2025’s Thanksgiving on the River Crew – Cindy, Kirk & Moi (photo courtesy of Cindy)
Kirk and I have had a Thanksgiving tradition of heading to water for the last 10+ years. It probably started because he just loves a flowing river, and even though my river time had been limited before we met, I quickly took to the eddies and riffles as he showed me the ropes of paddling, rafting, and floating downstream.
One of our first trips was a packraft adventure on the North Fork of the John Day River. You can read all about it here:
click for the full post…
We had many other adventures on the water, most frequently coming back to the banks of the Lower Deschutes River as it usually had the most water of any of Oregon’s rivers in late November. We would invite various friends, sometimes it would snow, sometimes it would drop into the single digits, and sometimes those friends never returned for another water-logged Thanksgiving trip…the cold really highlights how a four-day sufferfest can drive people indoors, even if we bring multiple pies.
This year my longtime friend Cindy decided to brave the unknown, and possibly rainy weather to accompany us on our float, and she was rewarded with mild temperatures and minimal splashing as I had asked Kirk to find the smoothest and driest lines through the rapids – my neck and spine still can’t tolerate much jostling.
We launched on Thanksgiving morning and pulled over a few miles later to reheat our feast. I don’t think it was the best of our efforts as my turkey cooking the day before was a bit too zealous and left the meat on the dry side, and we skipped the fancy side-dishes for instant potatoes, stovetop stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and store-bought pumpkin pie, but it was all gravy. As Edward Abby says, “Hunger is the best sauce,” and the smell of the cooking turkey had started my mouth watering a full day before our dinner.
Dark comes early in late November, but I added some festive cheer with some battery-powered lights and hot cider.
The skies were blue and the nights dark, and we all got a solid 10 hours (or more!) of sleep each night.
It is such a gift to be on the river during this time of year. The blue heron was our steady companion each day on the water, and the sound of the current hushed any background noise that we carried over from day-to-day life.
It’s 0-dark-30 in Pendleton. My room sits eye-level to busy Highway 84, and I try to drown out the sound of trucks breaking and cars racing through the city by turning the fan on high.
I arrived in the late afternoon and shook off the four-hour drive. A pain had just started to take hold of my lower back, but some light stretching and walking helped to ease the stiffness that had set in.
It’s time for the yearly Oregon Outdoor Recreation Summit, and arriving here brings back all sorts of memories of my body last year. What do I mean? Last year, I was in such debilitating pain, still blaming my condition on slow-healing injuries, that I was jacked up on pain meds and moved so deliberately that many people noticed something was wrong. Only weeks later would I be diagnosed with cancer, which explained the constant neck and back spasms that had been plaguing me for months.
The Summit is designed and hosted by the Oregon Trails Coalition, the group I have been leading as Chair of the Steering Committee for the last three years, and this is my final summit in this volunteer role.
That first night I stopped in distillery where about 50 other summit folks milled about. Entering this room was both exciting and daunting. Many people knew of my challenging year because I’ve been quite public about it, but others had no idea. It was as if I was breaking out of a cocoon…a cocoon that had been smashed and thought destroyed, but not. I had emerged on the other side of my brush with mortality to find myself on a similar path I had been on before. It was both exciting and confusing.
But I digress. I wanted to write this blog post to talk about volunteering and how remaining involved in the Coalition has been a vital part of my healing. My fellow board members cheered me on this year, they ran the monthly meetings until I was able to engage again, and gave me lovely gifts like home-made granola, books, and a bright yellow t-shirt that I wear constantly.
To have a purpose greater than yourself and to be of service to your community is a powerful motivator and force for healing. I was deathly ill a year ago, and now I’m walking upright. I still have the glow from the Portugal sun on my cheeks, and am reimagining my future. This summit doesn’t represent my swan song; it’s a re-awakening. It’s a rebirth. BTW, this seems an opportune time to mention Renee means “reborn” in French. How can it be the first time I’m drawing this connection?
So volunteering. Volunteering has helped pull me out of my self-focused fog. Sure, I could have dwelled on my pain, quit the Coalition, and sulked about my inability to backpack, but I decided to use what energy I had to continue supporting, promoting, and advocating for the preservation, development, and stewardship of a statewide network of trails. Using my precious hours in this world for good has always been vitally important to me. When I was faced with a million career options after college, I pushed that all away to become a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. I wanted my time to mean something to someone. I found that direct aid was the best way to disentangle myself from the rampant consumerism and individualism that modern society primes us for. Volunteering connects us to the collective, much like I believe hiking connects us to the land. And connection is healing.
My mom will be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas at a diner serving dinner to those in need. And with the SNAP benefit disaster, I expect this small act of kindness will have a dramatic impact on her community, and her outlook in the wake of my dad’s death.
Are you volunteering?
My brother has always loved animals, so I’m encouraging him to look into animal shelters in his area and explore if they need help walking dogs or petting cats. Volunteering could look like anything. You could show up for children, the elderly, the sick, or the natural areas around you. You could pull invasive weeds or plant milkweed for migrating Monarch butterflies. It’s endless! And when it feels like everything is falling apart, volunteering can connect you with the beauty of what is working, what is alive around you.
If you are in Oregon, we are in our recruitment period for the Oregon Trails Coalition Steering Committee and Advisory Board. The Advisory Council strives to be truly representative of the Oregon Trails community of professionals, advocates, volunteers, and trail users. It advises the Steering Committee on coalition advocacy positions and campaigns, and helps implement and promote events and programs. The Steering Committee provides oversight and guidance to the Coalition Director, is responsible for carrying out the Coalition’s mission, and generally acts in accordance with the Advisory Council’s recommendations.… and you get to work with fabulous people. Please join us!
