I ran alone. No sound of planes. No sound of automobiles. No sound of people. Just footfalls and the rhythm of my breathing–heavy breathing, at this point. I felt tired and my left quad was starting to complain. With the finish line only a few miles away, I ran through more deep washes, dodged cactus, hand-scrambled up steep slopes, kept a strong pace down a long stretch of dirt road, tiptoed across a narrow wooden footbridge, and slogged through more deep sand. Naturally, the final approach to the finish line required a crawl up the sandy face of a bluff. How appropriate.
Travel Starts in Our Backyard
The travel restrictions of a global pandemic taught me something about myself. My voracious appetite for travel wasn’t just about leaving or escaping. It was, first and foremost, about discovery–discovering new worlds. And that discovery started locally, in my back yard.
Chasing Life: Trail running in Santa Barbara, California
The day started with a trail run through shadowed canyons and groves of ancient oaks. It ended with a bottle of cava, hand-carried from Spain and uncorked on a sunset-lit beach that looked […]
Chasing Muse: Finding the “Wild, Silky Part of Ourselves”
People pay good money to chairlift up a mountain in civilized fashion and then ski down for pleasure. I just paid to snowshoe straight up 2000 feet in single-digit temperatures to brave […]