The Myth & The Majesty

A couple months back, I was paging through (the great and powerful) M-Man's most recent copy of Backpacker and I came across an article that put forward a new idea. [Note: most recent then. For the life of me, now I can't find the piece I read.] Now, if there's one thing you should know about Backpacker as a magazine, it is that it is always packed full of trail maps and hike descriptions from basically anywhere. The Hills figure in there on a regular basis -- as does the Appalachian Trail, the Rockies (rather prominently), stuff all up and down the West Coast, and plenty of spots from other countries. Packed. Full. This article suggested something different from trying to see it all everywhere. The mantra was simple: one wilderness, all the trails. Pick a wilderness and make it yours. Hike every trail in it until you know each of them forward and backward -- and then take all the side trails. And some non-trails. Hike it all till you know every body of water, every...

I am a slob. This is not by any means a revelation. Anyone who knows me even sort of well knows this. It's been a thing since I was quite young -- my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Carlson, even told me, "Ashley, you can be anything you want to be. Just please don't become a cleaning lady." Yeah ... She would be alarmed at what I now do for a living. The thing of it is ... I've been taught better. My mother is an excellent maintenance cleaner. Every Saturday morning is spent sweeping, scrubbing, dusting, moving furniture aside to get to the hard-to-reach places. Her house is rarely more than twenty minutes from company-ready. My sister is even better -- she just plain keeps things clean. For some reason, I missed that skill. My desk and my bedroom when I was a kid, and now my car and my house -- always a mess. More than anything, it's always been paper. Books, half-used notebooks, old journals, scrapbook paper (rarely used for scrapbooks), notes and rec...