I’ll leave you with this post from my friend Jess, and I’d love to hear from you. How do you volunteer? How would you like to volunteer? I bet we could connect you with a meaningful opportunity that helps you see the beauty and richness of an engaged life.
Since commenting has been so buggy on this website, I’ve decided to share these posts on Substack , where commenting will be much easier.
Kirk and I took a day hike up to the base of 3 Finger Jack last weekend. It may look extreme, but this point is only 2ish miles from the trailhead! The worst part was driving up the washboarded dirt road, which was much harder on my neck than the hike.
I mentioned my intention to hike some of the Camino de Santiago thru Portugal in one of my last posts, and now, buoyed by all the good health news, I’m making it happen…and all of a sudden, the trip is soon, very soon (like September soon!)
I’ll be writing here daily while I walk, and now my time is filled with logistics like:
Whats up with the whole luggage transport system? Since my back/neck/shoulders still can’t support a pack I’ll be paying to have my roller carry-on bag transported each day. There are several companies that offer the service, and you only need to book 48 hours in advance, so that leaves room for serendipity…especially important because I don’t know how many miles per day my body will tolerate yet.
How do I book hostels, hotels, or auberges? Fortunately, many of these lodging options leave half their beds open for first-come walkers….In the day and age of cell phones and reservations, that is amazing, and again leaves some time for the hike to evolve as I see how the miles are feeling. I do have the first three nights booked, though.
Visa? Not needed
Money? Debit and credit cards will work, although I’ve had to check the international fees for both…since my trip is relatively short, just a few weeks, it sounds like getting cash from ATMs along the way will be an advisable way to go
Gear? I’m experimenting with a few different lumbar packs to carry things like a raincoat, umbrella, snacks, and water…I used the Gossamer Gear Piku this past weekend on a day hike, and loved how light it was, although the larger capacity (nine liters) means I can still put too much weight in it, like I did for a walk around town this week 😬. I have a Mountainsmith lumbar pack on order to try, although it comes off the shelf much heavier at 1.56 lbs vs the Piku at 8.9 oz.
Blogging? I thought I would bring my Surface tablet with keyboard to write at cafes along the way, but on my hike around town, it seemed heavy in the pack…I could just type on my phone like I do on regular backcountry hikes…we’ll see. I’ll take some more hikes with it and decide later.
Language? I’ve been taking some Portuguese lessons on Duolingo, but a big portion of the way will be in Spain (about 100 miles vs 70ish in Portugal), and I don’t have time to get good at two languages. Anyway, I hear English is pretty prevalent, and I can always rely on Google translate.
Sleeping? Since I’ll be in a bed each night and can transport whatever fits in my roller carry-on, I’m planning to bring my 40-degree feathered friends quilt, an inflatable pillow, and a silk liner for the beds. I hear i will need to be alert for bed bugs, so I am getting versed I need what to look for.
Food? It will be quite an urban experience, so I’ll have cafes and restaurants all along the way. I will also probably take advantage of grocery stores and hostel kitchens to buy and make my own meals…as for eating restrictions, I’m going to be a bit looser with my diet and eat what is fresh and authentic…I want to immerse myself in the experience, and if that means an occasional glass of wine or pastry with lunch, so be it!
Navigation? I bought the Wise Pilgrim guidebook and app, and I also made my own data book in miles vs kilometers, and have the route uploaded onto Caltopo, which I’ll use on my phone too.
There will be other questions that come up as I’m putting this trip together, and I’ll probably post once or twice more to share that with you. I’ll also post my gear list and anything else you might find interesting. Have other questions? Leave a note in the comments!
I see this as the first of many Camino-style hikes I plan to take since my body is different now, and as I’ve mentioned to some of you, I see developing these type of hiking opportunities for the less-able bodied or people who simply want to eat good food and sleep in beds as a potential pivot for my business once I’m able to start working again. Exciting!
Did those few weeks even happen? The few weeks where Kirk and I lounged on beach chairs under thatched shade and watched waves the color of turquoise gently touch the white sand shore?
We went deep into sleepy vacation mode, and it now all seems like a quick dream.
And it’s June all of a sudden! Otherwise known as birthday month 🙂
Let the wild ruckus begin!
I have a feeling it will be similar to the birthday I celebrated on the PCT in 2006 at Walker Pass…
NEMO and I doing our last few miles into Walker Pass.Everyone around me wore birthday hats that day!Billgoat!The amazing Scott Williamson on his first successful PCT yo yo in 2006NEMO knit me this hat!Party time!
So many wonderful people are arriving this weekend for my party at Amber’s place, it’s going to be so much fun. She will be slinging her scrumptious wood-fired pizzas and I’m excited to be immersed in my most treasured place: among dear friends!
Back in the real world I got a news update that had me in a great mood. Apparently exercise is ‘better than drugs’ to stop cancer returning after treatment. That’s just the news I needed to hear. I need to ramp up my miles if I want to hike some of the Camino this fall. My default state lately has been resting as I’m still dealing with neck, shoulder, and body soreness every day….but now I have more motivation to walk despite the aches.
“Patients who began a structured exercise regime… had a 37% lower risk of death and a 28% lower risk of recurrent or new cancers developing, compared with patients who received only health advice, the trial found…Their weekly target was the equivalent of three to four walks of between 45 and 60 minutes, but patients could choose how they got more active. Some went kayaking or skiing, for instance.”
