Trail Journal: Eastern Continental Trail 2018 Days 0–7 (1/15–1/22)
Because I am doing this so publicly, I am posting on a delay in order to give myself time to make minor edits and also to protect my exact location at any given time. Each of these entries were posted in real time to my personal facebook page or were typed or handwritten as a personal note. My attempt here is to capture the immediacy as much as possible. For more pictures from the trail, please follow us on instagram and twitter @otherlivesorg.
One more note: I also have been terrified to post this and was dragging my feet because of it. As odd as it may sound, this feels way more vulnerable than publishing about suicidal ideation after the fact.
(The Medium app has also veen giving me a lot of trouble, so that’s been another factor. Anyway, enough with the preamble…)
Day -1 — JANUARY 14, 2018 (Tampa)
On my 33rd birthday, my friend Dora gave me a stick n’ poke at her house. It was planned sober and executed drunk. I wrote the words in sharpie, she stuck me, and it ended up being one of the best nights of my life.
Yesterday, four and a half years later, my oldest best friend and tattoo artist, Telly, helped me finish the piece by using a 9 round and intentionally watered down ink with one quick pass over my handwriting.
I leave for Key West tomorrow at 5:30am, and on Tuesday morning I will start at mile 0.0 and begin to experience life at 3.1 miles per hour full time.
These legs are about to get tan.
No time to be afraid. Last pic for scale.
Day 0 — JANUARY 15, 2018 (Key West)
8:17am: I literally had to run to catch the ferry, but I made it.
6:09pm: This is the line a few minutes ago to take your picture with the Southernmost Point buoy. There is no one in charge. People are just self-organizing. Still, it will look better at 5:30 tomorrow morning.
The second picture is the sunset through the wrought iron fence right behind it.
I decided to stay in a hostel tonight (rather than attempt to stealth camp on the island) because I got serious word that the cops are very aggressive here. They gave me a bottom bunk right near the door.
I walked about 5 miles today around KW. Don’t tell anyone, but I am going to try for a 38 mile day tomorrow. We’ll see what happens. (Spoiler alert: lol)
DAY 1 — JANUARY 16, 2018 (Key West to Sugarloaf Key)
Started at mile 0.0 just before 8am. I feel like I look anxious in this pic. Two years of thinking about it, seven months of focused preparation, and a lot of help from y’all brought me to this exact point.
3:40pm: Somewhere around mile 16. No shade all day except for the shade I carry in my heart for petty things all the time.
I lucked into meeting some stealth camping travelers on a beach down a short side trail this morning and I got re-confirmation early on that the reason I’m out here is not for the miles but for what you do on them.
I got hot spots (pre-blisters) around mile 5 and my feet hurt badly, but I get to sing at the top of my lungs out here. The pain and relief come in waves.
It’s 3:40 and I still don’t know where I am sleeping tonight and I haven’t been this happy in a long time.
The owner of a coffee roaster here in Saddlebunch Key gave me a hat that is camo as fuck. He said “I know you don’t need another thing in your pack,” but I put it on right away. His company, Baby’s Coffee, has been one of the sponsors of the AIDS advocacy bike ride from Miami to Key West every year since its inception. He also said that everyone who works here is either a vet or from a military family. Support them if you are ever down here. They make a damn fine espresso. Damn this dude had some amazing words of support.
5:26pm: I just saw one of the fabled iguanas on a branch in these mangroves, but when I went to take a pic, he saw me, got spooked, and belly flopped into the water with absolutely zero grace. Motherfucker was bright orange. YOU HAD ONE JOB, IGUANA. I am still laughing.
(I know it’s chameleons that change colors, but I was tired and excited. Laugh with me anyway, you bastards. I am intentionally leaving my errors up here.)
6:57pm: Mile 20. Reality setting in. Feet feel like two pieces of wood that somehow found the ability to scream. Still don’t yet know where I am sleeping.
(I recorded a facebook live video during this that may become available elsewhere later.)
9:06pm: A new friend I met online through the Florida Trail hiking community pointed me to an abandoned road where I can reasonably get away with stealth camping for the night, so I am here until pre-dawn, with my alarm set for 5:30.
