It's about time we all got out of the house, wouldn't you say? Even if you can't physically remove yourself from inside of four walls, nothing's stopping you from immersing yourself in these narratives.

Anonymous writers share their personal narratives regarding adventure and travel through real-life, verified stories. Hear their point of view!

Adventure & Travel Narratives - The Doe

It's about time we all got out of the house, wouldn't you say?

Adventure

I have always been fascinated by the depths our bodies can endure. The duality of our mind both creates walls and destroys them. When we are tested, we are capable of much more than we think. This train of thought has led me down a path of all different self-experiments and, in the summer of 2018, a perfect storm of sleep deprivation, drugs and an ultramarathon led me to discover “the edge.”

It began at my business partner's wedding, a beautiful affair on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Upstate New York. In three days, I was due to race an ultra-marathon on the other side of the country in the Nevada desert at Burning Man. I had the best intentions to behave myself at the wedding, but one cocktail turned into several, then someone slipped me some ecstasy and mushrooms, and the evening was off to a wild ride.

The night raged on and culminated with lovemaking at sunrise with a lady friend on a mattress we pulled out of a dusty supply cupboard. Sunday morning delivered one of those ghastly headaches that open bars at weddings are famous for. I ambled my way back to Brooklyn to pack for Burning Man. By the time I packed, I’d managed to eke out three hours' sleep before flying to Portland to collect our RV. 

We arrived in Portland on Monday around lunchtime and picked up our RV. The race was in 17 hours and maps said it was a 12-hour drive. We hit the road stopping only for fuel and supplies. We carefully hid a considerable cache of recreational drugs intended to last us six days at the Burn. My friend and I split the driving and, around sunset, I started to hit my first wall.

A wall for me is an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. It’s the body's “low battery” warning. I tried to nap, but by the time I found a comfy position in the RV, it was my time to drive again. I cranked a Red Bull and some techno music to find a second wind. We arrived at the famous Burning Man traffic jam around 3 a.m. By the time we were through the gates, only an hour remained before the race.

As I laced up my shoes, I hit my second wall. Three hours of sleep in three nights started to catch up with me. Imagine the finish line, I thought. I trudged towards the start line. Butterflies formed in my stomach, adrenaline coursed through my veins. The energy of 300 eager ultramarathoners brought upon a much-needed third wind and I was ready to race.

When people say Burning Man has something for everyone, it’s true. If your thing is subjecting yourself to a sustained battering of your legs, aerobic system and mind, then there’s an ultramarathon for that. These are the deranged masochists of Burning Man. Many are dressed in costumes. There are tutus, a Superman, a leprechaun. One guy is fully naked except for his shoes. The race is four full laps of the festival. I told myself I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Running is an easy sport. The only real thing you need to do is not stop. Some say it’s the art of dying the fastest. The hard part is convincing yourself to not stop. Your mind wants to throw up walls and convince you that you are in danger and should no longer go on, but the mind also has the power to overcome. It’s as much about inner strength as it is about outer strength. Mind over body.

At 5 a.m., the starting bell rang. We made our way through the dark campsites and out onto the playa, full of lights, art, cars and music. The Milky Way bore high overhead. By the second lap, light appeared on the horizon, and the sun rose over the playa revealing revelers who were still partying from the night before.

By lap four, the sun blazed overhead. I found myself sitting in 11th place. At 42 kilometers in, I felt a third wall coming on. My legs started to feel heavy. My mind convinced me that I was doing some permanent damage to my joints as my knees and ankles screamed in pain. My lungs stung from the heat and my eyes were red from the dust. My pace slowed to a crawl with the finish line in sight. I told myself to keep going but the body refused to listen. I stopped.

At this point, I heard measured panting from behind. A fully naked man in his 50s slowly jogged past me. I tried to move my legs to keep up with him, but my legs had no more to give. There is a slow sad irony of being overtaken by a naked man in a marathon. You can’t help but check out his dusty tanned butt cheeks as they slowly pass you. A strange torture.

In the wake of his cheeks, I found a fourth wind. If a naked man could finish this race, so could I. Using energy conjured from an unknown source, I found the willpower required for the last eight kilometers. Shattered and dusty, I rolled into the finish line in a little under four hours. An honorable finish considering the sheer lack of sleep. My friends were there to greet me.

It was 9 a.m. and my crew was rested and ready for action. Someone slipped me a tab of acid and we were off on our bikes exploring the playa. The acid and excitement of exploration brought on a fifth wind. The acid negates the exhaustion and we bounced from party to party. With a little top-up of ketamine, we headed off to a sunset dance party. By the time 4 a.m. rolled around, I was in awe of my body. Still standing and into my fourth sleep-deprived night. Alas, the sixth and final wall hit me. I knew this experiment should end. Delirium overtook me and I asked my friend Nicole to escort me safely back to camp. We zig-zagged home and on the final turn before our camp, the world turned black.

Nicole dropped her bike and raced over to my dusty, tangled body. She removed my bike from on top of me as I regained consciousness. My eyes fluttered open and I saw a frightened look upon her eyes. I laughed like a hyena. “What’s funny?” she said. 

“Only those who have been over the edge know where the edge is,” I said. “And we found the edge.”

Best of 2021

Drugs & Alcohol

Running a Marathon on No Sleep and Lots of Drugs: Discovering the Edge

It was my girlfriend Liv’s 21st birthday. Because I have ADHD, I naturally had forgotten to get her a present. That day I was meant to be meeting her to spend an evening drinking cocktails at overpriced bars. Instead, I spent a guilt-fueled morning gathering a collection of token presents for her, so she wouldn’t instantly remind me that I was the worst boyfriend ever. The problem was that none of the presents was quite “right.” After all, this was her 21st. I had to get her something spot-on. 

Fast forward six months to the summer we were traveling through China. On one train ride, I had been flicking through a Lonely Planet travel guide when suddenly I saw my way out of the predicament of the present. 

We’d just finished the summer teaching in Chinese classrooms and earning our TEFLs (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Then a few weeks traveling the big cities: Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an.

