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 […]
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.
Adama Bah’s story begins at Fajr time on March 24, 2005.
That morning, agents from the FBI, the New York Police Department and immigration authorities knocked on the door of her family’s apartment in Harlem. Adama was 16, the oldest of five children of Guinean immigrants.
I try to stay around the doors. That way I know I won’t miss them. Although I spend much of my time alarmed by bugs and leaves, I do crave affection and I try to get it every day. So I wait near the doors.
Join me on the trail, both metaphorical and literal, as I blaze a way through my next phase of life, as a writer, as an activist, as a person of faith, as a traveler, and whatever else I prove to be.
In the living room of the house in which I grew up there was a wood-burning fireplace surrounded by white bricks. Every December it was the center of all things Christmas. The armchair that stood year-round to the right of the fireplace was moved to make room for the Christmas tree, usually a six-footer with the pine aroma of the holiday.
On a visit to the Houston Holocaust Museum I learned that had I lived in Nazi-ruled Germany I would have been classified as a “first-degree mischling.”