The picture came out badly, but my bivy sack on the ground.
The only thing I am scared of right now is dogs, so I side-shuffle peed the entire perimeter of my nest because I heard once that it will keep mammals away or some shit.
…..
As I was typing that, I heard a rustle and saw eyes reflecting back at me in the woods. When I moved, it ran, paused, and then disappeared. It was too small to be a dog and it didn’t move like one, so it’s either a curious cat or a tiny panther that requires the blood of the innocent to survive.
No clue how I am going to sleep tonight, but I am spraying myself down with bug spray because there is no way I am getting in that bivy sack and becoming an all meat burrito for that panther.
Did I mention this is my first time sleeping outside in 6 years and that I am afraid of everything except central air and merino wool?
It’s a good thing I am fucking stubborn.
Edit: WHY DOES EVERYTHING SOUND LIKE A STALKING PANTHER NOW?
DAY 2 — JANUARY 17, 2018 (Sugarloaf Key to Marathon)
8:35am: Follow up from last night: I didn’t fall asleep until after 1:00. Everything physically hurts, especially my hips and my feet and a few sunburned spots I missed. Today is going to be brutal, but I am out here because I know I have the mental fortitude piece on lock and that, within certain boundaries, the rest is just details you figure out as you go. I keep thinking that I have to be more willing to let go of who I think I am and end points and goals and all the things that constitute “identity.”
I got moving around a quarter to 8 and walked out just as a guy was beginning to walk in for his daily stroll.
“Did you go all the way to the end?”
I lied and said yeah for some reason.
“So you saw the burned out bridge?”
“Huh. I guess I didn’t go to the end. So it stops just a little ways down there?”
“Unless you’re going in the water, yeah.”
In that moment, I kicked myself for not walking further down that abandoned road last night.
He is local and a vet and he just lost his wife to cancer on 12/30. They had evacuated and she died getting treatment in Texas. He said he’s glad she never saw the devastation down here. “It used to be beautiful.”
“I’m so sorry about your wife.”
“Shit happens.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
We very briefly talked about my Pop and his death, PTSD, generational trauma, all that stuff, how he burned his military records in a fire pit before he died and how I still need to request them from the DOD.
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Shit happens.”
He nodded, we shook hands, and then both said “enjoy your walk.”
3:09pm. The Spanish Harbor Channel bridge between Big Pine Key to Scout Key. 0.9 miles of sheer terror, and then this. I’m watching two pelicans fish and this one adorable small white hanger-on of a tern just keeps following them around while they dive and gulp like “hey guys, what’s up?” Not scavenging. Just being near.
2.8 miles until I stop for the day. I have an hour and a half to get to a bus stop so I can get across the seven mile bridge before dark. Tomorrow, I’ll take the bus back and walk it because them’s my rules for this journey.
If you actually, on an emotional level, knew how hard a thing would be, would you ever even do it?
DAY 3 — JANUARY 18, 2018 (Marathon to Long Key)
12:15pm: I got hosted by Chuck, a former Florida Trail and Appalachian Trail thru hiker, last night on his boat in Marathon after a 17.5 mile day of beautiful ocean views, terrifying bridge crossings, and hobbling along on feet that will probably not stop hurting in this particular way for a few hundred miles.
I ended my day yesterday at trail mile 38.8 to catch a bus across the Seven Mile Bridge before dark. My original plan was to bus back and walk it this morning, but after seeing the road from the bus, my brain nope nope noped out of that idea with zero fucks given. (Chuck is from here and added that there are head-ons on that bridge about once a week.)
I resumed right on Chuck’s street at mile 47.5. So I skipped 8.7 miles that would have amounted to 3 straight hours of terror with zero benefit, and I feel just fine about it.
I got a late start because him and I hung out chatting and drinking coffee and smoking for a few hours before he walked with me to grab smokes and go about his day. It was really nice to meet another native Florida boy out here who truly understands why you’d do something like this and also laughs in recognition when you say “I’m actually not a liberal. I’m way scarier than that” and has a solid grip on what structural violence and white/male/cis/etc privilege are.