By the time we got to Beijing, it was time to spring my surprise. I snuck out of the hostel early and spent the morning alternating between the fire that was the Beijing smog and the frying pan of Beijing’s smelly, crowded subways. I returned an hour or so later, feeling both lighter due to the pride that filled me and heavier for all the camping gear I carried. 

I sat at the entrance to the hostel and got chatting with a traveling group. They were heading to Shanghai that day and had some weed on them. Do I want to buy it? They can’t risk taking it through the airport-style security you must go through to get on China’s high-speed trains. 

Weed is especially rare in China. So, what do I say? “Sure!” This is a camping trip, after all. 

I return to our room to explain to Liv what her birthday present is—a camping trip on the Great Wall of China. She asks me if it's legal to camp on the Great Wall. Not exactly, I explain. But it’s 13,000 miles long; they can’t patrol it all, right? 

If you ever go to Beijing and visit the Great Wall, you’ll probably go to Badaling. It’s the part of the Wall that you see in tourist pictures, all rebuilt and shiny new, prepared for your tourist photos. That was not where Liv and I went. We went up to Gubeikou—via six hours of bus rides with three changes. We’re trying to avoid being caught, remember?

So, we get to Gubeikou and to the gate that admits entry onto the Wall. No other English-speaking tourists must ever make it this far because the admittance attendant didn’t have anything to say to us other than “closed.” However, we hadn’t come this far to turn back now. Plus, I was still trying to redeem myself for forgetting my girlfriend’s 21st birthday. 

As I said, it’s a big fucking wall. So, we simply walked away and began to climb again. 

An hour and a half later, we had hiked high enough away from the small village below us and up onto the Wall. Our tent was made and basecamp was established for the night. Liv offered me a wink and a wry smile that said “Well done, you.”

At this point, I pulled out the weed. It was pre-rolled so no messing about. We smoked and smoked and watched as the sun set. At that moment, we were a little pearl in a giant oyster of a Chinese summer adventure. 

It is remarkable how quickly a picture-perfect scene can be so quickly disrupted by the eerie, unnerving descent of nightfall. For weeks, we had taught in classrooms and toured the big cities. Now, up here on the hills of remote China, it was quiet. Too quiet. Unnervingly quiet. There wasn’t even a dog howling at the moon. 

“What was that?” said a startled Liv.

I brushed it off. “Nothing, of course, just some animal.” 

But the sniffing grew louder. Without any light whatsoever, it was too easy to let the shadows play with our imaginations. 

“James,” Liv said, “What animals do they have in Northern China?”

We had Chinese SIM cards, so we quickly loaded up Google to settle our nerves. No such luck. Our search revealed that they have both bears and wolves in this part of China. Now we’re panicked.

We rush into the tent. Inside it, I try to collect myself. Liv has lost her head. She’s sharing her location to her group chat and telling her friends to make sure her mum knows she loves her. I interrupt that there’s no time to think about that now. Sending those kinds of messages would somehow make this whole nightmare more real.

How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I check? Surely this isn’t how I’m going to go? To a fucking bear on the Great Wall out in the middle of nowhere? I’m not the live-fast-die-young type. Let me grow old in a care home somewhere. 

“Liv. What if we get outside of the tent?”

“If it is a bear, what if we go out?”

Liv looks at me like I have lost my mind. (At this point, there’s a good chance that I have.) If it merely smells us, it might come to investigate. But on the other hand, if it sees us, then it might turn and leave us alone and go hunt some smaller prey. Between us, we can look big in the dark, right?

She leans forward and says I should go first. We find the time to rock-paper-scissors. My heart is banging.

I lean forward. Liv lets out a scream with anticipation. I turn around to shush her sternly, fully aware I have no idea whether a scream makes a situation like this better or worse. There is no precedent for the process of my decision-making. Every reaction is now a hot mess of instinct, conditioning and my brain scrambling to piece together any scrap of Ray Mears and Bear Grylls that I’ve caught over my life.

The sniffing grows ever louder. It’s screaming in my head over against the absolute silence from a petrified Liv in the corner.

I lean for the zip. I take several attempts to grasp it because my hand is shaking so much. Eventually, I manage to steady my nerves long enough to take hold. Do I do it slowly or all at once, like a Band-Aid?

Band-Aid. Go! Zip open. I clamber out. My best foot forward. Or kind of forward. It's shaking so much that it oscillates six inches either way with every inch that I creep forward.

I see what’s going on and my brain pieces it together even though it’s forgotten all other functions. I scream. Liv practically backflips in fear. She has no idea what I’ve seen.

The weed’s got us way too high. I still hear the sniffing still but it’s not a bear or a wolf. 

It’s a rabbit. A big rabbit I must say, but a rabbit, nonetheless.

I turn to her with a huge smile on my face. I can’t even explain at first. God, it really is the biggest kind of rush thinking you’re going to die. Now don’t get me wrong. At this point, I realize I never was in any actual danger, but I thought I was. I genuinely believed I was going to die and so my nervous system acted accordingly. Blood had drained away from every non-essential area and was coursing through my body. I mean coursing. My heart was throbbing right into the underside of my ribcage.

I started to laugh and I just. Could. Not. Stop. 

Liv looked angry, as if she were going to kill me. Still laughing, I leaned in and kissed her. It was meant to be a quick kiss. A reassuring kiss. However, the combination of adrenaline and relief, it turns out, makes for a potent aphrodisiac.

I tried to pull away, but she pulled me back in. She kissed me hard. I could feel her breath panting. There was something in her breath, a heavy breath outward, the kind that would usually be rude, right in my face. She opened her eyes but didn’t look up when I pulled away.

A switch in my mind just flipped. My heart hadn’t slowed down from the scare, but my nervous system managed to spare me just a little blood for one essential purpose. And so it went—the hottest, most passionate, most animalistic sex that I ever had. There we were, young, alive and fucking on the Great Wall of China. 

Goosebumps

NSFW

Travel

I Thought I Was Going to Die and Then Had the Best Sex of My Life on the Great Wall of China

Here’s a general breakdown of how a normal dating progression tends to go: 

First date, drinks. Second date, dinner. Third date, drinks and dinner.  Fourth date: dinner, drinks and an activity. 

