Yesterday was a hard day. Again. Sorry for the redundancy. The capture didn’t work, so I’ll use this morning’s energy to try and get some of it down.

Titles rolling through my head: Land of the Extreme. The People Too. Back of the Pack. Lone Wolf. Some themes that have been going on in my head all week.

This is certainly a group of extreme people. I love the stories, the tracks, the adventures. One guy from Houston tells me he just did Mount Whitney, then Kilimanjaro, and the month after, base camp at Everest. I had to ask: is this a milestone thing for you? He smiled and said yes. His wife looked at him during COVID and said ‘so what are YOU going to do?’ He came up with fifty things to do before he turned fifty. He had 39 months total. I love this crew.

As for back of the pack: I am no stranger to sweepers. The NYC Marathon once gave me a full police escort. But yesterday when I spotted them coming, it certainly made me skedaddle. With twenty people already dropped out, those behind me are no longer behind me, and I guess I get to hold the banner of last one into camp. It is no less of a hurrah when I arrive. And many look to me and ask: how do I survive for so long on my feet? I am envious of their speed and less time out there, but I love the back-and-forth and respect about what makes us who we are.

Athlete I am not. But I am always hungry for more energy, more life force. And that means physical challenges, which often bring me enormous joy.

I’m really enjoying listening to Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights. He talks about how, when he found the rush of success, he needed to go on a solo journey. Not to be lonely, but to be alone. To reconnect with himself. To find gravity again. I guess that’s what happened with me in Patagonia. I didn’t realize I needed it. And here I am again, with a chance to reconnect, to hear the silence, and reckon with the voices in my head.

Mind and body have been having a lot of discussions this week. The body can re-calibrate in ways that genuinely amaze me. My first night sleeping, my body did not bend. It felt every rock and eggshell under the sleeping pad. As the nights go on, my body just starts to melt. A lot of it has to do with being so damn tired. And in the morning, after a couple of hours of bad sleep, everyone looks like zombies. And then somehow, we are all ready to go again. Me included. I am thankful for this body. Thankful it can bounce back.

And let us not forget about the fire ants. Those motherfuckers. I took a break on the trail and came back to find them in my sock and in my pants. Would that hurt. It did. But the mosquitoes, the fire ants, the flies. They are the price of admission for something this beautiful.

Somewhere in the long miles today I started singing on the path. I guess it’s kind of reconnecting with myself. Accepting it. Embracing it. Having some fun.