2 years ago on this day:

I started an incredible journey. I'm now 3 days away from beginning another one. HOW LUCKY AM I?!

A thoroughly necessary indulgence.

Yesterday I whined a little bit about the challenges and monotony of hiker food while leaving out the most important issue that I struggled with: nutrition. On my last hike, I started off very diligently attempting to eat dehydrated meals and dried fruit and protein powder and by the last 500 miles I was consuming nothing but junk food like Doritos and candy. It was a terrible diet and it was reflected in my daily exhaustion. I met a hiker in New England who I had blown past on my very first day of hiking in Georgia but hadn't seen since, and his exact words upon greeting me were "What happened? You used to be fast."

A balanced diet with healthy ingredients while hiking is incredibly difficult to maintain. You want food that is convenient to carry and eat, and often the options are limited. At many grocery stores the best you can do is a Nutri-Grain or Clifbar, and let's be honest, that isn't all that nutritious or appealing... which is why I am so excited that Raw Revolution has agreed to supply me with some of their product. Sprouted flax seeds and organic ingredients: these are a few of my favorite things... and when they come in the form of a raspberry chocolate bar well, things just don't get much better! This is a company that definitely knows the way to my heart!

I'm much more excited about my mail drops now. You can buy Raw Revolution products online and check them out on facebook. I'm looking forward to tasting all of their varieties soon, especially the organic greens superfood bars. Happy Friday! I have just days to get my act together before I fly to San Diego and hit the trail. I'm getting incredibly overwhelmed with excitement.

On mail drops:

I gave up on my mail drops with my departure for California looming mere days away. I hastily slapped down the lid on the largest of the boxes and walked away from the mess littering my parents dining room. There were good intentions involved with these mail drops. Great intentions, really. Visions of hemp hearts and 8 grain breakfast cereal and wholesome nutritious meals had danced merrily through my head until my incompetency and inability to pack and plan efficiently left me a defeated and broken woman, plagued by pouches of chia seeds, remorse and self-loathing.

 I am now going to admit something that I find slightly humiliating: I have been planning these mail drops for months now. MONTHS. For whatever unknown reason, I find it far easier to move bags of groceries from room to room than I do to finalize itineraries and determine amounts. These piles of oats and seeds and grains and berries have been moved from my car, to my room in New Hampshire, to the kitchen in New Hampshire, back into my car, to my room, back into the kitchen, in my car again to Massachusetts, to my sister's bedroom and finally to my parent's dining room and sun room, where they now remain, scattered throughout my parent's house in piles that are directly proportionate to the amount of despair I felt when attempting to divvy them up at the time. This is the albatross round my neck. Procrastination and packages. I couldn't even sleep in a bed last night, because it was covered in mail drop food. I have tried over and over to figure what exactly makes such a straight-forward task so challenging for me, but none of my answers are really adequate.

Yeah... that's a bed under there.

It is partially the knowledge that each ziplock bag full of sickly sweet vanilla protein powder will soon meld its nauseating fragrance with that of pungent dehydrated beans until it overpowers the taste of every other item in my box, partially just sheer unyielding procrastination, and partly the pressure-cooker of emotions that I submerge myself in every time I return home to my parents that is causing me to flail in a morass of unresolved planning and unpacked dry goods. Both hikes I imagined mail drops proceeding with good intentions and methodical ease and instead found myself overwhelmed with frustration and franticness at the last minute. I'm not a precise and methodical person. This sort of planning is not my strong suit. And yet somehow I find myself drawn to it, attracted like a moth to flame by the promise of order and preparation, which then inevitably turns to complete chaos.

On the brighter side of things: at least this hike I'm not attempting to pack up and move out of an entire house in one day.

Food for thought.

One of my most favorite things to do is to go to a farmer's market; something that is not always achievable when living in a tent or out of a backpack. My compromise this past summer when I was in the woods for long stretches of time was to carry lots of produce and upgrade my approach to backpacking meals.