And here is the dating breakdown of my most recent relationship: first date, drinks and more drinks. Second date, dinner. Third date, drinks and dinner. Fourth date—drinks, then casually spending 94 days in a row together, driving across the entire Eastern seaboard of America with two dogs and all of our stuff, as we attempted to navigate and survive a once-in-lifetime global pandemic.

When COVID-19 started making its way across the United States in March of 2020, there were several articles about couples who just met quarantining together and some even deciding to live together. My favorite headline came from Glamour: “Are Couples Who Moved in Together for Quarantine Okay?”

Many of those couples did it because of ease, some out of necessity, and some out of complete and utter boredom. It was both the most romantic and unromantic approach to dating, much in the vein of, “I want to spend every single minute with you—mostly because you are a body that just so happens to be here.”

But if you were to ask me why I spent 94 straight days with basically a total stranger, my answer would be pretty simple: It just made sense. We never planned anything more than a week or two out, and like the rest of America and the world, we were forced to make every major life decision, slowly, day-by-day with equal parts confusion, uncertainty, fear and cautious excitement.

I met Emily at the end of February 2020 on the dating app Hinge. It’s like Raya but for poor people. Our first date was an epic bar crawl through the Gowanus-Park Slope area of Brooklyn. We had good chemistry and a fun, bombastic rapport. She was just fresh off a divorce and I was fresh off a haircut. 

I would describe my previous dating history as a colorful contradiction of being a lifelong serial monogamist with commitment issues—kind of like a guy who joins the Army but hates war. I later found out that I was Emily’s first online date after her divorce so, in a lot of ways, we were an ideal match because we both longed for connection. 

Our night ended the same way all first dates in Brooklyn end: having whisper sex in a cramped, tiny apartment so you don’t wake the neighbors who can hear everything through the adjacent paper-thin walls. While your dog watches. 

We then had a second date a few days later where I went to her apartment to watch Jojo Rabbit, which has one of my favorite endings of any movie ever. Once the credits started rolling, the film shows this passage:

I apprehensively decided to go through with my long-planned vacation to Vienna, Austria, where I was basically crashing my best friend’s honeymoon. Like they say, “If you can’t beat them, be a third wheel and pretend you just got married.” Our trip was fantastic and eerie, with the ubiquitous news of a looming pandemic buzzing in every bar, museum and cafe.  

While I was in Vienna, I maintained contact with Emily, and on my very last night in the majestic city, President Trump announced that all travel to and from Europe was suspended. Because Trump made the declaration in the middle of the night, I woke up to a series of hilarious and not so hilarious texts from my friends and family saying things like: “Hey you’re stuck in Europe forever, Emperor Trump has decreed it so.” “Can I have your dog?” “Enjoy Vienna for the rest of your life.” 

Luckily, my flight was the next morning so I was able to barely slip past the Trump travel ban by a day and make it back to Brooklyn safely. As soon as I landed at JFK, Emily picked me up. On the way home, I casually mentioned to Emily, “Hey I think I’m going to go to my uncle’s house in New Jersey for a week until this blows over. I’m guessing it’ll be for a week or so.” OK, so I was a little off by about 63 weeks.

I asked her if she wanted to join me and used the very effective pitch that my uncle’s house happened to be a fantastic, epic and sprawling mansion in the remote woods of suburban New Jersey that was also completely unoccupied at the time. Emily reluctantly agreed to join me with her brutish, yet somehow baby-like pitbull, Taco, under the guise that she had to go back to teach at her Brooklyn high school on a moment’s notice. I am a comedian/actor/podcast host so I could be anywhere other than in my parent’s favor.

It was here that the reality of our situation and the pandemic started actually settling in, as we silently gazed at each other in a remote, cavernous mansion in the middle of nowhere. I subconsciously whispered a key thought to myself that I know Emily was also considering, “Oh fuck, I don’t actually know you.” This was hilariously manifested in several ways including going to a pandemic-barren Whole Foods together for the first time and literally uttering these words as we nervously perused the aisles, “So, what kind of food do you eat?” 

It wasn’t until about a month or so of quarantine together that we even knew each other’s middle names. Our cohabitation was helped massively by the fact that Emily actually brought a get-to-know-you icebreaker card game where we were allowed to ask each other questions about our personal lives. So as the world seemingly crumbled around us, Emily and I pulled out a bottle of my uncle’s finest red and took turns pulling cards that would hopefully give us more clues about the stranger sitting in front of them. 

It turns out Emily was from Pottstown, a gritty but friendly suburb of Philly. She grew up as a determined, tough and chronic overachiever, and split time between her divorced parents. I was from an idyllic and boring suburb of Chicago, with a childhood riddled with joy, repression and overheated perfectionism, sometimes all at once.

I think It’s important to take a timeout here and give a quick shoutout to alcohol. I was a moderate weekend drinker before the pandemic but during the pandemic, I discovered it was possible to consistently have wine teeth that resembled a boxer who had been punched in the face several times by an angry Russian with mob ties. There’s a reason that liquor stores were deemed “essential.” Alcohol calmed our nerves and allowed us to open up more quickly than if we were sober. And who the fuck wants to be sober in a pandemic other than Trump? We saw how that turned out. It makes you say dumb shit like, “Hey maybe you should drink bleach.”

We spent our days in New Jersey working. She taught children and brightened young minds over Zoom, and I dreamt of new and effective ways to tell dick jokes to strangers for approval. At night, she’d cook dinner (I’m not sexist) and we had great wine and watched classic movies like Groundhog Day, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. 

Toward the end of our first week together, my cousin and best friend Andrea started texting me, floating the idea of us driving down to Sarasota, Florida where she had a fantastic and most importantly, free house. I knew Emily was apprehensive about coming to New Jersey, so the idea of driving 1,200 miles with two dogs and a loose plan would be a stretch. So I “slow-played” the Florida trip, by casually mentioning it a couple of times. 