I mean, it’s like the world is begging me to keep hiking.
I still am getting caught up in the surprise of it all. That my life is 100% different than it was a year ago.
A year ago Kirk and I spent Memorial Day snow camping and ski touring up our local back-yard mountain, Broken Top. We skied in with heavy packs and plenty of snacks for several days…a prospect I can’t even imagine right now.
A year ago I was strategizing which trails to hike next and how to improve those trails through resource development…a la my trails consulting business.
A year ago I was hosting several conversations a month at Intentional Hiking, trying to encourage the trails community to take a more active role in the world we are hiking through.
Today, that is all gone. Well, not gone exactly; the trick now is to find out how to live what life I have now to the fullest, not knowing how much time I have left. Some argue we should always live this way….but I do know inside and and out that walking and hiking will still take center stage in whatever way I choose to live now.
When I was growing up, I believed the world was magical and filled with wonder and surprise. A childhood spent in nature only confirmed it. And then there were the movies and books I read. I already mentioned the all powerful Wizard of Oz, but this past week I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of all the childhood delights: Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Last Unicorn, Mary Poppins, The Princess Bride, and most of them hold up. Screen time back in the day wasn’t like it is now. I would watch these once a year, or once we got a VCR, maybe monthly, because most of my time was spent outside…my mom would push me and my three brothers outside, and I am so grateful for that now.
Do I still believe in magic and majestic adventures?? I will admit that the wind has been taken out of my sails these past eight months (eight months of sickness so far!!!), but the magic has shown up in many of my relationships with you, and I find I’m so rich in amazing people in my life.
And now that things are about to change, I can dive back into the wonder and awe that nature brings into my life. My hiking will be different now, but I know it will continue to bring complete strangers into my life and that they will quickly become great friends. And it doesn’t even have to be a thru-hike. I had an incredibly moving walk this weekend. Of course, spring had a lot to do with it, Bend is practically bursting at the seams with flowers and birds, and green everywhere….which is saying something for the desert. My walk helped to wipe the darkness from the corners of my mind. A darkness that was dragging me down to its sleepy hopelessness. (That reminds me of another movie: Legend, the 1985 version with a young Tom Cruise!) I took a walk and had some fantastic laughs with friends, and the world became whole and hopeful and wonderful again. Even if this is my last spring, this feeling is life, and I’m quite in love with it all. A walk is the engine for all the feels.
But thru-hiking, man, it just doesn’t get much better than that, and finding a good hiking partner that helps you see color is a real gift.
Check out this video I made of a short thru-hike of the Sunshine Coast Trail with Nemo back in 2018.
This sums up the feeling fairly well:
Will I carry a pack again in the wilderness? Will I be able to immerse myself in the far backcountry for weeks at a time? I don’t know, but I do know I have to make peace with this new body, or this new reality. And work? What the heck am I going to do if the focus of my business before was hiking a long trail to evaluate how to make it better, safer, easier for hikers to be successful? To make new trail resources and help a trail organization communicate with their hikers? Maybe I can help develop more hut-to-hut or bnb-to-bnb type trails in the US (Europe is spoiled for them) since those might be the only trails I can hike for a while. Maybe I’ll revamp the National Recreation Trails designation (something I’ve been wanting to do for years now! And a post for another day).
The news I got this week has helped fuel these thoughts. I know, I know, you will say I buried the lead, but I had my scans this week and met with my oncologist, and…it’s working! I’m officially in maintenance mode!! That means no more chemo for now. He said my body was chemo-d out…and man, do I feel it. I am still so tired. I have no appetite, I’m still losing weight and am quite nauseous, but the farther away I get from chemo, the more my body should find its equilibrium. The treatments have been working and he said I’m responding really well to the Tegresso and chemo…the combo helped to knock the tumors back a bit, and some of my brain ones are completely gone! I mean, I still have tumors, and might the rest of my life, but they are in check now. I’ll continue with the daily targeted med indefinitely and hope that I can regain my strength. This is a life-long disease, but I can see a life again.
There were tears of happiness yesterday when I heard the news….I’m bursting with the news.
So, things are happening this May! I’ll be on the road a lot, and you might not hear from me for a while. I have some nature bathing to do, visiting family to do, and even a spot of vacation with Kirk…he has dealt with so much these past eight months. I hope you all have a Kirk in your lives who is there for you when something completely unexpected and wild is thrown at you like this was.
Don’t worry, I will still keep blogging…it’s my way of processing this whole thing, and has been the way I’ve been sharing my hikes with you for over 20 years now. You could fall down the rabbit hole of my hiking journals for weeks and months if you explore some of my past hikes in this blog. And there will be future hikes, I can just feel it. And I still have more I want to explore…more memories and past lives, it’s fun to rummage around in my youth to tease out the elements that have led me to where I am today.
Should I be writing updates when things are heavy and dark? Maybe that’s exactly when I should be writing updates.
I learned yesterday that a friend from college’s husband, who has stage 4 lung cancer with the EGFR 20 mutation (mine is EGFR 19) is not doing well and has moved into hospice. OMG, I keep thinking this is something I will move past, but it’s claiming people I know!
And some family members are really not doing well.
And more hair is falling out.
And my pet’s heads are falling off.
(Sorry, that’s a Dumb and Dumber movie quote that my highschool friends and I used to reference incessantly)
The gravity of my situation has been feeling so heavy lately. This last round of chemo really got me for some reason. I’m much more nauseous that I’ve been since the first round and can’t walk as far…and I am still struggling to eat enough to keep my energy levels up.
