“Set aside a certain number of days… and live with the bare essentials, saying to yourself: Is this what I feared?”

— Seneca, Letter 18

I am packing for the Gobi March. But what I am really doing is asking a question. What is essential? What is extra? Seneca’s voice is in my ear. Ray Jardine is whispering about ounces. I feel the weight of every item. Grams. Meaning. 

This is my gear. Divided between what is worn and what is carried. Both lists are short. Each item must be justified.

Worn.

Flags. Not cloth, but spells.

I wear two:

— One for my family, the land—where we stood barefoot in dust, and rose. Against Moghuls. Against the Empire. A flag stitched not of threads, but of defiance.

— One for the other side of the sea—the American tri-color, born in rebellion’s smoke, its stars dreaming of self-rule, of No Kings but Us. Important to remeber today.

I do not wear them as decoration.
I wear them like old scars—visible, undeniable.

Two ghosts of revolutions.
Both stitched in the spirit of people who dared say:

No throne will decide my worth.
No crown will name my god.
I am better than no one due to my birth,
and no one is better than me due to theirs.

Pink running shirt. 128g. Patagonia. Quick-dry. Visible. Personal. A soft compliment to the landscape. Could be simpler. But this one is mine. I wore pink the day I got married.

Black running shorts. 105g. Patagonia. 5 inches. Light. Minimal. Tested. Enough. Memory of salt stains.

Injinji trail sock. Worn with respect for the trail gods.

Altra trail shoes. Wide toe box. ½ size larger. Broken in. Worn with hope.

Bandana. For sun. For sweat. For spirit.

Sun Sleeve. Outdoor research. Lessons learned in past races.

Sun Runner Cap. Outdoor Research. White.

Carried.

Backpack. 506g. Hyperlite Aero. Still testing. Required.

Montbell sleeping bag and Compression Sack. 704g. Compresses to a whisper. For the version of me that is cold when tired. Required.

Blue-grey Down Jacket. 288g. Montbell. Packs small. Expands at dusk. Carries the loneliness of the evening. Still smells of Namibia and Grand to Grand. Required.

Silver-blue Rain Jacket. 181g. Outdoor Research. Windproof. Waterproof. Recently tested. Required.

Grey gloves. 26g. Black palms. Light and thin. For building confidence on cold days.

Beanie. 31g. Patagonia R1. Warm. Wicking. Familiar. Required.

Montbell wind pants. 74g. Paper-thin. Required.

Injinji trail sock. 105g total for three pairs. Separating toes like secrets. 

Roka Prescription sunglasses. 43g. Necessary. They stay on. Required.

Dry bag. 74g. Sea-to-Summit. A cave inside the cave. Keeps the warm things dry. Required.

Hydration system. 193g total. Two 800ml Raidlight bottles. One 1L Platypus. Nothing more essential. Required.

NeoAir Uberlight sleeping pad. 264g. One thin argument with the earth. The hole still needs to be fixed. Luxury. I might trade this for Gossamer Gear Thinlight Foam Pad - 1/8" that weighs 76 grams.

Two headlamps. 93g total. One main. One backup. Required.

Swiss Army knife. 20g. Victorinox Classic SD. Tiny. Symbolic. Last time, I used only the scissors. Required.

Emergency mylar bivy. 85g. Loud silver foil. Hopefully untouched. Required. 

Mini compass. 0g. Zero grams of direction. Purely philosophical. Required.

Red flashing light. 11g. For visibility in the dark. Or in case I become invisible. Required.

Mirror. 9g. For signaling. Or self-confrontation. 7 days without looking at my face. Required.

Toothbrush. 9g. Half-length. Ritual as hygiene. 

Blister kit. 74g. Necessary. Gauze. Tape. Offerings to pain.

Body Glide. 43g. Prevention.

Sunscreen and lip balm. 103g. Protection. The desert does not negotiate. 60ml required. Will work to reduce weight.

Hand sanitizer. 28g. Modern comfort. Essential in theory. 

Titanium cup and spork. 79g total. Useful. Ritual of soup. The first taste after a hard day. Luxury.

Toilet paper and compressed wipes. 122g. Needed.

Sony Walkman and earbuds. 54g. Luxury. Maybe weakness. 

Ditty bag. 11g. Whistle. 11g. Medications. 6g. Compression bandage. 20g. Safety pins. 5g. Small items. Nothing important. Until it is.