I ditched a tupperware bowl that was too big and heavy, got a long sleeve base layer from Chuck (it’s 54 degrees at noon here) and a Buff to keep the sun off my neck for the day, and started thinking about what other things I can ditch from my pack to lighten it up. (I am definitely carrying too much food and water at once right now.)
I feel like this is a boring catch up, but I’m just walking and the best parts of last night and this morning are really hard to capture while typing on my phone down US-1.
I am 150 miles from the southern terminus of the FT. Aiming for Islamorada tonight to stealth on a beach, then Key Largo tomorrow where there’s a chance Chuck’s cousin can put me up.
10pm. Marathon to Long Key. I made it 2.4 miles across the old Long Key bridge in the dark. There are several long bridges that have separated multi-use paths which are treasures out here, They always seem to be the old original bridges that got rehabbed rather than destroyed, and this is one of them. I was joyously alone except for a few folks fishing towards both ends and didn’t have to fear the traffic.
After I crossed, I sat down on a bench and immediately met two dudes who were walking to the bridge to night fish. They asked why I was walking and I told them the truth. Turns out, one of them (Asif) has PTSD and is an artist who is building a LARGER THAN SCALE Soviet Mig fighter jet out of PAPER. I asked why, and he said “because I’m crazy,” knowing I would get it, and laughed. He showed me videos and pics. The motherfucker has moving parts, and it’s larger than scale so that he can fit in it. (Fighter pilots are selected to be small.) We chatted for a while and made a plan for me to go see his studio and interview him in Miami on Monday before I head west toward the swamp.
(I ended up meeting with him and will write a separate piece about the experience. In short, we became very close friends right away, and his story is so powerful that I have no idea what to do with it yet. This picture below is from four days later.)
Holy shit. What a day.
Now I am on a beach just off the highway stealthing, trying to generate as little light and sound as possible.
Love you ❤ Alarm set for dawn so that I can get out of here before the world reawakens.
DAY 4 — JANUARY 19, 2018 (Long Key to Key Largo)
Awake at 4:45 shivering on 3 hours of sleep covered in light dew. I knew this would happen. Problems at home with sleep worse under severe body trauma and stress. Hump to get over. Darkest before the light. Still dark. Cried pure pain tears last night for the first time in a long time. I know some people think I don’t have to do this, and they are right. But would rather be doing this out here. Same people do not understand that home is not easier. Actually worse because stagnant like still water. Out here, must adapt. Water must flow. At home too easy to keep ignoring. Big reason for walk is to push to not avoid anymore. To make life harder because comfort is easy. It’s cold. Be flowing water, not still water. Must get meatshell moving. Must also eventually move beyond conception of meatshell and integrate and love and honor body as self. Much to unpack. Effects of violence, emotional and physical, apparent.
12pm. 11 miles in. Trail mile 80.
The bridges have become less scary. Actually, rephrase: I have become less scared of the bridges. I am aware but not afraid.
I finally bought ibuprofen. I don’t care how I look anymore. I finally got into the right rhythm with these damn trekking poles this morning (right pole with left step, left pole with right step) and it’s reflexive now.
I got REALLY lucky with the weather down here this year.
I am constantly revising and updating plans in my head.
This is paradise and hell at the same time. I need to make it another 20 so that I can pick up a resupply box by 1pm tomorrow.
I am two days away from catching a lift off trail to Miami to spend a day with a friend I only know from facebook and hopefully interview the artist with PTSD that I mentioned in my post last night.
Revise, update, left foot/right pole, right foot/left pole, revise, update, drink water, stop and take a damn picture if you want to.
I was originally planning on not going back to Tampa for 700 trail miles, but I am bumping it up so that I can handle some personal and OL administrative tasks, see my folks before they leave for a month, and make a flag for the back of my pack that says “PTSD IS REAL.” (Or something pithy and on message like that. Ideas welcome.)
I keep remembering that I am on day four of a YEAR long journey. That doesn’t mean I can dawdle unnecessarily, but it does mean that I don’t have to have an answer for everything right now.
The air is cool and salty. The water on both sides is a patchwork quilt of blues and greens.