Enough! Chin up!
I keep hearing positivity is the key, but do I have to be positive every freaking minute? Can I feel the weight of this and cry and rage every once in a while? Of course. There are no rules, but are there? There are so many books that I’ve been reading about how to live with cancer, how to eat with cancer, how to survive cancer, and there seem to be rules….but they are different for everyone, so we can’t tell you exactly what they are, but know that if you don’t follow them it won’t be good, or might not. We don’t really know why some people make it out and some don’t. So do the right thing, we just don’t know exactly what the right thing FOR YOU is, so figure it out.
Ahhhhhhhh!
I know my body is fighting. Is that why my hair is falling out now, and I have no appetite? Or is that the poison of chemo working its way through all the cells in my body? Or is that the cancer advancing?
How about some good news? I made it to Madison after spending all day sick in bed the day before my flight. I even looked at flying out a day or two later, but ticket prices were RIDICULOUS to reschedule, so I put on my big girl pants, packed a puke bag, and hoped for the best.
I had a delicious breakfast where I felt like a normal person. Normal!
And I made it. Travel day wasn’t too bad after all, and I had a wonderful dinner catching up with Jasmine. We laughed over the “turkey vultures” bit (see the last blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and remembered that it really was “pig vultures”. We were trying to get under our little brothers’ skin after all. “Pig Vultures!” we would screech as we peddled away down the country roads. They would circle and circle the intersection on their bmx bikes, hurling insults back at us as we laughed hysterically and coasted down the hill on our bikes, giddy with freedom.
Jasmine!
It was fun to tell stories, and apparently, we lived about a mile from the Ice Age Trail…I knew we were close, but not that close!!! A national scenic trail was evolving in my backyard and I didn’t even know it existed! It was designated as an NST in 1980, I was three, so yes, it was most definitely there. I have to hike it. I have to live long enough to hike it. And Jasmine’s mom still lives in the house I know so well, she can be my trail angel! She just doesn’t know it yet. In fact, I have a friend thru-hiking it right now, and he calls it a pub crawl, so maybe I can arrange for some of my gear to be transferred from town to town so I don’t have to carry much, and there isn’t much elevation gain, so maybe this is a trail I can hike in my cancer years??
Whitney and I went out for dinner with Luke last night, the executive director of the Ice Age Trail, and we talked a lot about it. That’s the magic of these trail conferences: you get to meet the people that do the thing! And that thing is trails, which I love so much!
Jasmine also told me that she remembered that I was very philosophical when I was growing up, and remembered lots of deep conversations that we had during sleepovers. While dealing with a bout of nausea in the hotel room yesterday, I did finish watching Wicked online, the prequel to the Wizard of Oz. Then I had to watch the Wizard of Oz of course, and was immediately reminded of its influence in my life growing up.
Gotta love the saltines!!
Back then we just had a TV with a few channels. It was even before the VCR days. The Wizard of Oz would come on once a year around Easter (wait a minute….Easter is this week, in real life!). The story of a long walk, meeting kind strangers you ended up loving and having good and scary adventures with, must have planted the seed for what would become my thru-hiking life. That and the Ice Age Trail in my backyard (right by Fountain Lake where we spent sooooo many days swimming) and my dreamy philosophical nature.
Check out this map:
The x is where I lived, the circle is where Jasmine lived, and the + is where our other friend Katie lived. My freaking back yard!!!
I feel down, but then I start thinking about how many trails there are left to hike, how many places to see and people to meet, and I get excited again. And sure, I probably won’t be hiking the Hayduke Trail that I had planned to do in 2026, and the Great Divide Trail in 2027 for my 50th birthday, but there are plenty of other trails where I don’t have to carry 7 days of food and 8 liters of water on my back that can be added to my list.
I woke again about midnight. I haven’t been staying in bed until 3am like I promised all of you a while ago. Oops. Instead, I keep getting up and reveling in the quiet early morning hours to read, write, drink my coffee, and enjoy the quiet. I just like it, ok?
But my new med makes me quite tired during the day. I’ve struggled to keep my eyes open even when visiting with friends, and the extra napping is probably compounded by the short nights. That has been the main side-effect of my new mutation med so far, sleepiness.
This morning I was scrolling on Instagram when I decided to post a TBT image. TBT, you know “Throw back Tuesday” where you post a memory photo.
Then I started reading my blog posts from the Owyhee packraft trip and remembered that my favorite place to write isn’t at 2am at home when I can’t sleep from the cancer in my bones, it’s writing at 4am in my tent or spread-out cowboy-camping style on my tyvek when I’m hiking.
My tradition since starting to blog on my hikes many years ago is to write every day. Get up in the dark, make my coffee, and write. Write for hours even! This is the beauty of solo hiking too; I don’t have to work around anyone else’s schedule, I don’t have to keep quiet so I don’t wake them up, I don’t have to start walking before I’m ready, I can write and nap, and make a second cup of coffee, and write some more, and eat breakfast, and then hike out when I’m ready.
If you browse back through some of the many adventures that I chronicle on this blog, the routine is the same. I write every morning. That is my jam. That is my happy place. To be alone in nature, writing as the day breaks. I know I’ll get back there, I know it in my bones, so I have that to look forward to. This writing at home is the abnormal part. This writing at home is a placeholder for me in the dark in my tent.
