Bold tracks and Bagpacks

  There are years that rush past you like a strong wind on a ridgeline, and then there are years that carve themselves into your bones. This one did both. It ran, stumbled, lifted, tumbled, and somehow still held my hand through every sunrise. It has been equal parts chaotic and compassionate, a beautifully disorganized universe, operating with precision beneath the surface. As the year folds itself into its final pages, I find myself sitting still, not because life has stopped, but because I finally learned how to quiet my own noise. Where Strangers Become Stories If I were to measure this year, I wouldn’t count the trophies or the tired days.  I’d count the strangers. The ones I met on trails, sweaty and breathless on mountain ridges. The ones serving me dinner on evenings when I chose solitude over crowds. The ones in boardrooms, in parks, in supermarkets, in conversation queues of life. Strangers who became friends. Friends who became familiar. Some who drifted away wi...

  It’s been a minute since I did a traverse hike. And I must have been out of my mind to think I was back in shape for one. Say what? The weather in the Aberdares is always something else, wild, moody, humbling. This year, hiking has been what I’d call polite,  not easy, but kind. The mountains have given grace. But last week, I prayed for rain. I missed the chaos, the kind that tests not just your boots, but your spirit. The Aberdare trails answered generously. The ascent up Table Mountain was brutal. The kind that leaves you talking to yourself, bargaining with your breath. My rain pants stayed forgotten somewhere at home, so the rest of me had to make peace with the soaking. But the boots held firm, my Salomons biting the mud like loyal soldiers. By the summit, the wind came from the belly of the clouds, the cold biting deep. We stayed barely ten minutes,  there was no view to steal your breath, only mist, wind, and the silent kind of triumph that doesn’t need an au...