Fried polenta cakes, sauteed vegetables, veggie burgers, stir-frys, and a nice big pot in order to cook pasta with the correct amount of water so it wouldn't turn into starchy mush -  I had multiple pots and pans, which basically means that I was living the dream, people. Cans of chickpeas, pounds of yogurt... all kinds of ridiculous things that were obscenely heavy were made tolerable due to the low mileage to my destination. It was ten days of food (really heavy food) but I only had to grin and bear it and hike for less than three miles. I'm pretty reluctant to go back to my thru-hiker ways, which consisted of many dinners of cereal and instant milk and a lot of couscous, instant mashed potatoes and dehydrated beans. All of which are easy and light, but boring.

I could have opted to dehydrate meals but found in the past that they tend to taste stale and boring after a while unless you mask it with powdered cheese and hot sauce. I get tired of this very quickly. Plus it would have been a lot of work. So now I'm faced with the limitations of a very small cook pot and a very basic alcohol stove in addition to the challenges of monotonous food. Goodbye, frying pan and propane burners... it was nice while it lasted.

My biggest problem is that I like variety and in order to satisfy that my food bag becomes drastically heavier. I'm not a hiker who can eat ramen every day, as much as I'd like to be. Right now I'm contemplating carrying honey, butter, jam, and even balsamic vinegar (I'm going overboard, I know). I'll definitely have apples, oranges and avocados as treats and am going to use salad bars in grocery stores to my advantage much more than I did last hike. I didn't carry a knife on the Appalachian Trail but this time I've caught myself thinking I could do a lot more with veggies if I had a small knife and one of those really light, flimsy cutting boards.

Is this crazy? You tell me. I've been struggling with figuring out what are unnecessary indulgences for this hike for quite some time now! (You'd think I'd have this part all figured out after the first hike, but it just means that I'm sick of deprivation and I haven't even started hiking yet!)

Reasons why.

Although generally they are very supportive, one of my good friends was incredulous when she heard that I had decided to hike the PCT. "Why?" She asked. "You were miserable on the last hike. You hated it!" This was a logical conclusion for her to make since I tended to make phone calls to her when I was extraordinarily bored and/or miserable. There was a monumental struggle with ennui on the Appalachian Trail and I'm curious to see how I cope with it on my second attempt at a long distance hike.

I should call friends and family more often when the amazing aspects of hiking occur so that I can convey the reasons why I feel this love and longing towards hiking... but when you're in the woods you don't usually want to whip out your phone at these moments.

So for those of you to whom I perpetually complained about boredom and filth here is an apology and just a few of many moments that I should really should have shared, instead of complaining for the umpteenth time that I smelled bad. I can't wait to discover the many reasons why the Pacific Crest Trail will be far more wonderful than it is terrible. These pictures only convey the smallest fraction of the joy and freedom you get to experience while living life on a long distance trail.

Dressing up.

"You, said my colleague, are really girly."

This was a pronouncement issued in a tone that allowed for no arguing. A tone that almost sounded accusatory, as if girliness was something I should apologize for. Now, bear in mind that my job at this time issued an axe to each of us during training. We got down on our hands and knees in mud and hugged 200 pound rocks, straining to move them with our entire body. We quite literally shoveled shit. I shaved my legs only once that summer (and only to the knees). I went ten days at a time without showering. Crocs and Carhartts were standard attire. I felt slightly insulted when he informed me of my girliness... and yet I can't argue with that statement.

I wore dresses on my days off. I was caught wearing makeup once (I was with my girlfriends in an urban location and then forgot to wash it off!) to the astonishment of another co-worker. And I'll admit it, the crocs I wore at my tentsite (a shoe I once swore I'd never wear) were an especially feminine style. Don't judge me too harshly.

For over five months on the Appalachian Trail I didn't even have a second pair of shoes. I walked all day in a pair of trail runners; if I wanted a change of pace in town or in camp I let the laces hang untied or I walked around barefoot. I had a warm jacket. A rain coat. A pair of spandex tights for cold days and laundry days. A pair of shorts. A tank top. A long sleeve shirt. Two pairs of socks and a single pair of underwear. That was my wardrobe in its entirety: nine articles of clothing. I was starved for variety; I daydreamed about wearing jeans and a cotton t-shirt.