--

Each object tested. For weight. For why.

What protects. What distracts.

What makes me less afraid. What merely fills the silence.

Seneca warned. Jardine calculated. But neither could tell me what it means to stand alone under a desert sky with everything I chose to carry.

Is this what I fear?

Or just the shedding of things I no longer need?

 --

Total gear weight: 3272g.

7.21 lbs. 3.27 kg. 

 This will change over the coming weeks. I am sure I have missed some things. I am also sure I have few extra things.

April 22, 2023. A line of storms had been sharpening its teeth as it tumbled over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Frederick, Leesburg, then down the long corridor of air and water and green. The sky tore itself open. Lightning leapt. Branches scattered. The canal didn’t shimmer, it raged and mirrored the tantrum above. I stepped into the storm like a thief entering a house he does not own, or like someone waking mid-dream and finding themselves in another’s bed.

The question wasn’t: Can I finish? It was: What am I made of?

It was my first 100K. The One Day Hike. The day before, my back felt like a door kicked in. I could barely manage five kilometers. I slept on a razor's edge, unsure if I’d even start, let alone finish. Then the morning broke and the pain lifted, vanished, like a ghost with unfinished business suddenly satisfied. The body had accepted. That quiet mystery: how flesh can agree to suffering before the mind catches up.

I had never walked this far. I wasn’t chasing medals. I was chasing the shape of myself. I wanted to find the edge and press my palm against it—gently, firmly—and ask: Are you real?

The rain was southern and violent, nothing like the soft whisper of Portland mist. It came down like memory, like reckoning. Like something familiar I hadn’t seen since Ruston, Louisiana. The sky cracked. Water sheeted sideways. I was soaked in minutes, marching alone under a chorus of thunder, and it felt impossible. More than impossible. My legs betrayed me. My back spoke again, sharper now. I was far beyond any place I'd ever been. Past marathon. Past reason. Every step was suffering. The mind faltered. Words got strange. The trail blurred.

And then—like a match on gasoline—rage. A grief I didn’t name. A storm inside the storm. I threw my head back and howled, not screamed, howled into the lightning. The kind of sound that doesn’t come from lungs. Not the bark of road rage. Not protest chants. Not even pain. It was something older, feral. A sound made of marrow and myth. My neck tensed. My jaw split. The howl spun up through my ribs, into my throat, lit my veins. My stomach clenched like a fist and launched the vow through my mouth and into the sky: I will never quit.

My hand rose, not for help, not for salvation, but for witness. To mark the moment. This was not anger. It was sacred. A flare of being. The moment doubt caught fire and turned to ash. I will never quit.

**

There comes a moment deep into any true effort when a voice rises up inside: I can't do this.

**

It is not weakness. It is the threshold of transformation—a liminal space where past and future stand face to face. Which side will you choose? Will you cross over, or linger? You see it all, like Janus: the ache behind you, the familiar present, the unknown ahead. And in that space, if you are lucky, belief in effort becomes more powerful than belief in success. Resilience is no longer about certainty. It is about willingness.

I did not know the science then. But my body knew.

I walked beneath canopies of storm-rattled trees. I stumbled as I accidentally hit a rock - did I break my big toe? My legs throbbed, my breath sharpened. Yet the path along the canal was beautiful, solemn, like a liquid prayer stretched between green banks. The water had transformed—its surface thick with movement, rippling and warping under the storm. It no longer reflected the sky but held its own weight, its own voice. It had volume now, a strange presence, like something alive and watching.

People appeared like blessings—volunteers at aid stations, bikers flying past on the towpath at speeds I envied, each offering a gesture or a phrase stitched with kindness. Fellow walkers too, strangers made luminous by the weight we carried together as if part of some ancient procession. Their words and glances lingered with me, not just in memory but in motion. I carried them like relics, warm against the cold edge of fatigue.

It was never just about finishing. I will never quit.

**

Later I would learn: there is a quiet, radiant beauty in loving the things you are not good at. Loving the long walk, the endless run, not because they come easily, but precisely because they do not. Joy appears when you offer yourself to a discipline without expectation of mastery. Every step becomes an act of grace. Every blister becomes a small lesson, folded into a prayer. Failure is not a verdict but a doorway. Growth happens in the soil of every little setback. Every misstep, a cartographer charting a future decision.

