Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi My regular readers will know that I was a single mom for most of my twin daughters’ lives and that they grew up with only myself to shepherd them through childhood challenges. When my marriage to their father endedContinue reading “The Funnest Day”
Author Archives: Colleen Drake
Lost in the Bighorns
Having no destination, I am never lost. Ikkyu Well, okay, I was not exactly lost. But the trail that was supposed to take me back to my waiting vehicle at Paint Rock Lake could not be found, and I was on the last day of a three day hike, scheduled to be back to workContinue reading “Lost in the Bighorns”
When the Ten Essentials Are No Longer Essential
Do not be surprised that the return of the light lifts your spirits. Do not be surprised that warmth on your back calms you and makes you glad. Feel your spirits lift as the sun rises higher in the sky: this is part of you, this snaky gladness, part of who you have been forContinue reading “When the Ten Essentials Are No Longer Essential”
Why I Am Still Not a Thru Hiker
When we walk like we are rushing, we print anxiety and sorrow upon the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth. Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet. ThichContinue reading “Why I Am Still Not a Thru Hiker”
Why I Am Not a Thru Hiker
Wanderer; your footsteps are the road, and nothing more, wanderer, there is no road, the way is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Antonio Macrado, Proverbias y cantares XXIX in Campos de Castilla In 1968 when the PacificContinue reading “Why I Am Not a Thru Hiker”
What’s for Dinner?
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. Nadia Boulanger Younger hikers. . .and even younger old hikers. . .may be surprised to learn that there was a time when convenient packets of oatmeal and cocoa and other staples of the hiking diet wereContinue reading “What’s for Dinner?”
Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
When things all seem too much, what better solace than a reminder that they are, provided you’re willing to zoom out a bit, indistinguishable from nothing at all? The anxieties that clutter the average life–relationship troubles, status, rivalries, money worries–shrink instantly down to irrelevance. So do pandemics and presidencies, for that matter: the cosmos carriesContinue reading “Cosmic Insignificance Therapy”
Buzzed
“What I like” isn’t what’s good for me. “What I like” is familiar, what’s good for me is foreign and unknown. Charles Wright I have a memorable recollection of my first encounter with a bee, not because I was stung, but because a happy afternoon walking barefoot in the grass with my friend, Patty, wasContinue reading “Buzzed”
Making the Leap
Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear, and our arms are time. These chill humors seep through our capillaries, weighting each cell with an icy dab of nonbeing, and that dab grows and swells and sucks the cells dry. That is why physical courage is so important–it fills, as it were, theContinue reading “Making the Leap”
Not Dead Yet
The most fundamental thing we fail to appreciate about the world. . .is how bafflingly astonishing it is that it’s there at all—the fact that there is anything rather than nothing. Oliver Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks When I started this blog a little over a year ago, I envisioned it as a place toContinue reading “Not Dead Yet”
The Solitude Trail 