Whatever decisions I make out here will be the correct ones. No one gets to define this but me.
6:15pm. “Embrace the suck.”
I know it's an old, old phrase, but I first heard it from a thru hiker.
Granted, this has so far been approximately 85 miles of road walking that doesn’t fit anyone’s typical conception of hiking, and I’ve got another 30 before I even set foot off of a road and walk the dikes at the eastern edge of Everglades NP.
It has been nonstop traffic noise, except for the night I was worried about critters.
I don’t think I mentioned this, but part of the reason I only got 3 hours of sleep last night was because just as I was drifting off, I heard a big truck pull over on the highway near where I was illegally camped at a hurricane damaged and closed state park. I could see the lights through the trees. Then someone got out with a flashlight and started walking in the woods toward me. My heartrate jacked up, I pulled my bag down flat, and I lay prone wondering whether I should abandon my ground sheet (too noisy to pack up), grab my pack and bivy, and skitter into the dunes. My phone was already on silent. I guessed it was just a utility worker or a scavenger looking for valuable trash amongst the debris under the cover of night, but I also thought “COP COP COP SOME RANDOM FUCKING DICKHEAD SAW ME DUCK IN AND REPORTED IT.”
Eventually, he turned a different direction and left a few minutes later. I cried some more as quietly as I could and then woke up before my alarm and got out of there well before dawn with no water left after I made a tiny cup of instant coffee.
This morning was amazing. I walked quickly and fearlessly on little food and no water for the first several miles.
I like this. I like this a lot.
I did 15 or so miles and then I started melting down in a parking lot from fatigue around 3pm today. I met some more great people, but it is really exhausting when half of them are looking at you like you have three heads. I even considered starting to lie when people ask where I am headed. When I say “Canada,” many people just have no idea what to say next. I might just say the name of a town 50 miles away and say I am training for the AT. I don’t know. I don’t really know where the advocacy piece ends and my own basic need to feel like I belong begins.
I got past the pretty parts with the ocean views and beaches and just need to make it to the Key Largo post office by 1pm tomorrow to pick up a resupply box. I am walking to another bus to boost 8 miles to get to a motel that someone dear offered to pay for.
I have blister burns on my ankles from yesterday and have been wearing tights all day to give my legs a break from the sun.
I can feel myself getting stronger, but it got scary in that parking lot for about a half hour when the fatigue-induced flashback scrambled my brain and I could barely work my phone, much less sort through motel listings and availability on a screen this small. Thank you to two people. You know who you are ❤
Next up: 14 hours of sleep behind a locked door in a room that has running water with my feet elevated on two pillows.
I’m fine. I just. This is what I signed up for. I am altering it the best I can without compromising what really matters to me. And I’m sure what really matters will change some too as I go.
DAY 5 — JANUARY 20, 2018 (Key Largo to Southern Glades Trail)
3:30pm. Key Largo to the Southern Everglades. 8 miles in for the day so far. 109 total trail miles with 20 yellow blazed for safety reasons. (Yellow blazing is when you skip miles by car.)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I AM DOING THIS AND IT FEELS AMAZING.
After a good 10 hours of sleep, soaking my feet in the motel garbage cans, and a hot shower, I feel like a new person.
Pic of progress so far, with Cuba included for scale. I will be on the mainland in a couple of hours.
A really sweet person at a visitors center thought to go get me a cup so that I could refill my water bottles since they are too tall to fit in most bathroom sinks. She said I could keep it if I wanted to, but totally understood when I declined because of the weight of it. Some people are so nice that I grow larger inside for meeting them.
I also found out that the government shutdown won’t prevent my passage through the parks.
Currently sitting on the shoulder of the road having another cup of coffee. This feels luxurious.
5:30pm. More road karaoke via facebook live because I am practicing being a more openly shameless dork. This one is in honor of me finally getting off US-1 and into park land in 2.6 miles after nearly 120 miles of walking it. Sturgill Simpson’s “Long White Line.” These lyrics are amazing and are relevant to this whole damn journey. (Some interesting stuff ended up happening here while I was recording, and I may put this video out at some point.)