So, instead of recapping this incredible adventure of packrafting a 175 miles of the Owyhee River as a water alternate to the hiking route, I’ll just link to my blog posts here for you. This trip did a great job of encapsulating what I love most about adventures….the going out and not knowing if something can be done, but trying anyway. I didn’t know if one could packraft the Owyhee river in July at 135 cfs, but I wanted to find out, so tried. That is true adventure, and the kinds of adventure I hope to get back to…and by going solo I have learned to rely on myself. I have learned to trust my instincts, trust my training, and trust the world to get me through.
I trust the world to get me through this cancer too.
So here are the posts from my 2-week Owyhee solo packraft trip. Enjoy!
Read about my full Oregon Desert Trail section hike here. (I was the 10th person to complete the route after getting the job to establish it the year before. I had to hike it to know what I needed!)
I don’t really know how to think or feel most days.
Many of you remark on my positivity and resiliency, but I think a lot of that comes down to what my body and mind’s basic operating principles are: to be optimistic and hopeful. I think a lot of my current mental state can still be chalked up to denial, or disbelief. I truely can not conceptualize that I have Stage 4 cancer (at some point I said it was Stage 3, but really it’s Stage 4 due to the levels it has spread in my body…this is all an imprecise science…but at this point I don’t think it’s useful to pretend it’s better than it is).
I had another biopsy last week to try and figure out what mutation I have and determine the best course of treatment, but somehow that went awry and they sampled plain old bone that doesn’t have tumor. I’m not sure how that’s possible given the CT scanner that was used to try and target the tumor for sampling, but I’m left with a useless test and no more answers than before. I haven’t talked to my oncologist yet about the bum test, I’m sure he’s NOT HAPPY, so I’m not sure if I’ll get scheduled for another, or if he will have enough information from the blood testing that was done a little over a week ago.
Regardless, I’m left in the hazy in-between state of not knowing. I’ve been in this not-knowing place for many months now, and it forces me to live in the present like never before. I really want to plan my year. Typically I would have multiple hikes, trips, local river adventures, etc. mapped out for 2025, but all I can really do are pencil in some ideas about what Kirk and I would like to do, if I’m able, later this year. I am really good at going with the flow, but I’m also a lover of spreadsheets and calendars and get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of planning. For now I’m planning for the maybes. Why not map out a 2-week Portugal Camino walk just in case I can do it at some point this year? Why not think about river trips we might be able to take this year if I’m stable enough? That gives me something to look forward to, and a reason to keep on despite the not-knowing.
The not-knowing is also a great place to look-back. The looking back at past periods in my life has been a fun adventure, and I’ll admit, a challenging one. I posted my PCT video montage a few days ago, and had a complete break-down when I got to the northern Washington section. It probably had a lot to do with my music selections (Phish’s Swept Away (sob!) and David Grey’s Slow Motion (), but also it really brought home the fragileness of life now, life then, and the fact that some people don’t make it out of this cancer journey. Some do pass on to another state. I keep not believing that’s my path, so it’s overwhelming when some of that pierces through my optimism.
I’ve lost people. Missy, my best friend in high school and college lost her cancer battle (lung cancer in a non-smoker!) a year ago in October. It was fast too. From March to October we rallied around Missy (me in my typical disbelief) as she and her wonderful husband Garrett and cutest young son ever, Parker, and her family did everything they could to keep her going. Our group of friends were able to have a video call with her just a week or two before she passed, and I was so grateful to have had that time to connect with her again. I didn’t believe she would actually go, or that I would find myself dealing with something similar a little over a year later. So today I’m going to go back to explore my time in Wisconsin; Missy’s Celebration of Life was the last time I visited Wisconsin in October of 2023.
Here are a few photos of my dear friend and I:
So here I am, feeling a bit more raw than usual on this Monday morning in March. Wisconsin has always been an important part of my story, and I credit my time(s) there with helping me become the person I am today.
Wisconsin can be broken down into two phases:
Childhood (I was born a cheese head and lived there till I was 12)
Post Peace Corps (I moved to Madison for about 7 months in 2001 after I returned from the Peace Corps)
Most excitingly, I have an upcoming trip to attend the International Trails Summit in Madison in mid-April too! I really hope I’m healthy enough to go, and if any of you cheese-heads are reading this and want to connect while I’m there, please let me know! I have a bit of time on the front end, and would be willing to tack on a day or two on the other end as well…
Childhood
No trip back to my birth would be complete without explaining how my adventurous and amazing parents ended up in the Midwest. For all of the non-traditional life paths I have taken, a pretty big deviation from the technical and engineering-focused life choices of my three brothers, hearing more about the early Wisconsin years puts a lot into context. My folks did a great job of showing me that anything is possible, and that idealism can be a good way to make decisions in life.
My dad grew up in California in the San Jose area, and joined the Air Force after college. He was stationed in West Virginia when he met my mom in the 70s. My mom found her way to West Virginia from Lafayette, Louisiana when she took a job as a nurse and moved out of the south with her brother, my Uncle Al, also in the Air Force.
Legend has it my uncle was planning to introduce her to a dude named Steve at an Air Force party. She met Steve and it was a quintessential head-over-heels love affair, but as it turned out her Steve wasn’t Uncle Al’s Steve! Didn’t really matter though, my folks were quite taken with each other. The wedding happened a short while later, and that’s when the adventurous spirit that I inherited from them both appeared.
I will probably get some of these details wrong, but essentially my Dad had decided to leave the Air Force, and the plan was my folks would get in a car, road-trip across the country, and find a place to call home along the way. That place happened to be Wisconsin. They made it to central Wisconsin, and happened upon an old farm house in a very rural part of the state that spoke to them. Somehow, the idea of living like the Amish, a kind of back-to-the-earth ethic, was strong at the time, and the white-washed old farm house with apple orchard in the rolling glaciated idyllic Wisconsin was going to be the setting for their new start.
