When I go camping, I always have this image of a lone tent set high up on a bluff at night, the sky generously grated with stars as bright and yellow as cheddar cheese. But it’s never like that. Not really. Take, for example, the sounds. Where that beautiful lonely campsite I mentioned before would only carry the rustlings, zippings, crunchings and murmurings of a few humans, and the rush of the alpine oceans intermixed with chirps, warbles and the occasional hum of an unwan

We woke up to an ominous black line of storm clouds closing in on the campsite. But we didn’t care because we’d be traveling the 61 miles into Canada to hike the Bertha Lake Trail in Canada. The drive there was scenic, but everything is around here. There’s a beautiful mountain that looks like someone took an axe to the top, but with a dull one so that it’s jagged and somehow straight. We passed so many cows standing in the middle of the road, unfazed by car horns or cattle g

Today was our first day of hiking in Glacier. When I say this place is not real, I mean that when you hold a lens up to one of the mountains with the sun glistening off of the sparse snow packs, sprinkled with the most beautiful spruces and pines and you click the shutter, you wonder how what you see with your eyes can’t be translated through a Nikon D500. Or any camera for that matter. John Mayer’s “3×5” drifts through my mind with the lines: "didn’t have a camera by my side

Traveling by night has its advantages. Less people on the road, less tiresome Missouri landscape flashing by. We drove 12 hours and ended up in Rapid City, South Dakota, early this morning. I was lucky enough to get a lightning show from St. Joseph, Missouri, until Council Bluffs, Iowa. Speeding through the Midwest is made infinitely better with huge flashes from the east that light up the night and remind you how insane nature is and you begin to feel really small, in a good

I found my hiking boots at the REI on 6th street in Austin. The place was packed with families getting last-minute supplies for trips all over America. My dad insisted on Vasque boots. I had my eye set on a grey pair with “African Violet” peppered about (their name, not mine). I had to bargain with the girl next to me to try on my size (6) because she was hoarding every 6 in hiking boots trying to decide on a pair. Turns out a 6 is not what I needed. I’ve never been a 7 in sh