Aiming for 80

In December 2018 I hosted a book launch party to coincide with my 70th birthday for the publication of my recently published book You...

Martha Alden had been my best friend in kindergarten when we both lived in Ellsworth, Maine. Alas, my parents moved to Bangor and hers to Stockton Springs by the time I was in second grade, and we might have lost contact, had it not been for our mothers who decades later crossed paths at a social event. I did manage the occasional Christmas card and a visit to their home as our kids were growing up. Otherwise, it was fast-forward to some 40 years post-kindergarten that Martha

Even by my own travel standards, being out of the country for seven out of nine consecutive weeks was excessive. I couldn’t believe my good luck that one of my few weekends back home would coincide with the Crescent City Classic. A ritual in New Orleans, this 10K race starts at the Superdome, winds through the French Quarter, continues down Esplanade Avenue, and ends in a final exhausting one-mile loop within City Park. Before the race, I got out my collection of T-shirts fro

When I knew my three-week window for Maine in summer 2021, I immediately contacted Barb McEvoy Sepe Bentley to ask her availability to climb Katahdin. She was game but asked if I’d consider the Travelers Loop rather than Baxter Peak, the summit of Katahdin and Maine's highpoint. Katy had done it the previous summer, and I figured it would be plenty challenging as the run-up to the scheduled climb of Granite Peak in Montana in August. I went into the hike with two health con

Julie Hernandez was spending the summer near Chamonix in France, training for her trip to Nepal several months later. When she couldn’t...

As per custom, Martha Alden (best friend from kindergarten in Ellsworth, ME) had made the reservations for our ski trip to Maine Huts and...

On New Year’s Eve 2022, I learned from Dave Covill, President of the Highpointers Foundation, that he and wife Beckie planned to spend...

Did all excursions in this 12-month period need to begin with some type of mini-disaster (food poisoning, horrible weather)? #35 was no...

The Mont Blanc experience proved a suspicion I’d had for a while. Julie Hernandez and Dave Covill (President of the Highpointers...

Julie had a glorious day of rock climbing under Dimitri’s tutelage, while I explored the nearby village of Les Bossons and the t-shirt...

When taking a test, go with your first instinct. Your first guess is probably your best guess. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that logic...

When we failed to summit with Eva Bazant and her family in early July 2023, I blamed myself for not getting 15-year-old Giuliana to the...

Ordinarily, a 3-4-hour hike might not meet the criterion of physically challenging, but the scenery in Acadia National Park on a sunny...

Since 2019 Tulane had received funding for its family planning work in the DRC through the Central Forest African Initiative (CAFI), with...

After a successful ascent up Katahdin in July 2023, Charlotte Stetson and I were ready for the next adventure. I had read about the W...

The first annual extraordinary outdoors adventure of 2024 was scheduled to be the yearly cross country ski trip to Maine Huts and Trails,...

A knee injury in October 2023, followed by a 4-day, 48-mile hike in Chile, landed me back in PT. Despite 2-3 sessions a week for six...

This extraordinary outdoor excursion offered a new twist: the mini catastrophe occurred at the end of the trip, not in the days leading...

Charlotte Stetson and I were well matched for hiking, not only for our interest and physical capacity, but our problematic knees. On our...

When Charlotte Stetson and I reached Baxter Peak on Mount Katahdin in summer 2023, it represented our fifth trip to the summit together:...