This first 100K—this reckless, beautiful dare—opened a door. On the other side waited deserts, salt flats, mesas: Atacama, Namib, Grand to Grand, and at last, my first 100-mile ultramarathon.

And in a quieter way, this storm-lit canal was the first real step toward the Gobi March, the 250-kilometer crossing that is waiting for me halfway across the world. And Greece, Antartica, Marathon des Sables. The endless list.

**

To thrive through difficulty, three things matter most: choosing the challenge freely, believing that you can improve, and feeling the quiet strength of shared humanity.

I chose this path. I chose these blisters, these storms, these doubts. And in choosing, even when faltering, I find a kind of freedom.

Resilience is not blind optimism. It is seeing the storm clearly and stepping into it anyway, even when everything inside you wants to turn back.

When setbacks come, how we speak to ourselves shapes what happens next. If we see hardship as temporary, specific, and survivable, we find the way forward.

I would need that understanding again when, deep into the Namib Race, everything inside me cracked. When exhaustion hollowed me out and I wondered if my body or spirit would give out first. That story is for another time.

**

I can still hear the rain drumming the canal. I can still feel the howl leaving my throat.

Not anger. Not fear.

A wild song.

The song of someone who knows failure doesn't diminish us. It reveals us.

The song of someone who knows:

You don't walk to prove you can win. You don't walk to prove you can finish. You walk to discover who you are when the end is uncertain.

You walk because somewhere, in the hush between footfalls, a voice asks:

Are you willing to go farther than you thought possible?

And your body, battered but awake, answers:

Yes.

One day, one storm, one long wild walk, and a life forever open to new adventures.

**

Now, almost two years later, this Saturday, I will return.

The same One Day Hike. The same 100 kilometers. A chance to see it all again with new eyes. What a joy it is to be allowed to attempt something twice.

This time, like the last, the race begins at 3AM, under a sky that may crack open with isolated thunderstorms. I can already feel the excitement building—not fear, not even really nerves. Just a deep gladness to be there. To start.

I do not know if I will finish. Strange how even after so many miles, so many deserts, the uncertainty still hums at the edge. And yet, unless something unexpected happens, I believe I will.

The question this time is different. It is not simply Can I finish? but How deep am I willing to go into effort, uncertainty, and discomfort? How much of myself am I willing to risk for the sake of growth, not just success? This time, it is about how intentionally can I embrace the process, knowing that pushing harder does not guarantee success, but guarantees learning. It is about testing the edges again, not for proof, but for discovery.

I will walk again beneath the trees, following the towpath where memory and movement will run side by side. I will share the path with strangers. I will carry the old relics and gather new ones.

I will meet myself again, and maybe, if I am lucky, I will go even farther.

And no matter what the storm says, no matter what my legs say, no matter how the dawn unfolds, I know one thing:

It will be fun.

Author's Note:

For those interested in learning more about the psychology behind persistence, resilience, and the positive framing of failure, you might explore:

• Self-Efficacy Theory (Albert Bandura)
• Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck)
• Self-Determination Theory (Edward Deci & Richard Ryan)
• Optimistic Explanatory Style (Martin Seligman)

These ideas have deeply informed how I approach challenges, both in racing and in life.

(You may want to read Summer Day and listen to The Journey recited by Mary Oliver)

The ground is near white—scabbed salt, ghosted with memory. The sky, stolen indigo. The mountains stretch the horizon, aching blue. Clouds above, broken and low, mirroring the cracked flats beneath. It’s just past eight. The light already feels mythic. Something a prophet might be afraid to name.

Atacama is magical this day in 2023, and the Long March will have me feel every tooth of it.

I look—the salt flats stretch in every direction, gleaming, endless, cracked. You can sense water in the driest desert on earth. You see green, here, today.

They are all here.

I am not alone. 

One day I finally knew what I had to do—and began.

Junardeo. The house with the slanted light. My mother barefoot in the hallway, already part wind.

A needle in the daal. I did not see. I bit down. My tongue bled truth.

Ran barefoot through gravel to Gufa Mandir. Cave of gods. Shiva in shadow, ash in his hair. Ram and Sita—still. Hanuman mid-leap with his mountain. Durga’s lion eyes watching. I stood small at the entrance knee deep in water. The bell. Ancient. The air smelled like stone milk.

Train smoke. Coal-blast against sky. I leaned out too far, chasing the ghost of a horn.

We held it down. The neighbor sharpened the blade. The lamb knew. 

