What It’s Like to Turn 28 on the Trail

Without a blue spot in the sky or a dry one on the ground, today — my 28th birthday — managed to be incredible.

I began the day quickly, taking down the tent with Rachel just before a drizzle, and then slowly, eating snacks and drinking beer with hikers at a sheltered picnic table. Cheshire Cat, a New York actor I helped get a ride into town, bought me an ice cream sundae. Cindy and Suzanne are basically who we want to be in our 50s.

From our picnic spot, Rachel and I walked the paved hill back to Fontana Village, where we’d booked a room on account of the occasion and the all-day rain. Fontana Village isn’t truly a village or a town, but a quaint resort operated above Fontana Dam, the largest in the U.S. east of the Mississippi.

We found Fontana surprisingly friendly to hikers. Putting aside even the discount on the room we received, we felt wanted. We were allowed to use the room prior to our 4 p.m. check-in time. We could have bought our entire resupply list, including stove fuel, in the hotel lobby (we didn’t, on account of the better selection at the gas station, which is owned by the resort as well).

As the day wore on, and particularly over a rich dinner of alfredo tortellini, I thought about the richness of my life. I am related to musicians, but also to mathematicians and engineers. I have stayed in a Manhattan skyscraper and at a campsite so remote I could scarcely see black between the stars. I’ve traveled multiple days by car, foot, plane, train, and boat. I’ve spent at least a day in four different countries.

I’ve been so fortunate to get an education, and so flabbergastingly ignorant about things I couldn’t imagine until I had to. I have worked at a company of hundreds, a company of six, and a company of only myself (which I hate to call a “company,” but legally, it was). I’ve interviewed farmers, Fortune 500 executives, students, and inmates. My published works include crime and fire reports, poetry, short stories, human interest journalism, business trend analyses, and historical nonfiction. 

I try not to boast, and I worry I’m doing so. What I’m trying to say is that I feel blessed to have had such a wonderfully, almost impossibly varied experience. I’ve gotten to do and to be so much so far.

What I want at 28 is for that to continue. I want to see change, both in my own life and in the world around me. I want to know what comes after the smartphone and after the car. I want to know whether we rise to the challenge of climate change, or perhaps more realistically, in what ways we adapt to it. I want to tell my kids about a time before home internet, when humans still drove internally combusting missiles mere lateral feet from each other. 

I’ve bought myself a lot of change, and certainly an unusual experience, with this trip. Whatever else happens on it, or afterward, I’ve already gotten what I wanted for my birthday.