The story of a misfit ultra runner

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

~ Henry David Thoreau

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The third and final leg of my gap year(s) started with me deep in mourning for a place in time that was forever lost.

After I thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), I moved in with an aunt and uncle in Tacoma, WA. I have no idea where I'd be today had Jill & Pete not held space for my grief. It was incredibly challenging for me to understand and verbalize what I was going through, yet they took me in, like the refugee that I was. I have never been as vulnerable as I was during this period of time in my life. It's as if the PCT peeled back the layers of thick skin that I had built as a kid and young adult that were needed to live in our society. Everything (music, movies, people) felt like "too much" and I continued to retreat into the wilderness for solace.

Slowly, I evaluated, deconstructed, and rebuilt every aspect of life that still remained after my thru hike. I transitioned my PCT diet back to vegetarianism and read everything I could on mindfulness, meditation, minimalism, and Buddhism. I sold nearly everything I owned beyond some of my cloths, my camera, my backpacking gear, a few bikes, and my mini cooper. My weeks were filled with running (a lot), volunteering (a lot), and loving on my dear old border collie.

It turns out that transitioning Ironman training, to thru hiking, to ultra running was a fairly potent path. I fought through a 35mph hail storm to I win the first ultra marathon that I ever raced. I continued to race my first 100 miler and my fastest 100km, placing in the top 5 for both.

I also ended up volunteering for the PCTA (a gallery of images I've taken while volunteering is on this site) for 100's of hours that summer, finding mentors and friends who I will love for the rest of my life. Beyond the community, volunteering allowed me to say thanks to the trails and trail association that made my thru hike possible; it allowed me to be part of something bigger than myself.

I transitioned my summer to running and fastpacking iconic Pacific Northwest routes rather than racing. Every trail I experienced brought me to tears as I both celebrated the highest fitness high of my life and moved through the mourning period after my thru hike.

And that dog. Eure. If she hadn't been my ride or die before this period of my life, she was then. Look at her eyes in the first photo above. If you can't tell, she was the type of dog that transcended the normal bounds of 'dog', showing her magical spirit with a full range of human expression. Our story became so catastrophically interwoven that even I wouldn't understand how crucial she was to my existence until she passed away in 2024.

Long story short is that this became the year that finally broke me and all of my perceptions completely down. It filled me with both hope and desperation, until the 'right' career path finally made itself known. I accepted a job at a tiny, mom & pop aerospace company that was my gateway to my current career specialty... and eventually to my beloved town, Bend, OR.

I write this chapter of my story for a lot of reasons. Without the gap between the PCT and returning to the churn of a corporate career, I'm not sure I would've solidified my core values and drivers. I'm not sure I would've been able to hold tightly to what makes me 'different' and how I want to live differently had I been swept back into the fold, sooner. Below are a list of the resources that helped me the most during this period of my life.

• "When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron

• Carrot Quinn wrote an essay on the Cup of Morale that I will link here when I find it again.

• How to volunteer for the PCTA (and how to become a crosscut sawyer)

• "Running your First Ultra" by Krissy Moehl