The nearest big cities were Stevens Point (where I was born), and Waupaca (where I went to school), and the farm house was bracketed by the small little towns of Almond and Wild Rose. I mean, just the names sound so picturesque. I don’t remember a ton about the farmhouse, but stronger memories remain from when my folks bought some property and started building their own house by hand a few miles away when I was about 5. Community and friends were a huge part of their (and my life) during that time. My folks formed some strong bonds with other young couples, and we spent many hours together as our the families came together for cider pressing and chicken plucking parties. Many of the families were also doing a homesteading-back-to-the-earth thing in central Wisconsin, and we 70s kids benefited.
Then there was the earth-bermed house. My parents were very interested in energy efficiency and sustainability at the time, and decided to build an earth-bermed house. It would face south to get the passive solar rays, and have dirt mounded against the sides and back of the house to the roof to help create a stable temperature inside. This earth-bermed house would later be eclipsed by the house they built in Illinois a few decades later, a real earth-ship! The Illinois house was completely ensconced in earth (about 5 feet on top of the poured concrete structure) complete with solar tubes to bring some light into the back corners of the house. My dad called it the hobbit hole, and it was about the coziest place around. They left their hobbit hole in 2020 when they decided to move to Lafayette to be closer to family as they aged, but those houses and the memories of living close to the earth and the natural rhythms of nature left strong mark.
Wisconsin and our little slice of paradise was the perfect place to grow up. I’m a solid generation X kid, and a true product of the 80s. I don’t think we got more than a few TV channels until I was in high school, and even the VCR got very limited action in our house. My three younger brothers and I spent the majority of our childhoods running around outside, climbing trees, building forts, riding bikes, reading books, and finding ways to entertain ourselves.
My parents were still quite ensconced in the community vibes of the area after the new house was built, and we had multiple families with kids our ages within biking distance in all directions of our house. We had acres of woods to explore, and there were lakes and ponds and creeks and corn fields that featured heavily in our play. We lived close to several Amish families, and when their horse and buggies would drive past the house, we would play dodge-the-horse-poop on our bikes. Sometimes we would visit them to buy fresh eggs and marvel at the peacocks that would parade in their yard. My parents let us on a looooong leash, and we would often spend all day adventuring with our friends in the woods. Because I had three younger brothers, I would need to find my own escapes, and would often climb a tree with a book to find some quiet. I became quite attached to reading books outside…one of my great loves to this day. I 100% believe this upbringing is what paved the way for me as an adult to be so comfortable outside, with being alone in the wilderness, with change and uncertainty…I learned how to occupy myself. I learned to find awe and wonder in nature. I learned how important friends and community were, and grew up with the wisdom of Mr. Rodgers and Sesame Street guiding my upbringing. It was as good as it could get.
When I was 12, my Dad, who had been working in computing at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, took a job at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. I remember this time with excitement and anticipation… perhaps that was because I was on the cusp of my teenage years and the premise of moving to a larger town with malls and more boys was quite exciting. I was solidly into my New Kids On the Block obsession phase, and did I mention boys?
Post Peace Corps
It wasn’t until 2001 that I returned for my second Wisconsin phase, the post-peace corps pre Appalachian Trail time. It was all because of Cindy that I returned to Wisconsin. Cindy was a fellow volunteer, and I remember meeting her at the beginning of our Peace Corps time. We spent a few days in Washington DC in the summer of 1999 when we all had to report for the start of our service, and got whisked around town for a few days getting LOTS of shots and going through various orientations. It was a bewilderment of activity…but I remember sitting next to Cindy on the bus and discovering our Wisconsin connection.
Fast forward to training…we lived with host families in Bobo-Dioulasso during the first three months while we were in country. Cindy and Mia’s family lived fairly close to us (I roomed with Collaine…and fun fact, all four of us are currently Oregonians!), so she became part of my core friend group…which was cemented when we received our village assignments and were both sent to the far northern part of the country. Cindy and I both traveled to the regional center of Ouahigouya to get things like mail and interaction with other volunteers. We spent long hours playing cards, drinking beer, and sweating under the hot hot sun. More to come on the years we were in Burkina Faso, but it was during the first few months of my service that I had decided that I would hike the Appalachian Trail when I was done, and somehow convinced Cindy to hike it with me.
When our time was coming to an end in 2001 and I was still planning to hike the AT in 2002, Cindy convinced me to move up to Wisconsin and spend the fall/winter in Madison as we prepared for the hike. It was an easy sell…I found a job at the university, moved into a group house with some of Cindy’s college friends, and embraced my cheese-head origins for a short while.
How would I characterize this second Wisconsin phase? To start I’d encourage you to play Brian Eno’s Ambiant 1 Music for Airports.
The house I lived in was off of Monroe Street (near the football stadium and Lake Wingra) and was pretty crunchy. What do I mean by that? My housemates listened to records, we didn’t have a TV, they brewed beer and were very wholesome. A record I played over and over and over was Peter’s Ambiant Music for Airports. This became my musical touchpoint for this phase of life.
I got a job in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and while I didn’t really have a background or much interest in landscape architecture, it was a very Wisconsin department to work in. I ended up really loving the professors and faculty that I worked with, and this is where some seeds were planted in my brain, or the seeds of influence started overlapping. There is a big conservation ethic and history to Wisconsin, and several influential people like Aldo Leopold and John Muir were also cheese-heads.
