If 2024 felt like a steady state, then 2025 brought real change in some ways.
In other ways?
We continued the life we crafted for ourselves. We immersed ourselves in wild places, shared them with friends who visited us, and returned to the landscapes and people who shaped who we are.
Joan with Katie and Mike in The Maze.
We visited Oregon to see Joan’s family over Thanksgiving and enjoyed quiet winter hiking along the Oregon Coast.
Joan and her sister Gail grew up in Oregon. We visited two Thanksgivings in a row.
Over the holidays, we spent time visiting my mom and her partner in Florida. Hiking took a back seat, but we did enjoy a short walk through Lake Griffin State Park.
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As before, time in wild places still made up the bulk of how we spent the year.
Together or apart, we logged about 90 bag nights through packrafting, camping, hiking, and backpacking. We slept outside every month and in all four seasons. We never chased that metric. It came naturally from how we choose to live. “Every week is a vacation”
January backpacking, thirty minutes from home.
Trip highlights from our time together include:
- Starting the year in Big Bend National Park.
- Spending many weekends camping before or after backpacking trips, or sometimes camping by itself.
- Continuing to use packrafting as a way to meander through canyon country near home.
- Spending eight days on a combined backpacking and camping trip, we called Eight Days at the Edge of Nowhere. We saw no one after day one. At the end, we both felt ready to roll into town, shower, resupply, and do it all again.
- Heading into the La Sals, the Abajos, and the San Juans during summer and early fall.
- Returning to the Colorado Plateau through fall and winter, drawn by both the landscape and the cultural history.
- Closing out 2025 with four days on the Colorado Plateau, revisiting old places and stumbling upon new ones together.
- Continuing our volunteer work, which even turned into a part-time paid position for Joan.
I also spent two days helping build a new trail that opened in December. From Moab Trail Mix.
- Ending the year with a literal bump in the road when our truck met a deer. We hope to have it back soon, since it remains an important outdoor tool for us in accessing public lands.
What’s Joan been up to?
- Joan works part-time with Utah SHPO, collaborating with volunteers and public land staff across agencies. Her day job can challenge her, but the SHPO work gives her satisfaction, sanity, and something rooted in our small desert town.
I do not have a field photo of Joan for her SHPO role, so here is a photo from “The City of Moab” website.
- Friends from her Atlanta days visited. Joan worked as a postdoc in a past life, and the community she built there helped her choose a different path. Joan’s sister also visited us for the first time. She entered a new phase of life, and we enjoyed showing her our desert town.
- Joan completed about 350 miles of the Colorado Trail solo. She attended a family wedding near Kenosha Pass and wants to finish the remaining miles and wrap up the trail in 2026 or 2027.
- Joan also found aerial silks here in town. Aerial silks is a performance art that demands upper-body strength, core strength, balance, and flexibility. It brings her joy, and it carries over in many different ways. Another part of her past life in Atlanta that impacts her today.
A reader encouraged me to make a print of this photo. He was correct. Photo from Moab Aerial Events.
What about me?
For the first time, I had a job that let me combine my IT trade with work, people, and a purpose I genuinely cared about. But over two+ years it also became the most stressful job I have ever had. It is a small town, and I do not see a need to get into the weeds. I will simply say that I feel disappointed.
I could say more, but I am still grieving in some ways, and I do not use that word lightly. I chose to leave, even if I did not choose the circumstances that led me there.
That’s life.
But it is a life where I get to call this place home and share it with someone I love deeply.
- As I mentioned, most of my trips were with Joan. While she hiked the Colorado Trail, I got in some satisfying mountain time that helped me cope.
- I went down to Austin, ate excellent BBQ, and went on The Trek podcast. That trip helped me change course. I used to joke that PMags is my alter ego, funded by Paul Magnanti through IT work. The trip made me reconsider that story. Maybe Paul Mags is the real person, and Paul the IT guy plays the supporting role. Between that trip and Eight Days at the Edge of Nowhere, I had a moment of clarity.
- In October, I lit out for the territory and walked about 500 miles across New England on a route I stitched together from the Canadian border to the Atlantic in my home state of Rhode Island. I reconnected with my roots, saw places that shaped my earlier life, spent time with friends and family, and had a hike that felt deeply personal and meaningful. I do not think I would have appreciated it the same way earlier in my life.
Sunrise over the Atlantic. “Ocian in view! O! The joy.”
The online world
I am going to take the lazy way out and share a screenshot of the most popular articles from this past year.
These remain fairly consistent year to year. Gear dominates, with the exception of one informational piece Talus vs. Scree, and one potentially aspirational resource, The Colorado Trail guide. My content stays evergreen enough to keep showing up in search results.
But these popular articles never rank as my favorites.
They answer the what and the how. My favorites try to get at the why. They come from the same place the trips come from. They point toward the way we live, the way we move through wild places, and the way we try to pay attention.
If I had to pick favorites from this past year :
- Ultralight Catechism. I see gear as tools, not an identity. I like the practical, but I distrust dogma in any form.
- Outdoors After 50. I do not see aging as the end of something. I see it as a continuation. Stay active, stay consistent, and keep finding joy in the wild places.
- Small, Good Things. I updated this one, but it still feels like a keystone. It reminds me that a good life often shows up in ordinary moments, in small trips, and in the quiet hours between bigger plans.
- Gear Pick of the Year 2025. This one fits the theme. Sometimes the best gear is also small, good things.
- A Properly Attired Hiker: Blaze Orange in Hunting Season. Another update. Practical and useful. It also reflects the reality that we share public lands, and we do better when we treat other users as allies instead of opponents.
- Cold and Wet and Shoulder Season. More updates to older articles. I keep coming back to the time in between. I also find that I enjoy educating and sharing the how more than the what, with a bit of the why mixed in along the way.
- Pay to Play. This one comes from a place of alarm. I worry about the corporatization of the outdoor experience. I do not think a 12-year-old version of me would have the same opportunities today that I had nearly forty years ago.
A past photo Joan took of us on the sly.
Looking ahead?
I have no idea. 🙂
I suspect 2026 involves more structured rambling around this place we call home. It likely involves red rock, mountains, old paths, and more time with Joan. I plan to keep documenting it all as long as I have a keyboard, a camera, and a reason to share.
Onward!
From Pinterest.