Walk Across America – Training Day #1
First big training day – double digits with a pack! Continue reading Walk Across America – Training Day #1
Category: Writing
My Brother’s Wedding
My youngest brother is getting married today. I am honored to be a big part of it. Continue reading My Brother’s Wedding
My Privilege to Walk
Thoreau writes in his essay, Walking, “I wish to speak a moment a word for nature.” I too wish to speak a moment, but not for nature, even if my topic is often mistaken for something natural. I want to recognize that embarking on a 7-month, non-work-related journey is a full-on exploitation of my individual privilege. This understanding makes my innate desire for travel and … Continue reading My Privilege to Walk
My New Everest
PRE-WALK, BLOG #1 I’ve got big dreams. Big goals. Always have. Probably goes back to when I was a kid and found my dad’s do-before-I die list. I don’t remember what it said exactly, but as soon as I read it I wrote one of my own. At 8 years old I hoped to one day run a marathon, ride a horse in the Mongolia … Continue reading My New Everest
A Visual Book Review: Part 2
“Memory is the one true agony carried in the body.” Doug Rice’s An Erotics of Seeing is witness to the purest of all enigmas, memory. I take slower steps, wander the streets of Mexico City, look closely at small things. Forgotten things. Remembering beauty. “Ghosts haunt the streets, the alleys. Words replace people. Names.” “Most times, a word never becomes more than a shape to … Continue reading A Visual Book Review: Part 2
A Visual Book Review: Part 1
Doug Rice’s An Erotics of Seeing is a gift of observation. A peek through a crack. A breeze. Makes it hard to keep your your eyes open. Makes tears fall. My response: a practice of seeing. A Saturday morning walk through the streets of México City. “The longer you live, the more you die.” What you see becomes you. Find questions in the image. Is the after more real than the before? … Continue reading A Visual Book Review: Part 1
Endurance
Last night, Katie and I sat down to watch Life in a Day, a documentary about four amazing women competing in the 2016 running of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run. Within minutes of the opening credits, I was already getting misty. The snippets of familiar trail sections and footage of runners, crew members, race officials, and spectators brought me right back to 2007 when … Continue reading Endurance
Grateful
The last time I had seen the Washington D.C. Metro so jam-packed was back in 1993 when I lived in Virginia and was returning home with my friend Becca after a Grateful Dead concert. And really, there’s no way it could have been as crazy busy as it was on the morning of the Women’s March, Saturday January 21st. After all, 500,000 people converging from every corner of the … Continue reading Grateful
What Matters
We ended our day of inaugural protest back at Busboys and Poets, 5th and K, and braved the line winding around the block. Crowds came for the fantastic food, but also to hear poets Eve Ensler, Kimberle Crenshaw (and more) perform works of resistance. Their website called it a “pep rally” for the next day’s Women’s March. From outside we could see the corner stage … Continue reading What Matters
Stay Woke
With hours to kill before joining up with Disrupt J20, we hit A Baked Joint for some espresso, then Busboys and Poets, 5th and K, for breakfast. Paris, our server, couldn’t have been cooler. She made sure we knew about the free protest posters then let us hang out long after we paid. I watched inaugural happenings on the television over the bar. CNN. Scrolling … Continue reading Stay Woke
Tom Griffen 
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