Previously published in the Dandelion Magazine Winter 2003
I’m well into my thirties and happily single. I’ll probably never have children, which, unlike a lot of people my age, doesn’t bother me.
There are those who feel the urge to make other little people, and then there’s me. If the survival of our species [...]

A version of this essay closed “Backpacker” magazine’s “2001 Gear Guide”
The only time adults seem to have casual conversations about bodily functions is when we are raising toddlers or in the backcountry. I think there is something about both that reflects a more natural order of things; the cosmos’s way of reminding us that [...]

We stood at the bottom of one of the largest college football stadiums on the east coast and stared at an expanse of stairs so high that the last step looked like a little brick in space. She smiled and took off running. My thumb hit the play button on my iPod and, [...]

Sniff, sniff. I cracked open one eye. Sniff (pause), sniff, I couldn’t believe what I was smelling: not in the backcountry, not mothballs! Musty tents, sweaty socks, and dirt are the smells of backpacking; mothballs are the smells of my grandmother’s house. They were as misplaced in Denali as the steel mills [...]