6:30pm. Just walked off of US-1 toward the canal dikes that will take me to the Everglades listening to GNR’s “Estranged” loudly and the epicness of this song is perfect right now as I hit a body high where I feel like I could go forever even on swollen feet and that nothing ever actually dies but just changes. 16.5 miles for the day so far and 117.6 miles on the trail. I am sobbing hard right now from pure joy and wonder so strong I feel it everywhere. Holy shit it’s beautiful, it’s so beautiful. It’s all so beautiful.
9pm. Holy shit y’all. This is where I am right now, walking along the dike of canal C-111 toward the Everglades.
In the parking lot just before, I met a couple RVing for the night who were absolutely amazing. We talked for a couple of hours and they fed me chicken and sides, gave me tobacco and water, and are going to meet up with me again somewhere in Alabama when they head north this spring.
Wow. What a beautiful world.
I’m crying with joy again out here in the dark.
I’m so alive I can’t believe it. I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
The guitar solo from Estranged hits again.
I am going to night hike until I am ready to stop. It’s too good to stop right now.
I am alive.
Holy fuck, y’all, I am alive.
I aurvived it all and keep surviving.
I sob and keep repeating out loud:
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
DAY 6 — JANUARY 21, 2018 (Southern Glades Trail to Miami)
7am. I woke up once to pull out my quilt because I was cold, and then again because raindrops were hitting my face. I decided to just get moving, figuring I’ll nap somewhere later. Seeing the Everglades for the first time in the light, directly to the left of the path down canal C-111. I chucked a rock out and heard water. My lord, the expanse of it.
Later: My need for a nap pushed hard early. It’s 70 degrees, with a nice consistent breeze, cloudy, and- incredibly- barely any mosquitos. I don’t even have the brainpower right now to decide whether getting out my sleeping pad is worth it or not. It’s okay. It’s nice right here.
1pm. The guide misstated the mileage and the destination I was aiming for is out of reach, especially on 4 hours of bad sleep, and I am melting down so I am in survival mode again. I really need to dial in the sleep part. Looking like I am going to have to drop $150 for a high quality inflatable sleeping pad. Also, the person who said they would pick me up and take me to Miami to hang with them is not returning calls or messages. Having difficulty making decisions. I have been laying down under this tarp to escape the sun for two hours now. I am out of water and need to force myself to fill my bottles from the canal, but the embankment is steep and I am having a hard time gathering up the courage. I saw my first gator this trip just a mile or so back in the same canal.
8pm. Everglades/Florida City Part 3.
Ooooooookay.
Yesterday, my friend Lillian told me this over the phone and texted it to me so that I would remember:
“This is your life motto: no stone unturned. You think that you are a person who gives up easily, quits. But in fact, you go to great lengths to be the person you want to be and have the things that you want. You think you are an unconscious animal but you do everything on purpose.”
So what happened after I got water from the canal, decided to get off the levee, and started walking back to the nearest main road?
Well of course I met a few local guys who were on fourwheelers. They weren’t exactly sketchy, but they weren’t exactly not if you know what I mean, and they sure as shit didn’t think I was safe out there.
They gave me a bottle of gatorade and two bottles of water and I drank them on the spot. I tried to explain what I was doing out there and why, but gave up quickly. These are the type of guys who hear the first part and fill the rest in out loud whether you are still talking or not.
Their jaws dropped when I said I had just drunk treated canal water and one of the guys proceeded to tell me about the sketchy things that happen in and around this canal, including “stuff you don’t even want to know about.” I said “try me,” and he just took a drag off his black and mild and changed the subject.
This was the guy who saw the ring on my right finger and asked where my wife was. I had just gotten the words “I am divorced” out when one cut me off with “can’t stay, can’t let it go, huh.” He also seemed to assume that I was running from “bad trouble” into the woods. When his buddy said “some people take off to find themselves,” I pointed to him and then looked back at the other guy and said “That. And,” pointing back to myself, “no warrants.”
