The Walking Boss

It took me far too long to realize that just about everything in life requires hard work. Inspiration can carry a writer, painter, artist, fat guy with a backpack only so far. At some point the writer begins to work on the craft of writing, or she is stuck pouring her raw talent into facebook updates. The painter learns to see light, or he is left with doing cartoon drawings of his coworkers. A fat man with a backpack gets off his ass and tries to turn some of that fat to muscle or he is doomed to forever craning his neck to look up at the places he longs to climb, but is unable to reach. I've carved fifty pounds off my frame, and still have at least another fifty to go. Trudging up the side of Guadalupe Peak was a challenge that I passed, but in June when I try to climb the 13,141 feet tall Wheeler Peak I won't have boyhood dreams pushing me along when my legs turn to jelly. I have to turn as much of that jelly into corded strands of steel as possible. I can't train...

After climbing down from Guadalupe Peak, I had little over an hour of light to find a camp site. So, I jumped in the car and hauled ass back into New Mexico. As someone who grew up in Texas, I never really realized how much land out west is public. Texas entered the Union with about 95% of its land privately held, and so there is very little land open to just wander upon. New Mexico (and many other states) have vast tracts of public land divided between the state, National Forests, Wilderness Areas, and public land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM.) It was this BLM land I was after that night. I drove several miles into the desert on a dirt road, and set my tent up in the dark. Again, click on the photos for better views. I set my backpacking stove up on the trunk of the car and made two huge portions of Tortellini with bacon, dressed with light olive oil and quickly ate them both. My hungry was trying to claw its way out of my stomach at this point, because ...

I've spent the last month or so checking the forecast for Guadalupe Mountains National Park (GUMO) every day, watching for a break in the weather. I have wanted, needed to climb Guadalupe Peak before my week long trip near there in April, to remove that temptation from my mind. Spring can be brutal in GUMO, with winds gusting over 100mph, and so without a break in the weather that matched my days off, I would have had to wait possibly months for the perfect month. Finally, the weather, the stars, and my weekend were aligned. I got out of work early on my Friday (Weds) at 2:45 in the morning, got a quick nap, a slightly longer goodbye from Neecy, and was on the road by 10:15 Wednesday morning. Four hours to the wonderfully weird and magical New Mexico. I stopped in for a green chili cheeseburger at a little place Neecy and I discovered in 2004 named Happy's. It was good, but just not the same without Neecy. Just the same, this trip was about being alone, and finding that lonel...

I've had Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, somewhere in my head since 1995 when I first got my drivers license. Back then, I planned this huge road trip that involved going to Big Bend and hiking forty miles through the desert, and doing a bunch of unlikely stuff, before ending up at Guadalupe Mountains National Park (GUMO) to climb the 8751ft Guadalupe Peak. Of course, it never happened. I spent the rest of my high school years driving an hour every weekend to see a girl, and forty hours a week after school working at Burger King to pay for the gas for the weekend trips. Later, I replaced the girl with getting drunk and going to school with a hangover. Then I traded going to school hung over for just not going to school at all. I quit school halfway through my senior year as a petty little protest in support of a friend. Quitting school left more time for work, getting drunk, and sitting on the friend's front porch, but somehow there still was not enough time to g...