Rewritten Road

I spent years believing a meaningful life had to be a hard one. Maybe because so much of my life was. Somewhere along the way, struggle became familiar to me. Not comfortable exactly, but recognizable. Like hiking a trail with loose rocks and insane elevation. Exhausting but predictable. You brace your body differently when you…

I used to believe that keeping a promise to myself meant following through exactly as planned. If I said I was going to hike, I hiked.If I chose the harder trail, I took it.If I woke up tired, sore or quietly resistant, I treated that feeling like something to override. Because that’s what discipline looked…

There are trails I don’t hike anymore. Not because they’re dangerous or they’re closed. Just because they lead somewhere I no longer go. Estrangement is like that. People think it’s one decision. A clean cut. A boundary drawn once and held forever. But it isn’t. It’s a path you stop walking and then have to…

Spring is here finally! Kind of. But the snow is melting, trails are opening, the air feels different and I’m finally able to get back to longer day hikes without it feeling like a fight. Hiking is starting to feel more familiar, again. Comfortable again. I know what to expect. I know when to turn…

I was an angry person for a long time. Not quietly, not underneath things, just right there on the surface, where everyone could see it. It didn’t always look like shouting.Sometimes it was sharper than that.A quickness in my responses.A refusal to let things go.A kind of heat that stayed close to my skin, ready.…

I used to believe in escape the way other people believe in miracles. Not softly. Not as a hope. As a plan. If I could get far enough away, fast enough, then something inside me would finally unclench. The air would be different. The rules would be different. I would be different. And the truth…

I didn’t plan this hike. Actually, that’s not completely true. I planned something different, ran late, watched it fall apart and then tried to salvage the morning on the fly. That’s how I ended up at North Point. I planned Giant Ledge but – I was already off. I woke up late. Running behind. A…

Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice. Moving 1,700 miles away from everything I’ve ever known. It doesn’t arrive as a full thought. It slips in sideways. In quiet moments of doubt, the space between one task and the next. A question without urgency, but not without weight. What if I misunderstood what…

For a long time, the trail had a job. It was where I took my pain so it wouldn’t swallow me whole. Where I converted panic into motion. Where I burned off the excess electricity of a nervous system that had never learned the luxury of stillness. Hiking was not leisure.It was management.It was strategy.It…

There’s a saying along the lines of – if you don’t rest now your body will force you to rest later. I never realized how true that could be. Navigating Lupus often feels like I’m negotiating with my body more than living in it. And, maybe I am. But – it’s also a reminder that…