This originally appeared in The Trek. You may see them infrequently. You may wonder at their skill or endurance. If you’re the average AT thru-hiker—young and male—you may worry about their safety and health. Don’t. Women 50 and over have as much strength and determination as any long-distance hiker. Most of them have faced one of the greatest challenges of […]
I hiked with puppies! Excited, yipping, furry balls of fun. Or so I thought. I was on a solo overnight backpacking trip in the Kelly section of the Lone Star Hiking Trail. The Kelly section is in the Sam Houston National Forest, roughly 90 miles north of my home in southeast Houston. My hike had taken me down a singletrack […]
Call me a snowflake. I own it. At some point in the latter days of the 2016 election, some right-wing Twitter users created an artificial identity divide, calling themselves “deplorables” and Trump critics “snowflakes.” If one is a snowflake simply by virtue of anger at injustice, watch me melt. On the evening of November 8, 2016, as commentators on CNN […]
Dann Hailey thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail this year, starting northbound from the approach trail on March 27 and summiting Katahdin on October 6. He is an Arizona native who left an 80-hour-a-week job working in a warehouse after hearing about the AT. He announced his intention to do a thru-hike – barefoot.
Farmersville, Texas, lies about 35 miles northeast of Dallas — a few hours from my home in Houston. So when I read that the city council had scheduled a special town hall meeting to address opposition to a Muslim cemetery, I decided to take a road trip to attend the meeting.