Leopold was extremely important to the Landscape Architecture department as he experimented with the revolutionary notion of restoring ecosystems damaged by human activity, both on his own land along the Wisconsin River and at the university’s arboretum. In his book, A Sand County Almanac, he weaves science, history, humor, and prose to articulate the bond between people and the natural world with the hope that people would treat the land with love and respect…an ethic and operating principle that I now hold central. I seek to use long-distance hiking as a way to deepen our connection with the natural world. If we can understand that we are a part of nature, and that what happens to the natural world is happening to us, we will act differently.
So this Wisconsin time was fruitful. Ideas and influences were taking root. Philosophies and ethics were germinating, and this whole time was one great meditative and contemplative phase for me. Cindy was living in Milwaukee at the time, and we would meet occasionally to hike and talk about gear (neithor of us really knew what we were doing with the whole hiking/backpacking thing), but we kind of figured some things out that winter. I didn’t know many people in town, so spent many hours walking the city, reading books, visiting coffee shops, and generally flaneuring my way around town.
I didn’t have a lot to do as a student liaison in the Department of Landscape Architecture, so I took it upon myself to find useful projects to keep my brain busy and help out. I decided to redesign their website, so I taught myself web design using Dreamweaver (the platform of the day) and had great fun designing the website after a technical landscape architecture rendering. This was when I started to apply my design skills to whatever I happened to be working on, and credit a lot of my creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to trying to be useful and learn something wherever I happen to be. I also took it upon myself to archive the department’s records, which stretched back decades. I carefully organized and catalogued file box after file box of papers and materials that choked the office. It was a way of keeping myself busy, which was the main goal. There is nothing I hate more than having to pretend to be busy or occupied. I’d much rather give myself a daunting and impossible task than have nothing to do.
All in all, this second phase of Wisconsin life was fairly short and sweet. In the spring of 2002, Cindy and I made our way out east and started hiking the Appalachian Trail…something that obviously has become the passion and obsession of my life.
My April trip back to Wisconsin is going to be a wonderful overlapping of all of these worlds. The nonprofit American Trails puts on an International Trail Summit every two years, and their Executive Director, Mike Passo, happens to call Marshfield, Wisconsin home (Marshfield wasn’t too far from where I grew up). I’ve been getting to know Mike and Candace at American Trails since I started my consulting business two years ago, and gave a webinar presentation through their weekly series right after I started. Give it a watch if you like!
When I started my second business, Intentional Hiking, in the fall of 2023, I hosted American Trails during my launch event and our connections continue to this day as they might take on some of the work I had planned for 2025. More to come on this come, but I’m very grateful for the work American Trails does!
So for all of you Wisconsin people that may read this blog post, like I said in the beginning, if you want to connect while I’m there, please let me know asap and we can try and make something happen.
It’s about time for either another cup of coffee or a green tea, so I’m going to sign off and see about this Monday.
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.
A triumphant She-ra at the PCT border monument.One of the best things about hiking the PCT in 2006 was meeting NEMO.Pouch and NEMO fell in love on the PCT and now are married and live on a farm in upstate NY!They are some of my best friends to this day.
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 designed our Get Out More Team Application to look like pages from Backpacker Magazine.
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!
Amber, me, Laurie, Nicole, Jonah, Artec & Carith (one of our leaders) in the Great Sand Dunes.Amber has skills.
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:
First of all, thank you so much for all of your sleep suggestions, advice, tips, etc. The last few nights have been much better, I’ve been clocking in at 5 or 6 hours of sleep which is a huge improvement over last week, and have implemented a few new things after talking to some of you and my doctors:
Using sleep stories on platforms like Calm and Headspace. These are brilliant. I start a story and get invested. I listened to one last night about Mont Saint-Michele in France, a place I’ve always wanted to go since learning more about France in high school french classes, and the initial details really captivated me and brought me in, but as the story progressed maybe the details got more mundane, or I was getting lulled by the voice, but I don’t remember…cause it worked! I fell asleep. I think these sleep stories will be key for me coming up, especially if I am waking every few hours…which after talking with a lot of you seems very common! We collectively have trouble sleeping solid nights.
More meds. A lot of you suggested THC/CBD products, and some of you told me about other medications. I met with my palliative care doc this week and we talked about sleep, and we decided to try trazodone for a while. I don’t like taking meds, before all of this cancer stuff I almost never took medications and preferred a natural way if at all possible, but given I’m on 437 different meds now I’ve kind of given in and will try the pharmaceutical way for now.
Limit screen time. I was in the habit of picking up my phone when I would wake every few hours, to check the time, first, but then I would start scrolling. Which is all new for me, again before cancer I didn’t sleep with my phone in the room. So many things have changed with how I live my life now! I didn’t have my phone in the room, so would have to get up when the alarm went off in the mornings, and didn’t have the temptation to scroll. If I needed to get sleepy in the before times, I would read a few pages of a book and that would put me out. I don’t have that problem at least because of the HUSO sound therapy. I listen to that when it’s bedtime and I’m out. So anyway, I haven’t been picking up the phone as much, and I think that’s been helping.
What have I been up to this week? I don’t know, the days seem to melt into each other and it’s hard to determine what day is what. But I do have a big day coming up tomorrow, I get another biopsy! The two I had done in December ended up being useless, at least for what we need to know now about my genetic mutation, so I am doing it all over again tomorrow. I get a deep bone biopsy and it’s a legit procedure, so no food tomorrow and only clear liquids.
