Describe one habit that brings you joy.
There’s no better way to clean off the week like dirt under your nails and sunburn on your shoulders. Fresh freckles on my cheeks and nose, but that’s nothing new. No version of peace that beats the kind you find halfway down a trail, ready to see the car, as much as you were the view. A fossil in one hand and your dog always remaining leashed by your side.
I don’t vacation for typical relaxation. I adventure. I explore. I curate memories, things at one point were but a dream.
I don’t check into resorts. I throw a sleeping bag into the backseat and head for whichever trail, lake, ridge, or overlook is calling loudest. I don’t go places to unwind like you’d expect. I go places to become more alive. The woods are not a break from life. They are life. The oceans, seas, deserts, mountains, plains, rivers, and lakes all offer beauty. You have to be willing to go deeper.
Adventuring is the one habit that makes me happiest because it folds everything I love into one experience: gathering, building, creating, feeling, moving, being. It’s my relationship with the world, my self-care, my work, my worship, my art, and my rest. Yes, all at once. And sometimes separately.
When I head out, I’m not just walking. I’m searching ways to make what’s around of use. I search for bones to clean and keep, herbs to dry and use(locally grown or to plant my own), flowers to press into pages. I’m rock hounding, fossil hunting, kneeling down in red dirt, eyes scanning every inch for something ancient to bring home. I don’t just collect. I connect. These aren’t souvenirs. These are materials, memories, tools, altarpieces, offerings. Even turning items into finished store products.
When I kayak, it’s not a sport, it’s a baptism. Gliding over still water surrounded by trees is a kind of peace hard to match. My phone’s off. The only sound is the paddle and the wind. If you’re lucky sometimes a heron lifting off from the reeds will share his majestic beauty. I’ve found pieces of myself in those silent stretches of lake that I didn’t even know I’d lost.
When I hike, I’m in conversation, with the land, with myself, and with something older than both. I might be alone. I might be with my dog, who doesn’t just walk with me, she teaches me to stop, and to watch. Or I’m with a friend, the kind who knows how to move in rhythm with the land and say everything without speaking. Even in moments we fill with loudness and goofiness the deeper meaning isn’t lost on us.
Camping is something I’ve done all my life. It started as a family thing when I was a kid, and it never left me. Now, I want to start camping rustically.Right now I have always paid for a campsite and pitch my tent like it’s home for the time being. Sometimes it’s a hammock strung up on two trees. I have typically always camped with friends (when not family) laughing around a fire, sharing stories under the stars, cooking simple meals that somehow always taste better outside. I love camping in every form it takes. I love the rhythm of it, the setup, the simplicity, the quiet. I plan to do a lot more of it because it’s one of the few places where I feel completely myself, without noise, without pressure, just present.
When I forage, I do it with reverence. Herbs aren’t just ingredients, they’re living history. I gather with care and intention, never taking more than I should, always thanking the plant and the place. I also always leave behind an offering. Some herbs go into spells, some into bundles, some into zines or handmade kits. I’ve blended wild mint and clover into teas. I’ve used dried mugwort for protection work. Every sprig, every root has a role.
Bones, too, when and if I find them, are sacred. I don’t take death lightly. When I gather bone, it’s with deep respect. Cleaned properly, they become part of my altar or are used as symbols in ritual or art. Each one carries weight. Each one tells a story I want to honor.
I press flowers like love notes. I stash them between paper scraps and books, wait weeks, and then pull them out as offerings, to beauty, to memory, to whoever needs that small, delicate piece of magic. Those pressed pieces end up in journals, zines, altars, even product packaging. They’re remnants of a day I lived fully and chose to remember. I started keeping a flower journal on my last trip, and hope to continue that tradition on future trips.
Everything I find out here becomes something. Nothing goes to waste. I don’t need stores. I need open fields. I don’t need supplies shipped in plastic! I need time in wild places with my hands in the dirt and a bag full of whatever the land is ready to give me.
My creative work lives because I adventure. My business exists because I go out, gather, and make. Zines, ebooks, wind chimes , raw or tumbled stones, spell pouches, poetic extras, almost all of my items come from what I collect on these trips. Not just objects, but moments.
This habit doesn’t just make me happy. It is happiness. Which is honestly how it became my business. I want to do what I love, and fill it with love.
It saves me money. It gives me everything I need. It lets me spend real time with my dog and my friends without distractions, without pressure. It keeps me off screens. It gives me room to think and space to breathe.
It lets me be a poet in love with the world. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.
I treat the wilderness the way poet treats a muse: obsessively, gently, worshipfully. I follow it, I wait for it, I let it change me. I bring it offerings and ask for nothing back, but somehow it always gives me more than I came for.
I know its moods. I listen when it’s quiet. I celebrate when it’s loud. I show up even when it doesn’t feel like showing off.
Adventuring isn’t my escape from the world. See through my eyes and you see, it’s how I enter it.
So no I don’t vacation in the typical sense. I go out to plug into the only thing that ever really matters to me: the land, the stories it tells, and the way I get to become part of them.
If you’ve ever wondered what kind of life you’d build if you let the wilderness guide you, this is mine. Not perfect. Not polished. But full of magic, movement, meaning, and dirt. Always, always dirt.