Since our first full week in quarantine went significantly well and without a hitch (other than her pitbull devouring one of my dog’s toys), eventually, and much to my surprise, she agreed. 

So, we packed up our several bags, two dogs, their beds and squeaky toys, and crammed into a rental car dead set on making it to Florida in less than 24 hours. We cruised through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., Virginia. The further south we drove, the more the landscape opened up, revealing hundreds of barren miles of highway, sparsely populated rest stops and gas stations, shuttered storefronts and sparkly, flashing neon signs that read, “Stay at home.” 

One particular rest stop was so deserted that several cars formed a makeshift drag race, sporadically peeling out as their tires burned rubber, scorched our eardrums and gave us the staunch impression that we were no longer under the pretense of “normal times.”

Despite the palatable uneasiness of traversing a drastically haunted America, I was exceedingly grateful for leaving New York City, especially as news of the COVID-19 cases and death count continued to mount. Waking up in a Virginia hotel room the next morning, hundreds of miles away from the epicenter of the coronavirus, I couldn’t help but be thankful to be safe in a warm, clean room, with Emily and the two dogs. And it was right around this time that I began to internalize one of the greatest lessons from the pandemic: When time stops, you have no choice but to look at what’s in front of you and be grateful. 

When time and the world stop, as they did during COVID-19, you are gifted with the opportunity of seeing the wheel for what it really is, a man-made construct that can be easily flipped over, torn down and reimagined into something more humane. 

If pre-pandemic me woke up in that very same hotel room, my first thoughts would be along the lines of: “Email someone to try and get a job,” “Get more followers on Instagram,” “Is that how you look with a shirt off? You look like actual milk.” Instead, I quietly gazed around that Marriott Residence Inn and thought, “Wow, a room.” “Cool, a bed.” “This girl next to me is very sweet.” 

The beautiful simplicity of these thoughts is nothing to scoff at. We’ve all heard about beer goggles. COVID-19 gave us all the opportunity to have presence goggles, the intense ability to sit with our reality and find something, anything to truly feel and be grateful about. 

The next morning, we did what we would later term a “full company move,” which meant once again packing up all of our stuff, our dogs and hopping into the car to continue our journey to Florida. Somewhere around Gainesville, we stopped at a gas station and saw a pickup truck full of pit bulls in cages and thought, “Oh this is the batshit Florida everyone talks about.” After hearing two different people with no masks on and very few teeth say, “I don’t care what the government says, they ain’t shutting my vape store down,” we made the sound decision to not stop again. And the even better decision to never vape. 

We eventually made it to Sarasota, dropped the dogs off and met my cousin on a boat that her boyfriend owned. To go from the COVID-19 hub of New York to the cool ocean waters of Sarasota is like going from a jackhammer to a back massage. The ocean air was a welcomed assault on our senses, as the teal, translucent intercoastal water lightly splashed at our feet, politely informing us that there is actually an easier way to live. 

And we did live that way. Here is our breakdown of how we lived for the next three months of our quarantine: seven different Airbnbs, five rental cars (changing them so many times that it began to feel like we were in the witness protection program), 120 coffees, one George Floyd rally, 14 trips to Publix, five boat rides, 25 trips to the beach, 30 straight nights of drinking, five dolphin spottings, a month of watching the documentary, The Last Dance, endless nights of card games, connection, laughs, incredible sex (some in a hot tub—sorry Emily’s body), one very negative Airbnb review and an odyssey unlike anything I’ve ever experienced or probably will experience again. 

But our stay wasn’t without tragedy. Andrea’s dad, my uncle, was admitted to the ICU due to COVID complications. Fortunately, he made it through, but the same couldn’t be said for her mom, Ronda, who passed away in July of 2020. 

One of the last nights of our time in Florida, I got an urgent text from my sister while I was on a boat in the middle of the coast, saying that my grandma was dying and I had to say goodbye over the phone. This was extremely unsettling for so many reasons, including the fact that I was completely hammered. So Andrea and I stood at the edge of the boat as it was anchored by a nearby island, and we told our grandma we loved her and thanked her for the eight amazing children she brought into the world. During the boat ride back to shore, the sky ripped open in a reddish, purple haze, a color I never knew was possible. All you could see for miles was the horizon and the possibility of endlessly more. And at this sacred moment, maybe the most important lesson of the pandemic hit me: Somehow life continues. And the poignant words from Jojo Rabbit were replaying in my head on a loop, “Just keep going.” 

Now that the pandemic is seemingly coming to end, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that humans always manage to do that, they “just keep going.” Or in the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” And it’s my biggest hope for the world that when the pandemic is finally over, we all realize we have no choice other than to dance.

I Don't Know You, Let's Live Together: Traveling With a Stranger During the Pandemic

"It's not all her blood,” I hear my Sergeant First Class say to the medic. I am sitting on the exam table staring straight ahead, not exactly certain where I am or what has happened.

The medic looks at me and then nods at the NCO who accompanied me to the clinic. He asks if I am hurt and my response comes out as a shrug. I’m not trying to be difficult: I truly don’t know how to answer the question. I am in a daze, completely oblivious to any pain and unsure of where all the blood is coming from.

The medic begins examining my head, probably due to the abundance of blood covering my right ear, neck and shoulder. He discovers small pieces of shrapnel lodged behind my ear. We will later joke how some pieces had literally pierced my ear. He picks the shrapnel out, one piece at a time, and deposits each with an audible clink into a metal pan sitting next to the exam table.

He speaks slowly and quietly and says, "You know, when you get back to Anaconda, there are counselors you can talk to. Your sergeant told me this isn't your first attack. You can go home if you want. No one comes back the same after they have been through what you have been through."

I nod and clear my throat to speak for the first time. I try to swallow but my throat is dry from the smoke and debris of the explosion. All I can muster out is, "Do you think I could keep a few pieces of the shrapnel? I think I can make an earring out of it."

Just a few hours prior, we were on a routine return mission back to our base camp. We were truck drivers and it was May of 2004. We drove all over the country delivering supplies to soldiers. Water, food, ammunition: You name it, we hauled it. And our vehicles of choice were M915s—traveling targets on wheels.