The papiha bird sang it haunting mad song. Pi-peeah _ pii-peeeaahh _ piii-peeeeaaahhh _ piiii-peeeeeaaaahhhh _ silence. A warning folded into song.

"Mend my life," cried one voice.

October 30, 1984. The day before death raged. I got on the train and so I live.

"Mend my life," cried another.

Union Carbide. I say it like a hex. The gas came for the city that day. It missed me. Not mercy. Just accident.

Thomas the Obscure. Chapter three. Read aloud flesh on flesh. I held the night up to the light and gave it a Rorschach test. It stared back.

My son fell. The stair reached for him. My hand arrived first. Soft landing. His head in my palm, body landing on my outstretched arm, like holding the world when it’s new.

Still the voices:

"Mend my life!"

But I didn’t stop.

"Don’t go," says one voice.

They’re all talking. Overlapping. The voices shimmer like heat lines in the distance.

Out there in the distance I see. A woman on a white horse, holding a tattered white umbrella and wearing a used wedding dress. She belongs to some forgotten Fellini reel. Behind her, the air sings: opera—loud, mournful, absurd. I don’t know what it is, not exactly. I only know the ache it leaves in the ribs.

And there, almost under it all, her voice—Mary’s. Mary Oliver’s. A voice like a secret river. Like a twinkle that dares.

And then the crust fails.

My foot plunges through the white, brittle surface—into muddy, shitty, salty water. A jolt. Salt finds every blister, seeps into them like fire. Crust cuts at my ankles. A slap from the desert.

Everything disappears.

The lamb, that day on train in 1984, Union Carbide, the woman, the book, the bell—

Gone.

Mary’s voice, my mother’s voice, all the voices—

Gone.

The crowd of thought. Regret. The chatter of past and future.

Gone.

Now.

Only now.

Pain. Salt. Breath.

I am here. Entirely.

Not remembering. Not imagining. Just being.

In the one body I have. In the one moment I live. In the shock of silence.

Now, I can go there. Now, I can go further.

The pain gives me no choice. It always strips me of everything I borrow. Leaves only what I can name. Or refuse to.

But we are all running now. Competitors file past. One of them—a Korean man, his speaker swinging from his pack—lets the aria pour out into the heat.

I shout over: "Opera! What is it?"

He turns, grinning, sweat streaking his cheeks. "Pavarotti! La Traviata!" he says, proud, radiant.

We share no language but that. Music. A nod. A grin through cracked lips. 

I am here now. I say it aloud: "I am here."

It is going to be a very long, very hot day.

The Long March.

We follow the muddy whisper of a lake, water as still as sleep. Then, the path stratches out. The Cordillera de la Sal. Paso Domingo Rames. The names sound biblical. We walk, we run, we climb. It is a hot day, the wind is not wind but breath—some old god, exhaling slowly.

Into Valle de la Luna.

The Valley of the Moon is not a place. It is a wound carved in salt and light. Ridges like broken vertebrae, wind-chiseled stone frozen mid-breath. The silence is sculpted. Sand drapes in velvet folds, rust-red and silver-gray. There are cliffs that mimic cathedrals. Crystals grow out of dust. The moon lingers, full and pale, even under day’s blue glare. It watches without blinking. We walk through it like figures in a dream someone else is having.

I move. I keep moving. The past few days have been heavy. My stomach had turned on me - I had barely made it to this day. But today is different.

Today, I see him.

A boy, maybe four, maybe five. No pack. No hat. No water. His hair is matted with salt. He looks lost but calm. He is me.

We’ve met before.

Sometimes on the trail. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes at dawn, between sleep and waking, when the light slants just so. Sometimes at the edge of memory, where grief and wonder hold hands.

He walks up and smiles. Like he’s been waiting.

I kneel. I always kneel to give him a hug.

He gives me his hand.

We walk. We don’t speak. The silence is full. The dunes hush themselves to listen.

He grows tired. The path is long and sandy, and he is small. He looks at me, worry creasing his brown forehead—the same one I carry still, permanently etched on my face.

"Is it going to be all right?" he whispers.

I look at him. I feel the sun. 

"It’s going to be all right," I say.

"Really?"

"Yes," I nod. "It’s going to be all right. I will make it so."

He climbs on my back like it’s the most natural thing. He is weightless. He sings something soft. A tune about the moon being part of his family, someone who will bring gifts. I carry him. I carry him until he’s gone.

