“My feet look like Voldermort’s frail white body under the bench at Kings Cross.”
I’ve had every attitude toward trail journaling over the past half decade. When I began hiking daily during the early-Covid era, I had a journal where I recorded every morning hike, even the shortest and most mundane. Id write the loop we’d done in the Fells, the weather, and some brief anecdote, or my emotion(s), or what I had listened to in my headphones. I guess it felt like I needed evidence that I actually WAS doing it—that I was getting out there day after day, re-building the habit, becoming ‘A Hiker’™️.
When that pressure dropped away, I journaled less. I reduced my ‘collecting’, in written-form, to big hikes. Goal hikes, new Long Trail mileage as I geared up for my thru hike, and then new AT trips in my post-LT era. I wouldn’t journal out on the trail, but would write what I could remember when I got home…when I remembered.
To help jog my memory, I started capturing little snippets on my phone’s Notes app. As I got more active on Twitter, those became adventure tweet threads, and the threads became my journal. I’ve now lost some of that to my dusty Twitter archive, downloaded to a zip folder and saved away on some hard drive. Now, I record short videos while on trail, to capture the story and help jog my memory afterwards. This really ramped up on ITI 2024 when there wasn’t time or mitten dexterity to stop and write out snippets via fingers. I share the videos sometimes, either via YouTube or ephemeral Instagram Stories which disappear after 24 hours but let my friends and family keep up with the fun.
I don’t regret my drop-off from capturing my adventures, what I lost in digital history when Twitter morphed into the evil X. I’m not a true author at heart, in that I don’t feel I have some story, some unique perspective stuck inside me, burning to get out. Mostly, I just enjoyed sharing the beautiful places with the folks who were interested to see them. I still do that when I can, in ways that I can, without any commitment to regular posting, to ‘building my audience’, as it were.
The clear apex of my trail journaling arc was my 2021 Long Trail thru hike. For the 19 days and 3 hours that my sister, Wylie and I tackled those 273 miles across Vermont, I religiously captured each day’s conquests. Our mileage. Our shelter stay locations. The weather, our moods, funny things that happened, engaging characters we met on trail. My journal is a faithful account, mixed with some of my own musings, my self-reflections.
My sister’s?
My sister’s Long Trail journal is a fucking work of art.
The Question of Style, and of Birth Order
Though I now consider myself to have two sisters (a story too long for blog posts), I am technically the third of four daughters. I have classic third child tendencies and traits—a bit lost in the shuffle growing up, I’ve always been the obedient one, the high performer (but not as high as the first, don’t wanna cause any drama!), the ‘yeah, im good’ go with-the-flow one. The “I think I’ll be an architect” one, who then proceeds to get back-to-back architecture degrees, starts working for a world-famous architect before she’d even walked at Graduation, and finished her seven licensing exams within 8 months. Make the plan, follow the plan, succeed at the plan, stick to the mutherfucking plan. My training mantra is “Discipline > Motivation.” I’m a try-hard, a total nerd, and at 40 years young, I have leaned into that identity with full comfort.
My sister (Shelt), was the youngest child. Theatrical in nature essentially from birth, Shelt is the “yeah, I gave away basically everything I owned and am moving across the country…again” one. The “did I tell you we got a snake?” one. The “yeah, I’m working under the table as a bartender in [undisclosed coastal town] but my boss says that if I can build my own clientele, he’ll give me health insurance!” one. [Spoiler alert: he didn’t.] The one who got her drivers license and had absolutely no idea how to get anywhere in our hometown, including her High School, because it hadn’t ever occurred to her that she was supposed to pay attention in the car. Her now-husband had to teach her, in her 20s, the correct way to hold a fork when cutting a sirloin.
She also successfully paid the balance of her way through art school, got a top MFA placement, and scrapped her way through the cutthroat New York art handling world. She rose up to where she now commands a team of six at a top Art Museum, traveling the world to install irreplaceable works of art from Belgium to Taiwan. Ask her sometime about her covert mission to Martha’s Vineyard (we’re not allowed to put it in writing but if we were we’d have half the script and be calling Nicholas Cage for the next National Treasure film). My childhood best friend’s take: “I am glad Shelt is doing so well…but, knowing her, I have absolutely no idea how she survives day-to-day.”
When, on one of our preparatory facetimes, I shared that my carefully curated packing list included a trail journal and pen, her face lit up. “Oh, we should bring a journal? Cool.” When I saw hers featured unlined pages, I was skeptical. When she proceeded to pull out a WATERCOLOR KIT, I was mystified. When I saw the first pages, I laughed my ass off. Her journal captures things that my pages of careful script couldn’t hope to convey—from the soul-crushing feeling (quickly followed by the fortitude that comes from having no other option) at the base of yet another climb, how deliciously adorable Wylie looked when he curled up for some trail rest.
If you read my trail journal, you’d have a clear understanding of the logistics of our hike, the details. But, as is true throughout much of life, you need to meet the sister to get the full, richer picture.
Instead of offering that full picture, for your confusion and delight, here is our nearly three-week, 273 mile, 66,000ft of climb hike that traversed the length of Vermont from Canada to Massachusetts, as captured exclusively by my baby sis.
Enjoy.
The TypeTwoFun Club 
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