Wow, my brain on sleep is magical.

Sleep feels like a wonder drug right now…especially when I don’t get it on a regular basis. And it breaks my heart that so many of you also struggle to get regular sleep! It seems like an epidemic of sorts. My hope for all of you, for us together during this time, is to cultivate better sleep habits…our brains need it, our bodies need it, our communities need it. 

Will you do that with me? 

What is one action you could take to work towards better sleep? 

One that I have been avoiding but seems the simplest to do is to stay in bed until at least 3am. I did not do that today. I woke up several times as usual, but got out of bed at about 1am. If I can stay put and at least try to sleep until 3am (given my usual 7pm bedtime) that would mean I’m giving myself a chance at 8 hours. I pledge to do that the rest of the week. Pinky swear. 

So biopsy. I had my deep bone biopsy yesterday at St. Charles Hospital in Bend. I had to get propped up on my stomach so they could take the sample; it was a CT-guided biopsy of the ovoid mixed lytic and sclerotic osseous lesion within the L4 vertebral body….that means they put me through a CT scanner to find the meatiest tumor which happened to be in my back rib. I was awake during all of it, but was pumped full of pain medications, so I felt pressure when the doctor pushed a drill into my bone, but not pain. Very trippy.

The doctors and nurses were most kind, and the world being the magical place that it is, I even had a connection with my recovery nurse when we found out that we had thru-hiker friends in common. Thank you world, you show me support in the most unexpected places!

Lets see, shall we go down memory lane again today? Lets explore the time after my Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike…that hike was so exhilarating and transformative that I decided I needed to find a job outside, somehow related to hiking. No matter that I had just gotten my master’s degree a few years before; I felt a very strong pull to the hiking community and wanted to immerse myself in that world. (Grad school happened at Goldsmiths College in London from 2003-2004 following my Smithsonian internship and will be a story for another day).

I finished the PCT on September 20 with Nemo and Pouch, and returned to Portland to figure out what the heck I would do next. 

This seems like a good place to tease my own PCT photo montage video that I made. This one isn’t as long as the class of 2006 one that Pro-Deal made, but at 45 minutes, it’s a commitment!

When I returned to Portland after the trail I found a new place to live…before the PCT I had been living in a group house in SE Portland on 44th and Lincoln (near Mt. Tabor), and this time I found another room to rent up in NE near the Lloyd Center. I didn’t go back to my graphic design job, and instead worked as a metal roofer for a few months.

I know! Random, right? Metal roofing? What the heck?

I became good friends with several other Portland hikers while we were hiking the trail that year, and it seemed like a good temporary job to work with them for the winter on metal roofs. In retrospect, metal roofing in the cold/wet/gray/rainy season of the Willamette Valley in Oregon wasn’t a brilliant move, but because I was working with friends, it was a pretty fun winter gig.

Luigi and Lint and I had spent some good time on the trail together that year; and as for the job, most days we carpooled together down to a Portland suburb to work. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, but I am pretty good at following directions so was able to figure it out and do a passable job. A kayaker friend of a friend owned the business, and there was a whole group of us hikers/kayakers who worked together. 

Those few months in Portland were so much fun. We were big bike nerds then and got into the whole bike-punk, zoo-bomb scene, which basically meant we rode kids bikes and tall bikes around town; we went on midnight mystery bike rides and got into a whole bunch of other shenanigans. Too much fun!

Here are some more pics from that time…

So during this time I was also trying to figure out what a job in the outdoors meant, and how I would get one. Another friend I made on the trail that year was Jack “Union” Haskel, who ended up being a pretty big influence on my next few career moves. I learned that getting certified as a Wilderness First Responder would help me get a job in the outdoor industry, so that winter I took the 80-hour course so I could be qualified to lead trips in the outdoors.

We also decided to apply to be the Backpacker Magazine’s Get Out More team, which would have meant traveling the country in 2007 and talking to people about hiking and camping and all things backpacking. We didn’t get the gig, but I started applying my graphic design and writing skills to outdoor work, which is still a big part of what I do today.

I applied for a bunch of seasonal jobs for the 2007 season, and finally got some traction with the Southwest Conservation Corps (SCC) which was based out of Durango, Colorado. Trail work was another side of the trail community that seemed essential to the thru-hiking world, so I found an Americorps program where I could train to become a trail crew leader with SCC and then lead trail maintenance crews around Colorado that year. I knew I was in the right place at the right time when I had my interview and learned that SCC had just hired a new Executive Director, Nelson Cronyn, who just happened to be my Peace Corps Burkina Faso Country Director! What a small world is that!?!?! 

I left Portland in February of 2007 to head down to Durango for a few months of crew leader training, and jumped in head-first to the trail maintenance world.

Of course I met some amazing people down there, and folks who I am happy to still call friends today.

In fact, Amber is coming to visit me TODAY!

Amber and I led a group of tribal youth in a front-country hitch in Colorado that year, and have remained friends ever since. She now lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her wife Anne…You may remember I just mentioned Amber in a recent blog post, we hiked the Corvallis to Sea Trail together a few years ago. Amber still puts her trail work to good use and has been instrumental in keeping the C2C trail clear of logs…she is great on the chain saw!

Learning how trails are built and maintained has been core to how I’ve progressed in my career and as a hiker, and my time at the Southwest Conservation Corps was elemental in that journey. Over the next seven months we worked in places like Canyon of the Ancients, Mesa Verde, and the Great Sand Dunes; there were hitches in state parks and on backcountry trails; and I learned how to build massive rock and log retaining walls, cut down trees with hand tools and chain saws, and so much more. 

All the time I was working around Colorado that year, the promise of the next trail I would hike was always hovering in the background. Durango happens to be the southern terminus of the Colorado Trail, and overlaps with quite a bit of the Continental Divide Trail too.

I decided to do a solo thru-hike of the Colorado Trail that fall and hiked out of Durango in mid-August and walked up to Denver (some 500ish miles) by the end of September. 

You can read all about that hike on trail journals here:

And you can watch my video montage of the hike here: 

That will do it for me today everyone, thanks for coming down memory lane with me, I’m really enjoying it!