hundred miles of mountains. Would lead to here. This dry little white one. No more than a hill. Still. Paid minimum wage to watch kids climb like boomerangs come twirling throwing snow back to be whipped again. Scarves hiding grins. Nobody wins. Nobody really has a gender. Or an agenda. Or anything better to do.…

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Coming Soon - 800 miles of trail journal

Coming Soon – 800 miles of trail journal

“Today I met a flip flopping thru-hiker who called herself Fly Away. She asked me my trail name. And I said Jeremiah. Fly Away replied, “Ah, the weeping prophet.” I laughed and said now you know that’s not far off. And she told me about a vista overlooking the valley I had just spent the morning circling, where she ate lunch. It was just as breathtaking as she warned.” Going through this trail…

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Twenty Five Miles

Love is a twenty five mile day. You take it on in sections. Walk along. Taking your licks. Your fallen sticks and fractured logs. Your sharp rocks, and the ones that like to stay slick. At the frazzled tail end of each, you’re beat. Done. Broke-hearted but too tired to run. Until you see it. The tinny right angle of a rusted roof. The creek. The road. Some sign for both. And suddenly impossible…

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