One Stupid Decision

What I'm Grateful For This Year I'll try not to get too cheesy The holiday season is here. As I write this, I've just arrived back in Chicago after spending Thanksgiving in Kansas City with my dad's extended family. In all effects, the 3-month cross-country road trip is finished. I've gone through a lot this year—some good, some not-so-good—but I've tried to reframe my mindset to savor the good and take the not-so-good in stride. Yosemite National Park I've been (relatively) open about my mental health on this blog in the past , but one practice I've found particularly helpful has been gratitude. I've kept 'gratitude entries' in my journal, in which I literally just list a bunch of stuff that I'm grateful for. It ranges from big things, like 'family support', to little/silly things, like 'whoever invented hammocks'. And to be honest, these entries are relatively infrequent—mostly when I'm bored or in a writing mood but...

PNW: Embracing the Wet Highlights from a turbulent 3 weeks in the Pacific Northwest Black bear at Glacier NP Let's turn back the clocks to mid-Septemer. I was 3 weeks into this great adventure, coming off an almost euophoric high of Grand Teton and Yellowstone , which blew away all my expectations. I had been catapulted into a world I’d had little exposure to prior; pristine lakes & rivers, stunning mountain ranges, and throngs of wildlife in quantities that I thought only existed in the 1600s.  And I was exhausted. The aforementioned destinations had so much to see, and I strained myself to keep the pace I envisioned to get the most out of my time. It was inevitable that I had a bit of a crash. The 3 days I spent at Glacier National Park, while delivering some of the most gorgeous scenery yet, failed to capture the elation of the previous week-plus. Mostly, I just didn’t have the energy to fully experience the park. Nevertheless, I had a good time—I even saw a black bear up c...