I'm about to embrace the pared-down hiker wardrobe again but this time as I stared at my closet, attempting to scrounge up a hiking wardrobe while spending as little money as possible I had a sudden epiphany in the form of a peacock blue cotton dress. 4.1 breezy ounces of girliness. Worth it.

10 signs that you are on the verge of hiking a long distance trail (or losing your mind).

 Couscous, TVP, dehydrated veggies, cheddar cheese & hot sauce... tastes good now; ask me how I feel about it in a month.


1. You wonder how much everything weighs. EVERYTHING.

2. The thought of eating oatmeal is enough to reduce you to near tears because you foolishly decided to mail yourself ten packages containing oatmeal, despite knowing better than that. Ditto for black beans, refried beans, and hummus... only your despair is even more profound at these items because they are dehydrated and thus even more revolting.

3. You spend whole blocks of time lost in thought trying to convince yourself that really, a shake consisting of protein powder, instant pudding, and dried milk is going to be delicious and vital to the success of your hike (when in reality the thought of vanilla protein powder makes you gag).

4. All of your to-do lists contain the words pack and gear. And there are many of them.

5. When you spend money unnecessarily you find yourself wondering how many groceries it could have bought you while hiking.

6. You find yourself obsessively researching crocs and other lightweight camp shoes at midnight instead of sleeping. And you don't even normally carry camp shoes. When you've exhausted the possibilities of camp shoes, you move on to other matters of vital importance, like finding the perfect sports bra.

7. You try on the overpriced organic mineral sunscreen you just bought, realize that it is the consistency of tar and the equivalent of white blackface (whiteface?) and start laughing hysterically by yourself in your room while covered in sunscreen.

8. You travel for a weekend away and find yourself wishing you had packed your digital scale.

9. Calories are being obsessively counted... not with the intention of cutting back like most people, but instead with the goal of doubling the average consumed.

10. You find yourself eating dehydrated hiking meals prepared in your real kitchen with real utensils and once again, can't stop laughing... both at the foolishness of preparing this junk like an actual meal and consuming something you'll be disgusted by and utterly sick of in just a few short weeks, and out of sheer, overwhelming excitement that this is actually happening. Again!

I am truly looking forward to hiking... filth, disgusting meals, deprivation and all. Here's hoping you'll stick around and experience this in all its hobo glory with me.

My nemesis... dehydrated black beans. I had a moment of weakness in the bulk bin aisle at the grocery store when confronted with a sale.

Becca Stadtlander

I know, I know. My inconsistency in posting has been off the charts lately. (Well, it hasn't been that bad but for those of you used to a post per day I apologize!) My mind has been spinning in futile circles lately; yesterday I tried to take a ten minute shower and ended up staring blankly at the walls for over forty minutes while I reiterated itineraries and mail drops and unfinished tasks in my head. It was completely and utterly useless. The Pacific Crest Trail has taken over my life, and I'm not even hiking yet.

Moving on to brighter things: Becca Stadtlander creates the most lovely illustrations and is yet another artist I kind of want to be.You can tell that nature makes her happy, and that makes me happy!

See you tomorrow. I promise.

Zero days.

Every day on a long distance hike is defined by mileage. A zero day is a pause from the normal routine of walking. Ostensibly these days are when you relax; instead usually you wind up cramming a large amount of errands into a small time frame.

Let's consider my lapses in posting last week zero days. I'm trying to fit so many things into small slots of time: socialization, productivity, creativity, and decompression from a work environment that doesn't just follow me home, it is my home. Lately I haven't feel like taking photos, or talking about art, or hiking, or really much about anything. I did however come to the conclusion that there are not enough hours in the day when you are inwardly panicking over an imminent thru-hike.

Panic is a misleading word, though. This is more like a nagging hangnail of insecurity that I can't resist picking at. I'm not really sure why I feel this way when I've already walked hundreds of miles before. But I do. This has been going on for days now. I'm going to try my best to clear the lingering cloud of doom and stress off of me today. Because look at what lies in my future: incredible things.

Photo of Lyman Glacier and tamarack trees by Marshmallow.

Phases of long distance hiking prep.