On May 25, 2004, shortly before noon, the 915 I was driving was hit by a roadside bomb. We were the lead truck behind the first gun truck.

This was my choice. I wanted to be in the lead.

My A-driver, my battle buddy, my best friend and soon-to-be-dad carried an M-249 machine gun. We always agreed that the lead of the convoy was where we belonged. One minute we were taking the curve upward on the ramp leading to a bridge; the next minute we were deafened by the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. The blast was accompanied by a rush of debris, thick smoke and overwhelming pressure.

I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remember is the steering wheel shaking. I can't see, I can't hear, but I can feel the truck. I push down with my right foot on the gas pedal, no clue where I’m headed or what has happened.

After seemingly forever—but only seconds in reality—the smoke begins to clear and I can identify my surroundings. Although I can see, I still can’t hear anything. I look over to my right and see my battle buddy covered in blood. He is holding his face, rocking back and forth. I can tell he is shouting, but I can’t hear his voice.

He falls over on me. He begins clawing at his face. That’s when I see it. The blood is spewing from his forehead and right eye socket and his right eye is hanging from a thread. I can tell he is screaming, but I still can’t hear him. I rub his back and I tell him it's all good.

I call in a medevac and am later told I was talking in a jumbo mess of words. Clearly, the trauma from the explosion was playing with my communication skills. The truck begins to lose momentum. It's beginning to stall. I get to the top of the bridge and park it as close to the bridge as I can. I have over 20 trucks behind me that need to get by. I tell my battle buddy, my best friend, this soon-to-be-dad I will be right back. I jump out and flag down a truck. The KBR-manned civilian truck panics and drives by. The next military truck drives by. They are following protocol, but I need help. I need to get my partner medical care. 

I go back to our truck and scream at him that I am going to get him out. I guide him to crawl across to the driver’s seat and I scoop him out. I drag him on to the ground and I cradle him like the little brother he is to me. Someone shows up and they hand me a bottle of water.

I pour it over his head to truly assess the damage and that’s when I notice that his right eyeball is gone: It must have fallen off in the truck.

I cradle him and soothe him and tell him it's going to be okay. I can hear him now. He’s saying repeatedly that he will never see his baby boy. I try to reassure him that he will see him. I tell him it's going to be just fine.

We get him into a truck that stops and up a few hundred yards and we create a secure site for the medevac to land. I stay with the convoy and grab all our weapons, ammunition and radio from our tuck.

I jump into another truck speeding by and I think someone tells me to stay put in the truck. But I don’t. I get out and pull security.

After the medevac takes off with my battle buddy, my best friend, this soon-to-be dad, we head to the closest camp in a town called Taji.

Justice

Insiders

American Stories

An Iraq War Veteran’s Story: How I Got My Purple Heart

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

When most Americans travel to escape their day-to-day life, they bury themselves in exclusive resorts, world-class dining and exotic locations. My first international trip, on the other hand, took place in an impoverished area of the densest city on Earth. For four months, I lived with an urban poor family whose income was $20 per day. I experienced metropolitan Manila as few Americans ever will: from the fringes of society, where I learned valuable lessons about materialism, gratitude, resilience and where to find fulfillment. 

Officially, I was a tourist, at least according to my visa, but my time in the Philippines was not a vacation. I arrived there to complete a requirement for my undergraduate degree: to live, study and volunteer for a semester in an urban poor international location. I chose Manila because of the tropical weather and my vague familiarity with the culture, which came via a Filipino mentor and friends.

The school I was enrolled with had no official presence in the country, save for a site facilitator. This person was a local who arranged housing and an internship. The site facilitator organized a legally dubious living arrangement, where I sublet a room for $150 per month (about 7,000 Philippine pesos) from a family of five. 

The home I lived in had been converted into two rental spaces. My host family occupied one section, containing a tiny living room, two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen that could fit one person at a time. The family could only afford one bedroom, so the other remained empty. The property owner left for his familial province before finding another tenant, which made the room available to me. I technically had no legal right to rent the room from my host family but was given no other choice. 

The room was sparsely furnished: a single twin bed and one small, unfinished wood desk. The floor was smooth concrete with a burgundy coating. I slept on a pancake mattress beneath a window without glass or a screen, giving easy access for mosquitos to feast on my blood. The ceiling was split at the center and transformed into an inverted geyser during daily rain showers. I did not have hot water, clean drinking water from the faucets, access to a refrigerator or Wi-Fi. I struggled with the inaccessibility to amenities I had taken for granted.

Stripped of the usual comforts, I questioned what made my life enjoyable. This dilemma framed my time in the Philippines, spurring a painful revaluation.

My experience with locals was a big factor in my transformation. Thanks to all of the charity television commercials I’d seen portraying the poorest people in the world as also the unhappiest, I expected to see defeated faces. It was a shock to see a jubilant populace. Those I befriended lived in conditions unfathomable for most Americans. Many were squatters who lived in makeshift homes on land they did not own and lived in constant fear of eviction. Their homes were built with corrugated metal and thin plywood. Few could access clean drinking water. Yet the crushing weight of poverty failed to exterminate their dreams or joy. I mostly remember bad puns, jokes about how I couldn’t handle the humidity and impromptu dancing and singing. I learned that economic models only predict people’s material disposition but fail to capture the radiance of the human spirit. 

Although I was floored by their determined positivity, poverty still inflicts a toll. I recall brimming with tears over dinner one night as my host mother—a strong woman in her late 40s—talked about her eldest child’s goal of becoming a doctor. She admitted that such lofty ambitions were expensive, and they could not afford the schooling. It broke my heart to watch a parent soberly explain how unlikely it is her child will achieve their dreams.

To have poverty’s devastating effects explained over a dimly lit dinner table by a mother struggling to make ends meet made it tangible. I felt the finality in her words and was confronted with the monster lingering at the end of optimism: defeat. The reality that snuffs out dreams and robs ambition. Despite feeling the weight of her fears, I understood that I could never completely grasp her struggle.

