Note: Opinions outlined here are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer. Last October, I was the only woman on a small trail crew comprised of backcountry campsite caretakers, our rover, and our field coordinator. I literally thought nothing of it; zero part of me felt a need to acknowledge this … More Caretaking While Female
Traditionally my blog has been a personal outlet and portfolio of writing on various topics, adventures, and concerns, with dabblings in photography and videoblogging. Writing in conjunction with multi-media projects has been a passion of mine since I was very, very young—my child’s resume would have boasted a regularly “published” snail-mail newsletter called “Quinn’s World,” … More GoFundMe: “Travel Blog Success”
Home, noun. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household. Home is elusive. Home is where the heart is. My heart is wedged between my left and right lungs enclosed by its pericardial sac. Is that my home? The heart beats and flutters and palpitates … More Home is where the potato is
Potato beetles wear black-and-yellow-striped suits and orange black-polka-dotted masks as if dressed to play the part of the circus clown. When you pop them in between your fingers, they snap-crackle-pop, bursting with bright orange goo, their deaths staining the dirt encrusted doodles of your hands. Leptinotarsa decemlineata lays neon-orange eggs on the under-leaves of our … More Farm Life: A Brief Musing on Life, Death, and Potato Beetles
Thursday morning, approximately seven minutes after my vehicle failed its annual inspection, it decided to break down on me at the trailhead to 19 Mile Brook. As a result, Friday morning found me hiking north on route 16, with my Kelty on, my snowshoes dangling, my microspikes jingling, and my thumb out. No one was … More When you fail at saving the world and decide to eat Sour Patch Kids instead
“Every woman likes to have her hair not only daintily and becomingly arranged, but soft and glossy in appearance and texture…,” claims an article published in the New York Times in 1908, titled “How to Shampoo the Hair” (The History of Shampoo.) This article also apparently recommended shampooing to be “accomplished” about once per month, … More Simplify: Hide Nor Hair of the ‘Poo
New Year’s resolutions haven’t exactly been a thing for me in a long time. Committing to long-term, distant and uncertain end-points has traditionally made me insurmountably uncomfortable, and the times when I did decide to gather my courage and pledge myself to some New-Years-hype-induced agenda, it either had to be such an abstract goal that … More Simplifying in 2016
Boiled apples and baby carrots enrobed in rich, honey-drizzled peanut butter sauce & speckled with almonds. While caretaking at the Guyot campsite in the White Mountains this past summer, I had the opportunity to get a little creative with my menu. Being a gluten-free vegetarian with a terrible memory, I decided to make a point … More Backcountry Gourmet: Apples & Peanut Butter Sauce
…but do I not live for the thrill of transition? Do I not secretly relish the crisis of adventure, the novelty of the foreign and bizarre, the suspense of impending departure—the jittery anticipation of arrival and the sweet, diverse indulgences that all the world has to offer?
Happy Thanksgiving, friends! So, we are down to the final stretch of Nanowrimo and I do apologize: my intentions were, of course, to post much more frequently than I have been, and I’m super grateful to the 45+ people who contributed material to be showcased in my next video blog. I had one reader … More NaNoWriMo: Word Sprinting to the Finish Line
