Welcome to Patrol

This is a newsletter about the little-known world of backcountry trail work, the highs, the lows, the budget cuts, and the secrets of our ancient, dirty trade. Plus occasional polemics about existential threats to our home planet.

My newsletter has been featured and cited in:

• Leaked recordings detail a major environmental agency quietly gutting its workforce, Vox

• The Forest Service is cutting its seasonal workforce and public lands will suffer, High Country News

• Hiring freeze puts avalanche forecasters in a bind, Backcountry Magazine

• US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency, Grist

• The Dirtbag Power Hour Radio Show (RIP), Gila/Mimbres Community Radio KURU

Before suffering a chronic illness in 2023, I was a backcountry trail crew leader for four years in Montana, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and the Washington Cascades. Prior to that, I wrote about regional environmental politics for Connecticut Woodlands magazine, made it roughly 200 miles (10%) through a PCT thru-hike (half of it with a broken foot), and took more amateurish iPhone photos of the New England woods than perhaps anyone alive.

Hope you enjoy these stories, but more than that, enjoy the woods near you. Thanks for reading.