Currently: September

Currently living/working in: We spent all of September in Yosemite National Park for our role as the Subaru/Leave No Trace Zero Landfill Team!! We’re in route back to Denver/Boulder to wrap up and report on our summer gig. Then we move into our next phase of work: so many Backpacker Magazine deadlines!!!! 

Current mood: Bewildered how the 4 months on the road is already over. But also tired (our last event was a 5-day setup and it rocked, but it entailed long days). 

Currently not excited about: Because we go nomadic for several months, we stockpile the mundane life tasks into a few weeks. We’ll be in Denver all of October catching up on medical stuff, jury duty and other necessary evils. 

Currently excited about: I am very much looking forward to unpacking everything in one place, taking inventory of what we have & most importantly, purging. Something about living in a car for 4 months that reminds me what I really need. Thankfully we are staying at Justin’s mom’s place in Denver for 2 weeks while she is away on vacation because I am plotting a major explosion of our stuff. #PackRatHusbandEvenInACar

Currently amazed by: How much we learned this summer. Mostly about recycling, but also about ourselves and as a team. I just didn’t expect learning to such a big part of our experience. 

Currently regretting: In all the other national parks, we were pretty adamant about hiking as much as we could. We accumulated miles here in Yosemite, but not as many as we could have. Blame the crowds, the heat or the fact that we’ve been here before, the bottom line is, we definitely did not take full advantage of having trails in our backyard. 

What a difference 13 years makes! 

Currently worried about: My father has some new complications in his health & it is hard being so far away. I have an extended trip planned there this winter, but that can’t come soon enough.  

Currently thankful for: This whole opportunity with Leave No Trace/Subaru. We absolutely loved working for both these stellar organizations sharing our passion for environmental ethics and are stoked to work for them again in January (more on that later!). 

Photo courtesy of Yosemite Hospitality’s Environmental Living and Learning Community

Currently proud of: It wasn’t always easy planning out a tour last minute with so many moving parts and people involved, but I believe we dealt with the adversity well. Again, Leave No Trace and Subaru were always fully supportive, which definitely balanced the challenges.  

Current guilty pleasure: Sport watching!!! Justin loves football season, and I actually do too. We’ve been able to watch 3/4 weeks of football so far, and hopefully more to come in October. 

Current confession: I hope to take a little social media holiday soon. I honestly felt burdened and stressed by the 1,600 pictures and videos we took—which needed to be sorted for Leave No Trace, Subaru and personal use—as well as social media obligations all around. I will look forward to going dormant a bit this winter! Don’t worry, I’ll never give up blogging (it’s my favorite!), but it just may be a little dark for a bit.  

Currently reading: I finished Alaska Wilderness by Robert Marshall. This is an old book about Marshall’s expeditions by foot north of the Artic Circle in Alaska. Justin brought this book—that we’ve had in our collection of books FOREVER—on this trip thinking he’d read it. I was determined that SOMEONE read it since he wasn’t. So I did! And I liked it very much!! I just love any and all books about Alaska. 

Currently watching on Netflix: I’m going to use this space to make a shout out to 2 AMAZING movies that are NOT on Netflix: Free Solo  and Dawn Wall. Both of these happen to be about famous climbers (Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, respectively) on Yosemite big walls and happen to just come out and happen to be featured one day only in Yosemite while we were here. Lucky us! They are both AWESOME movies. Even if you are not a climber, you would enjoy them. Even the trailers will inspire!