I carried the privilege of being a temporary visitor. After just four months, I would return home to Southern California —a wealthy enclave in one of the richest countries on Earth. Compared to the people I built relationships with in Manila, I was the one percent.

Returning home, I struggled to integrate my experiences. The enormity of inequality stunned me. It felt unfair that my Manila friends would likely never have the access to wealth, amenities or infrastructure the way I do. Countering those thoughts was the understanding that my friends were making the most of life. That dissonance uncovered a critical truth: Life may present immovable obstacles, but fulfillment can be had anywhere.

As a younger millennial living in fraught times, I often think about what brings my life fullness. I learned long ago that wealth is only a part of the answer. While wealth alleviates stressors that make life unenjoyable, I’m convinced that fullness of life cannot be achieved solely through economic means—there is fulfillment attainable only through intangible things that are harder to count. 

Squatting in the Philippines for four months with an urban poor family proved that to me. I felt it walking through flooded streets with my friends after a trip to the mall, in conversations after dinner with my host mother, in the compassion extended when I sought help from strangers. Manila is many things. For me, it was an awakening.

Living as a Squatter in Manila Was an Educational Experience

In 2016, Mum, the linchpin of our family, suddenly collapsed and died. She was 81 years old but lived life like she was 30 years younger. There was so much more left in her, and we were not ready to lose her. 

I missed her passing by 20 minutes. My brother met me at the hospital doors and shook his head. The strong, loving woman who we all turned to for advice, support and reassurance was gone. As he pulled me into a tight hug, a guttural roar left my body, which both astounded and terrified me. I remember thinking afterward, “So this is the sound of grief.” 

Months later, as the family gathered to scatter Mum’s ashes, my older brother became seriously unwell and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where the quick thinking of a local doctor saved his life. He had encephalitis. He made a slow and incomplete recovery. Our family life was changing rapidly.

And then, the worst happened: In 2018, my husband died. We had just celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary when he suffered a massive heart attack from out of the blue. I loved him. We were supposed to grow old together. 

My children, now young adults, looked to me to help nurse them through their grief. Watching them suffer and being unable to support them hurt the most. I was exhausted from crying and reliving the moment when I found my husband’s body. Exhausted from replaying how he might still be alive had I only found him sooner. The two people I needed to lean on, to help me be the person my children needed, were gone. I was a drowning woman unable to save her children who were drowning too. 

The following year, my aunt died, and the year after that, my beloved mother-in-law. The matriarchs of the family had now all gone. The love of my life had gone. I felt so alone.

Work was a distraction, and there was no shortage of social outings. Life was busy, but despite the activity, wonderful friendships and tight bond with my children, my joie de vivre had evaporated. Life was colorless. I now walked around carrying a dull, black weight. My children continued to look to me for the security that my husband and mother had provided, but I could offer little.

It was a chance conversation with my friend, Caitlin, that changed everything. She and her husband owned a small farm that had been in the family for 200 years. It was in a part of rural Ireland that I had never heard of. I was welcome to use it.

“Won’t you feel lonely?” my friends and family asked. 

“You hate being on your own,” my daughter protested. “Is this a good idea?”

But I didn’t have anything to lose. I felt alone in a place where I was surrounded by people who cared for me. I needed to do something. Something needed to change.

It was a bleak January day when I arrived at the farm. The rain was tipping from gray clouds, and a cold wind whipped up waves across the lough as it dramatically came into view while I whizzed along the country road. The shock of the dark, ominous water just meters away made me gasp. 

Panicky and feeling very vulnerable, I pulled over to calm my nerves and reread the directions to the cottage that Caitlin had given me. I was soon on a track that twisted and turned steeply uphill for a mile or more. It was getting dark, and if I had any hope of finding the cottage, it needed to be soon. Suddenly, a stout farmer appeared at a gate. I stopped the car and leaped out.

“Hello,” he replied, stretching out his hand. “I’m Fionn.”

He was incredibly scruffy and he spoke with an accent that I could barely decipher, but one cannot choose their rescuer. 

I trustingly followed this stranger down a long, grassy lane. As we turned a corner, there it was: Caitlin’s cottage. It was a typical single-story Irish cottage of whitewashed stone. This was to be my home for the next three months. I thought of my children and longed for them.

The cottage was cold. It had lain empty for a few months, and there was evidence of damp in one of the bedrooms. My heart sank. 

“We’ll need to get that fire goin’,” said Fionn, “or you’ll get a dose of it.” There was a wood-burning stove in the living room. I watched as he stuffed it with paper twists, kindling and logs and was amazed at how quickly a fire began flickering behind the glass door. 

That night, as I lay in the total darkness of my bedroom, my phone in my hand, containing my only Irish contact—Fionn’s, “in case you need help”—I felt fear. Under my pillow was a knitting needle—my defense against intruders. I was completely alone. My children were on the other side of the Irish Sea. I prayed over and over again for my safety and for theirs. I prayed out loud to the house's ancestors, reassuring them that I meant no harm. If I survived tonight, would I stay another?

I woke the next morning to sunshine and blue skies. No moaning ancestors had disturbed my sleep. Everything looked brighter and more hopeful. There was a dusting of snow on the ground.

I dressed quickly, pulled on my wellies and set off to explore. To say that the views of the mountains and the lough were stunning would do them no justice. My dry soul opened up and drank thirstily. Something was happening to me. I stood with my arms outstretched and my face upturned to the heavens. I laughed out loud and thanked God for the beauty of nature. And that was the defining moment when I knew it would be OK. I would be safe here. I would find peace.

My friends had advised me to seek out the library in the nearby town for Wi-Fi access and a place to write. During a time when we were still required to wear face masks, connecting with new people proved challenging. At first, the librarians received me with skepticism, although both were courteous and friendly. By degrees, I came to be trusted. A library membership card was offered and a space created for me to work. I began serving tea at the weekly knitting circle, helped at the launch of the library’s first art exhibition and joined its new book club. The librarian became my confidante as we laid the foundations of a firm friendship. 