I tend to go through several stages when planning a large adventure. The first step is announcing my plans to my friends and family. This is done well in advance, less out of excitement and more out of a desire to appall them. However at this point they tend to handle my pronouncements disappointingly well. Once my loved ones have been made aware of my plans and have hardly blinked a collective eye I move on to preparation.

Embarrassingly enough, the bulk of my time and effort is spent on idle uselessness rather than actual preparation; apparently my brain enjoys fixating on the perfect hiking outfit and weighing gear but excitement and tangible preparation fails to really make an appearance. I can agonize for hours over the theoretical inclusion of a dress to wear on days off from hiking. I've weighed my gear three times now. I'm not proud of this, but it's true.

And so between obsessive list making and agonizing over what to wear several months sneak by unnoticed and we then enter what I like to call the "Oh shit." phase. This is when I realize that I have less than two months left to get physically and mentally in shape for this hike. I become aware of all the mundane tasks I have been postponing: planning where to mail myself food, obtaining supplies, selling gear in order to afford a new backpack, figuring out the logistics of getting myself to a trailhead located on the opposite side of the country and most importantly, I start to panic about not being in shape, about my various joints and tendons crapping out on me; before I have even completed my preparation for the hike I begin visualizing its imminent failure.

I am panicking quietly at least; I just ignore the overwhelming stack of 400+ double-sided map pages sitting on my floor and I guzzle herbal teas like it's my job. I'm nursing a recurring knee injury brought on by winter hiking abuse. It's mildly stressful, to say the least. But at least the herbs with anti-inflammatory properties don't taste that bad.

I'm not going to lie: occasionally the pile of maps can longer be ignored and the words "Oh shit." really do reverberate through my mind. And when that happens rather than do something productive like finalize my mail drops instead I break out the scale again and make another list. Nothing like a little procrastination to soothe the nerves!

Hiking Priorities.

Check it out. I am the proud owner of a sweet vintage National Geographic book from the seventies about the Pacific Crest Trail.

It documents a time and a place where men were men... and wore tight short denim shorts while hiking to prove it.

Let me give you a little peek into my thoughts as I flipped through pages, which weren't about how excited I am to hike or the continuities and disparities between a hike then and a hike now. Instead my line of thinking was far more profound and went something along the lines of: Please let there be lots of men in sassy short jorts on the PCT.  Please, please, PLEASE. Barring that, I will settle for sassy short shorts.

...That's right. I'm not kidding, either.

Procrastination. It's occasionally delicious.

Mom, plan on making these cookies to mail to me on the trail. Sea salt & demerara sugar encrusted chocolate cookies (I overdosed on the sea salt a little, but that was ok!). Recipe via Orangette (I couldn't find a direct link, but it was a fairly recent post).

I have a million things I should be doing, but instead for the past two months all I have consistently been productive at is baking. There are worse things to waste time with, I suppose.

Meet Moss.

Moss is... me.

I have an entire set of friends who know me solely as Moss. A soft plant classified as Bryophyta. A single name, occasionally altered to Mossy Pants or Moss the Boss. This is not a delusion of grandeur or me trying to be a more earthy crunchy version of Prince. When you hike the Appalachian Trail you earn a trail name (usually inadvertently). Mine was given to me by two friends who were unusually kind in bestowing a moniker. There are far worse things I could be called (trust me)!

I'm telling you this because I am about to revert back to being Moss again. It's good being called it. It envelopes me back in that strange/comforting/stifling/freeing/simple world of long distance hiking. In approximately two months I'll be walking from the border of Mexico to Canada. I'll be surrounded by people who don't need a last name and all have (mostly) equally foolish nicknames and who will be able to identify me as a long distance hiker instantly by three things: my pack, my filth... and of course, by my name.

I let go of my thru-hike identity when I stopped long distance hiking. When I became a caretaker, I didn't see the need to resurrect it. I was no longer one of them. I wasn't in the thru-hiker club anymore. And in fact, I actually enjoyed being outside it. But it feels like it's time again.

There's a lot of different ways to look at my decision to return to this sub-culture. Right now though, all I'm going to do is introduce myself and tell you that in two months you can call me Moss, because in two months I'll begin hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

With every day that goes by I feel more ready for it