We are going with Foundation One testing, and the biopsy tomorrow combined with the blood draw I had last week should tell us what we need to know! So of course lets look into this Foundation One:
The company says they are an essential partner to patients, physicians, researchers, and biopharma organizations navigating the complex landscape of cancer care. Their genomic insights help guide informed decisions about treatment plans and research priorities. They built a powerful portfolio of comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) tests that—via both blood and tissue samples—evaluate more than 300 genes known to drive cancer.
Liquid CDx: I had the labs drawn last week, and apparently this test is an FDA-approved companion diagnostic that analyzes guideline-recommended genes from a simple blood draw. It analyzes over 300 genes—making it the most comprehensive FDA-approved liquid biopsy on the market. Sounds good to me!
I believe the biopsy tissue sample will also be sent to Foundation One, and they will put it through their fancy-schmancy testing system to give us an even better picture of what the heck I’m dealing with.
So hopefully we’ll know more soon (I’m not sure what soon means…weeks? A month?) about the specific mutation(s) I have and what kinds of treatments are available for it.
I’m also going to get another radiation blast to my ribs…my ribs have been achy with the tumors and slight fracture I have going on in one of them, so we’re going to hit it again next week right before my third round of chemo.
I’m telling you, its a full time job to have cancer.
What else do I have going on? The hospital provides Reiki, so I’m doing some of that. My PT is coming over this week, so we’ll go over exercises now that I’m out of the wheelchair and walking around the house. I did a lot of walking yesterday at the hospital trying to get some labs done, and it felt good, and I’m a little sore today. It’s been super mild outside in Bend, so I think I’ll try some outside time here soon. I’m trying not to go too hard too fast, yesterday was quite exhausting by the time we finally got home. It’s going to take me a while to get back into walking outside every day condition again, but it’s on the horizon!
Lets go to intermission
Are you an Oregonian who loves hiking?
As many of you know, I enjoy hiking so much that I’ve become much more active in joining in with other trail advocates around the state to share our love of trails and strategize how we can work together to defend our current trails and build the trails we envision.
YOU CAN JOIN US TOO by registering today for Trails Day at the Oregon Capitol on March 10.
8:30-9:00 am: Attendees arrive at our training venue about a half mile from the capitol to sign in and pick up up a schedule, training materials and talking points, and materials to share with legislators. (There will be coffee and light snacks!)
9:00-10:30: Welcome and training: We’ll let attendees know what to expect, go over tips for a productive meeting with your legislators, and give a primer on our key issues.
10:30-11:00: Small group practice and Q&A.
11:00-4:30: Grab a (free) sack lunch and head to the Capitol for meetings with legislators and/or legislative office staff. Expect to have 2-4 small group meetings (generally 15 minutes) scheduled during the afternoon. We’ll ask each meeting group to share a short meeting report so we can track support for our issues and respond to any questions that legislators or staff may have. (You don’t have to have all the answers!)
5:00-6:30: (Optional) Join a group of trails advocates at the Joint Committee on Transportation Meeting. (We don’t yet know if there will be a public comment opportunity during this meeting, but it’s a great opportunity to see a bit of the legislative process at work.)
4:00-7:00: (Optional) As you wrap up your meetings, join other trails day participants for camaraderie, an informal debrief, and a bite at a local watering hole before heading home!
What are we asking for? Our platform is straightforward!
Oregonians love trails! More than 80% of Oregonians use local trails and are happier, healthier and more connected to their communities because of it.
Oregonians want to keep our trails open! We’re working toward a lasting legislative fix to recreational immunity through passage of SB 179 with amendments.
Oregonians want alternatives to walking, biking, running, and skating on high-traffic roadways! We must address the funding shortfall for the Oregon Community Paths program as part of a safe, green, fairly-funded transportation funding measure.
Oregonians want to see beloved trail projects move forward! We must continue to build on recent planning efforts for Oregon Signature Trails like the Salmonberry Trail and Oregon Coast Trail and not let those plans gather dust on a shelf.
Oregonians love trails! More than 80% of Oregonians report using local trails, so of course we want our state legislators to partner in the work to keep trails open and build the trails we envision for our communities.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to be (game time decision?) in Salem on March 10, which is why I’d like to ask you to consider going on my behalf!
I went last year and many of us were learning to speak up and have meetings with our electeds for the first time. It wasn’t that scary! I wrote up a blog post about how it all went last year so you can give it a read and decide if this is something you would like to participate in. You don’t need to be affiliated with a trails group, and you don’t need to be a hiker! The Oregon Trails Coalition represents motorized and non-motorized trail users, and there are lots of issues we can combine our voices on together.
Early this morning I got an email from Mark Trails (one of my CDT hiking buddies) with a photo that brought back a flood of memories.
Instead of rehashing these first few days going into Colorado with Mark, trying to ski the trail, and getting spit out, I’m going to redirect you to my blog posts from those days to help tell the story of one of the hardest weeks of my life on the trail.
Here are a series of links to my blog that will explain everything:
That was a good chapter of the CDT, things got a bit easier from there, actually did they? No, they didn’t.
Mark Trails and I went low again, he had a scary fall when we headed back to the trail from Creed. I lit myself on fire and had to walk with 3rd degree burns to Salida, and wow, I guess the brutality didn’t end at Durango. Keep reading my blog to get all the deets!! (at the bottom of each day’s blog post will be a link to the next day)
), but also it really brought home the fragileness of life now, life then, and the fact that some people don’t make it out of this cancer journey. Some do pass on to another state. I keep not believing that’s my path, so it’s overwhelming when some of that pierces through my optimism.
She-ra Hikes 