The winter season passed with many a squall and storm rattling the barn doors and swooshing the trees surrounding the cottage, yet I felt secure inside my cozy home. I loved the dark evenings when I could watch my favorite TV quiz program, listen to the local radio, knit or read. Some evenings, there would be a gentle tap on the door, and Fionn would be standing on the doorstep with a shy smile, calling by to check that all was well and see if I had enough fuel. He made me feel safe and cared for—something that I had missed since my husband died. Our conversations would take off slowly, our polar-opposite life experiences allowing no immediate jumping off point. He was a farmer who had lived all his life in this small pocket of Ireland and had never left its shores. On the other hand, I lived in a busy city and traveled all over the world. Yet three cups of tea in and as many hours later, we would still be talking: him philosophizing about life, nature, man and the planet, me talking about my life in the city, work as a teacher, my family and my love of books. Our friendship burned slowly, but it was something that became as important to me as the mountain.

This great hulk of a man stood in stark contrast to the hulk of the mountain, with its burbling brooks, gushing streams, torrential rain and howling winds. He was gentle and offered safety, whilst the mountain both frightened and exhilarated me. I loved to stand in the middle of a field with the wind driving rain into my face. It was wild, exciting and fierce and reminded me that I was alive. 

Then spring crept in, and I learned that the mountain could be equally gentle and caressing and musical with the sound of bleating lambs and sheep, the rare sound of the cuckoo, the sight of brown hares, sparrows, thrushes and wagtails. I quickly fell in love with it all—with the people and their country ways, their unique language, their benevolent welcome and inclusion. My heart sang each time I stood and looked up at a full bright moon, a clear starry sky or the sun casting an amber glow across the landscape before sunset. I loved the fields with their bright yellow whin bushes, the blossoms on the white thorn trees, the brown heather on the mountainside, the yellow daffodils when they bloomed in March.  

“You seem so different,” my friends said when I returned home in April. “Something has happened to you. You look so well. You seem happy.” My relationship with my children changed too. Gone was vulnerability and sadness. Here was a stronger woman, someone whom they could lean on. They were now free to lead their own lives because their mother was leading her own. 

I felt lighter, happy, hopeful. The mystical mountain and its people had led me to a place of healing. I’ve returned here to Ireland for the summer, and it continues to work its magic on me.

When Death Surrounded Me, A Mountain Retreat Changed My Life

You can call me stupid, but there’s something hiding outside the frame of the picture-perfect scene in our American Dreams. Somewhere between white lines flashing over a dark highway stretching out to infinity, like Kerouac meandering in the rain, I was caught in a charade. With enough LSD to manufacture a hundred once-in-a-lifetime experiences, my friends Peter Pan, Cubby, Dago and I left Missouri for two months on the road crossing the American West, expecting the once-in-a-lifetime experience everyone talks about but misses out on. So before you call me stupid, just call me Nibs and know this story feels more like an acid trip than one down memory lane. 

It was 2018 as I juggled a clusterfuck in one hand with the residual effects of a high-altitude acid trip in the other. All the while the land of orange sunshine toppled out of the sky and onto my shoulders, flattening my dreams under Kerouac’s footsteps and the shadow of Desolation Peak.

Cubby’s crammed into a pickle offshore two lakes and 10 miles down the trail of the only way out of the north cascades, leaving me to hike the last portion of a 55-mile trail alone with nothing left to believe but the word of Nibs, the lost boy inside my head. 

We tripped over the edge and crash-landed on the wrong side of the open road. But where exactly? I was trying to figure it out and with eight miles left sometimes I think I can still feel the acid, I just don’t feel the magic.

Peter Pan and Cubby knew each other the longest, from a Catholic grade school leaving them more godless than religious. I knew Dago more from buying the weed he grew out of his old roommate’s closest. Cubby, Dago and I moved in together and started spitballing ideas for a trip. Dago mapped out the details from Missouri to Utah, Utah to California, up the coast to the border and back any way but the way we came. If the details were a lost cause, Peter Pan would still be shirking responsibility, never growing up and leading the charge forward. Not to mention with Cubby scoring a hundred tickets to the land of orange sunshine, the plan may have been drug-induced, but it seemed sound enough.  

When we’d waited enough tables, striped enough parking lots and saved enough money to finally load Cubby’s truck and hit the road for I-70 west, we still believed we were about to do something great. Maybe it was the LSD, the stereo’s pot-scented rhythm or the fresh-cut summer jet stream making us believe the indescribable force under us could only be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

The sun hadn’t risen yet as the hangover from the night before was shrugged off in Utah. Cubby, still too drunk to drive his truck, left it to Peter Pan. Peter wove through the canyons of Zion, headlights cutting through the last bit of night. As Dago and I passed a joint back and forth, Cubby was lulled to sleep by tires humming to the music on the stereo. I rested my head, imagining the truck as a firefly blinking off and on around curves, trying to elude a glass jar. 

The truck stops, overlooking the Virgin River cutting through a meadow of sunburnt grass. We’d follow the river carving out the Narrows into Zion. The sun was already bright in an empty sky; we followed a trail sliding into the river. Cubby and I decided to slip acid onto our tongues before getting our feet wet. One by one, the boys stepped into the river, wading along short sandstone cliffs. The canyon began growing up around them, funneling them deeper into the narrows when the acid hit. 

I stopped. The river’s currents rushed by, too busy sculpting red walls, dotted by green life in the cracks above, each bend a new hall from another portion of a never-ending dream. Spellbound and starstruck by the cosmic luck it took for a river to carve out another world within canyon walls, the Narrows swallowed the boys whole. Cubby ran his hand along the canyon walls, my oversized pupils snapped to Dago and Peter Pan splashing ahead, playing hide-and-seek in columns hollowed out by million-year-old eddies, stepping away from the current for a moment to themselves. I placed my hand against the canyon, my eyes sinking below the surface to my submerged toes, where the river meets the red wall. The shallow water pulled pebbles from their recess as the pebbles skipped and glided, tumbling against the canyon wall, leaving their mark on the world before being driven back beneath the millions that came before them and the millions that will follow. For a moment, the pebble escaped, its only contribution being the passing of time. That was the pinnacle of the trip. Not the climax. That came later. 

