Category: Other Navel-Gazing

Alpine starts, bear-baiting, & cowboy coffee: the ABCs of climbing (and living) disaster-style

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Kids at work ask me all the time where I live. I always point at my little Kelty two-man tent, and they almost never believe me.

“No way, Miss!” they exclaim in a tone of mixed disbelief and curiosity. I must seem almost crazy enough for it to be true. The tents we set up for kids will sleep ten in a pinch; my tiny two-man (which is for one person, really) looks to them far too small to sleep even one adult human. Often, a kid will ask if it’s a tent for dogs. They want to know if I have a TV in there.

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Lucky Dog: An Ode to the World’s Best Labradork

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“Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”

—Baz Luhrmann

Things took a turn for the worse for me on my last day on the Last Frontier. My beloved black lab, Lucky, was hit by a car and killed instantly just hours before we were supposed to head home, and as you can probably imagine, it hit me pretty hard.

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There’s No Place Like Home: My (Temporary) Retreat from the Land of Odds

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I am the only child of doting parents who reacted with the same enthusiasm to my less-than-stellar high school track performances—“But you didn’t get lapped this time!” they’d exclaim, “You’re much faster than the girl with the knee brace!”—as they might if I became an astrophysicist, and if you asked them, they’d probably tell you I’m smart enough for that, too. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that I didn’t really experience feelings of doubt about my station in life until the summer before I moved to Alaska.

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On couples’ yoga, and other things that shouldn’t exist.

Emma3 Comments

Several Valentine’s Days ago, I showed up to my usual Monday night yoga class because I had nothing better to do. I had recently been unceremoniously dumped, all my roommates had dates, and the scheduling gods at my place of employment had seen fit to grant me the night off on the one holiday I’d rather have worked.

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2013: A year for not fucking around.

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My 2013 was off to a bit of a rough start. New Year’s Eves past have seen me serving cocktails to those having way more fun than me, and damned if I wasn’t going to be on the other side of the bar this year.

…I spent the majority of January 1 in the fetal position on my couch, nursing a hangover of epic proportions and shaking a proverbial fist at my whiskey-shooting self. My misery was compounded by the fact that I completely deserved it. I hoped death would take me swiftly.

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