I don’t really know when it happened. I was tired and they were a little presumptuous and cold and mildly bigoted in that specific way small town locals can be when you are in their territory and they’ve watched the demographics change during the course of their lifetime, but at some point they decided I was alright except for the one hold out and the main guy said to the others “we’re gonna give the kid a ride,” so I took my hat off, tightened every strap on my pack down, hopped on, and grabbed my left wrist tightly with my right hand just above his paunch and held on for dear life at 50 mph down seven miles of dirt roads through farms and side roads without a helmet knowing I was dead on impact if this guy wasn’t as good at this as he thought he was despite his experience and I was just hoping against hope that I had played this right and that I hadn’t misjudged them and that they were taking me where they said they would and not somewhere else and I felt how alone I was out here and felt the precarious of this ridiculous shit I am doing in a way I hadn’t felt before. I had a glimmer of fear with the cabbie a few days back, but a friend of mine messaged me from out of the blue on Thursday a single line that said “Stay safe m’love, watch your drinks. I worry about your good nature” and this was the first time I felt with my whole body what the consequences might be if my good nature was wrong at the wrong time about the world being basically okay and wrong at the wrong time about my ability to navigate it and I silently chastised myself for not discreetly posting a pic of then to facebook before I left and for not making more mention of the fact that people know where I am and are expecting me.
I can’t say that I really know what it means for something to be “in your head,” but I ended up safely at this famous fruit stand they thought I should see where there is a petting zoo out back and about every kind of thing you could want.
I bummed another cigarette from the guy who’d brought me and dumped the canal water out while we chatted for a few more minutes. Now we were clapping hands goodbye and laughing and, before I walked into the place to go see about getting my bottles refilled from the tap, the suspicious one pointed toward the center of town and said “About a mile that way. Be careful down that road.”
I got my water, ate some, made a call, and walked my mile down grass shoulders with broken glass and sidewalks that run a half block at a time. For the past few hours, I have been sitting in the open courtyard of the Everglades International Hostel, the first place I don’t stick out like a sore thumb in since Key West, waiting for the arrival of a friend I met through tragedy to arrive to take me to Miami with him.
An angel of a person I also only know via fb quietly PMd me and is having the most highly recommended ultralight inflatable sleeping pad currently available sent to Miami. It will arrive on Tuesday.
No stone unturned, apparently. And that ain’t even all of it.
Landon eventually arrived, and we got to finally hug for the first time.
DAY 7 — JANUARY 22, 2018 (Miami with Landon)
11:50am. I can already feel this journey radicalizing and energizing me in new ways.
I have never been safer.
1pm. Off trail in Miami. A practical question and an update.
Does anyone have a tip on a good long sleeve synthetic or merino wool shirt that also has a hood? Black preferable. I have been using different methods to stay cool and protect my skin at the same time, and I really want to try a light shirt that has a hood built in. (Edit: Holy shit, y’all. A dear friend got Cambridge Bikes to donate one. It’s being sent to Tampa.)
Miami is wonderful so far. I am with Landon, one of my internet heros that I finally got to meet face to face yesterday. He is basically *the* on-the-ground expert in Miami when it comes to youth homelessness and its intersection with the specific issues that trans and gender nonconforming folks face. (Again, hero.)
He is hosting me for a couple of days after an incredibly difficult and rewarding week of his own and we are both doing laundry and relaxing with his three cats.
I noticed today that he has the Other Lives “traumatized by the patriarchy” trophy I sent him in his display case, and he keeps the little banner I mailed in his bedroom. My heart basically exploded.
Oh, and check out the shirt he gave me. He runs Miami’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Under his leadership, they added another “R.” It is now the Trangender Day of Remembrance and RESILIENCE.
Tomorrow, I’ll get to spend time with a friend from college who I haven’t seen in a decade and a half.
I love y’all to pieces. Thank you for being here. I have cried multiple times this past week over the love you share and the joy, comfort, and challenges you bring. We are building community, and that matters so much ❤
3:15pm. I am remembering the other night, when I left the road and began crying under the dark sky.
It is a view of heaven.
It opens up for us if we are following our own path.
No one can make it for you.
You are on your own but not alone.
It is there.
There is so much work to do, but I am falling in love with my own present and can see horizons without terror. I submit. I submit.
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