From Zion to California, we chased that feeling, up the coast and kept going, following the plan as Dago recalled. In the North Cascades, the group divided. Peter Pan and Dago would float alongside the mountaintops. Cubby and I would trace Jack Kerouac’s footprints to Desolation Peak. 

At the base of Desolation Peak, Cubby and I awoke, the moon resting in Lake Ross. We dropped acid around 3 a.m. before ascending the trail in silence. The moon drifting behind blueberry-shaded mountaintops, we climbed up a bluff and around a bend. Pausing breathless, we were blown away by a nuclear sunrise detonating across the mountains in orange explosions glittering through the morning dew and winking to us with a thousand morning suns dripping off a million pine needles, each one burning their treasure behind our watering eyes. 

What answers did I want to find in my memories? An experience? Then what experience and whose? Would the memory feel like the acid? Would it ever lose its magic? Was it all the same? Bleaching our brains on LSD like lost boys gallivanting across a neverland culminated only in my mind with searching dead ends for answers.

Two miles left for Peter Pan and Dago. What am I looking for? I know the answer, I just don't want to admit it. 

At the top of Desolation Peak, where Kerouac wrote and I spent an hour coming down off acid, I saw a land clouded by smoke from a dream caught in wildfires a thousand miles down the road. I don’t know what I chased. I thought I could almost see you, Jack Kerouac. In Desolation, I know that I saw you. You spoke to me as I’m speaking now and all I have left to say, Jack, is that I don’t know if you’re a symbol or just another lost boy looking for a home. I don’t think you’re a myth anymore, Jack. I just think you’re a human. And even without angels pouring me heart-filled cups, your mother can keep her rosary. You’ll get no qualms from me. You’re too tangled in her apron to see past angels. You can keep your Desolation Peak and the burnt-out view too. Because if Kerouac points to angels, I’ll point to his ass and tell him to fuck himself. Him and all the shells of human tropes talking out of their ass and chasing after his generation’s used nostalgia can eat shit. Fuck Jack Kerouac. Who the fuck am I pretending to be? I’m following you, Jack. Who are we pretending to be? Is Nibs some Dharma bum or just Neal Cassady’s sidekick? Is that all I am? I want my own story, my own life. I want to be the main character; don’t you, Jack? 

Our feet were buried on the last day of Oceanside before driving up the coast to the Cascades. I wiggled my toes under the sand. I told Peter Pan I didn’t feel like the main character of the story. When Peter said he didn’t know how that felt, I kept watching the sand. Waves broke against an overcast day with neither Peter nor I having much more to say.

Leaving the beach, I was the only one sober enough to drive, which sparked Dago and Cubby to begin shit-talking over who’d sit where. Cubby said Dago is sitting bitch because it’s his truck. But Dago didn’t wanna sit bitch—he wanted to smoke cigarettes. And nobody’s gonna make Peter Pan sit bitch. So Dago sits bitch. Cubby on one side and Peter on the other when Dago began smoking his cigarettes, to which Cubby promptly rejected because Dago was sitting bitch and it’s his truck. That’s when nerves crack, and the surface tension breaks with Dago lunging, wrapping his hands around Cubby’s neck, choking him. Whatever magic was in the land of orange sunshine left with the air strangled out of Cubby. They struggled for a moment until I pulled over, Peter intervened, and Dago let Cubby’s head deflate from its purple balloon state. 

That was the climax. At least how I saw it. 

The Lost Boys were trying to paint reality into the orange sunshine, and this was the result. Cubby prodding, Dago snapping and me not caring until it spilled into my fun. That’s why the boys split up for this last hike. The acid and high-altitude sun fried Cubby, dehydrating him to malnourishment. They had tried to hike out, stopping whenever Cubby needed to rest. Each stop, though, meant being kamikazed by mosquito swarms, pushing Cubby deeper into a thousand-yard stare and me removing items from Cubby’s pack, hoping to keep moving. But when Cubby couldn’t go any further, I knew coming back for him was the best thing to do. 

That's what I remember. I wish I were more focused. My knee was bugging me, and these thoughts made me think there was more acid in my system than I realized. Then again, maybe I just want there to be. Why? Isn’t this exciting? Isn’t this the once-in-a-lifetime experience everyone wants? Where’s the rush? The excitement? Am I being serious or dramatizing this to be more interesting? Is Cubby in danger or just lazy? What are Peter Pan and Dago going to think? I don’t know, but I wish I didn’t think so much.

Lucky for us, a bridge came into sight. I was almost to the parking lot. I began running. I could see the row of license plates through the trees as the hill flattened. The trees dispersed. I was off the trail and in the parking lot. Dago and Peter Pan were smiling back as they made coffee. I told them about Cubby, and they thought I was joking. “Seriously?” they asked. I nodded, “Seriously.” But no one knows how to take this seriously.

We’d been over the edge for so long, responsibility seems chaotic, and freedom is orange sunshine. We weren’t sure how we should act, even when the rangers radioed a rescue mission to recover Cubby. A ranger picked Cubby up by boat, taking him to a four-wheeler, escorting him to another boat that brought Cubby ashore where we picked him up. Afterward, we headed to the nearest McDonald’s. It was over. We all knew it and that’s where it ended, eating McDoubles and stealing blue Powerade in a plastic cup before starting back home any way but the way we came. 

Now, you can call us stupid. But at least you know when we start tracing white lines into a never-ending sunset against the backdrop of a picture-perfect scene, we’re outlining a dream that may flutter but it’s always fleeting, like the sulfur after the firework show we all missed and leaving us to only say, “Aww.” Because the smoke’s the last glimpse of the real thing, before the green flash leaves us with a floating spot where the sun used to be and a spark that vanished before we knew it was there. A spark Kerouac saw, only to be missed out by generations trying to trap nostalgia in glass jars. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I tried catching fireflies in the land of orange sunshine, and it never added up to the once-in-a-lifetime moment someone else painted for me.

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