Not vanished. Just not there. Like breath after the hymn ends.

I stop. I cry—the kind you never admit to. The kind that mends. I always do, when we walk together.

This is why I walk.

I walk to meet the child I once was. To say: it’s never too late to have a great childhood. 

Some walk to win. Some to raise money. Some because the desert calls. Some because they have nothing else.

But I walk to remember. To mend. To reclaim.

And when he disappears, I keep going.

Because it’s already late enough. And a wild day. And the night promises to be magical. And there’s a voice that keeps me company now.

My own.

Burning like a star behind a sheet of skin.

So if Mary Oliver is still listening, wherever the blessed go when they’ve tired of questions, I want her to know—

I don’t know what a prayer is. But I know how to kneel in dust. How to listen. How to carry memory through the scald of noon.

This is what I am doing with my one wild and precious life:

I will be. I persist. I mend. I touch the sacred crust of the world and call it home. I tell my story in steps. Each step a way to give a name to what once felt unspeakable.

I want to walk. Because walking is how I answer. Because when walking, I am.

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a
single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety
of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the
Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so
fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map
was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the
Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are
Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is
no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

—Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658.

On Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.

We were playing under the guava trees. Dust on our knees, sun in our hair. The air smelled of ripe guavas, mogra flowers, incense, and crushed dried leaves on the ground. And here a story was passed from lips to ears as a secret, just as it was passed over hundreds of years, something ancient—something not touched 

“Do you know Genghis Khan?” he whispered, leaning in close, eyes sharp with secrecy.

“No.”

“He could make whole towns disappear. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers, like magic, snap..gone

We were five.

“No”

“Yes.” His voice shook a little, with wonder. “Everything, your family, this garden, our neighbourhood, this city… poof. He just points and if he wishes, it goes away.”

I didn’t laugh. I looked. I looked as I have never looked…from a distance…at everything that I was close to—and imagined them disappearing. I grasped the fragility of my world as only a five year old could. I still remember that I was not afraid. Years later I understood that there is profound clarity in the simple idea that our world is fragile. There is freedom in it, and even peace, but that is a story for another day.

And Genghis Khan has stayed with me ever since right next to this beautiful little story by Borges. 150 words and saying so much, just like what my friend whispered to me. Empires, ideologies, epistemologies, and even human ambition…whatever we build to mirror this world gets buried in it. All what remains is the real, a fragment covering a beggar in the desert. So as a beggar I go to Mongolia wrapped in Baudrillard's dictum.

“It is the map that precedes the territory.”

Like the beggars, we are living in the map, in signs and simulations, referring to other signs and simulations ad nauseam, the reality is inaccessible, the grand truth about the empire will not be discovered…the fragment is all that remains. The course is set.

We’re going to race the wind. That’s what I keep thinking over dinner, during training, while doing the chores. We're going to race the wind, I say to myself. I sit with the glow of a screen, watching fragments of the Gobi March flicker across the screen—bodies running through the steppes. I mouth it again: we’re going to race the wind. Not in that Nike commercial, just do it kinda way. No. This wind is different. Six days without mercy. Salted lips, swollen sun. Dehydrated, a bit delirious, half-holy. The kind of wind that has carried dreams and fears. Smell of ancient times. Mongolian wind. Grass-grit-hymn wind. Wind that remembers the names of horses from the last 10,000 years wind. Wind that doesn’t care if you’re ready wind.

Khar Bukh Balgas—where we first gather. A ruined fortress. Abandoned, like a tooth pulled from history’s mouth. We’ll start there. I picture the stones watching us, unamused. Who are these soft-shoed pilgrims, these salt-sweated runners, speaking in dozens of tongues but all craving joy and suffering?

The course is six days long but centuries wide.
The grasslands will fold us in—green and wide and whispered to by animals.
The hills will unmake us.
The valleys will show us bones they have gathered.
The rivers, if we’re lucky, will cool our feet.
And the nights will be stitched in stars.

They say we’ll sleep in gers—round wool cocoons.
They say temperatures swing like a blade—sunburnt days, frostbitten breath by morning.
They say.
They say.

We will race the wind.
And maybe the wind will let us be at Erdene Zuu Monastery and discover hundred treasures
Feel the presence of Karakorum and Ögedei
Or maybe it’ll take everything—
snap its fingers—
and leave us only with
tattered maps on our bodies,
praying.