An Expansive Ocean (at Perfect Temperature) of Links & Recs
Plus: My Not Fancy European Packing List
I try very hard to leave the island where I live as little as possible from June through September. Starting around June 20th (and intermittently before), the weather is fairly inarguably perfect. We’re talking highs in the low 70s and cooling down to the low 50s at night, with no humidity, no mosquitos, no ticks, and because of our location, far less potential for wild fire smoke. (No climate is perfect and we have to deal with plenty of shit the rest of the year, so please allow us to revel in this one little stretch).
This year, I’m breaking my general guidelines to go trailrun/fastpack the Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites with my brother. We’re staying in the exquisite mountain huts (a mix of private rooms and dorms, mostly dorms) and traveling with very, very little on our backs (which is what makes the trail running/hiking scenario possible). Before meeting with my brother at the start of the trail, I’m traveling for five days through Austria (Vienna, Salzberg, Innsbruck) and apart from pressing publish on a few pieces/interviews I’ve already put together, I plan to live my best solo travel life, apologizing to no one about how many churches I want to duck into (“just to take a look!”).
I’ve been thinking about this trip for a long time, as it’s the first time my brother and I will do a (pretty arduous!) trip on our own as adults — and the first time I’ll be doing a non-work extended trip by myself. Also I’m running from hut to hut with everything I need on my back, so that necessitates some planning, too. So you’ll find all the usual mega-reading links below, as well as the highlights of my packing list, including my AMAZING NEW DOB KIT and some ardent requests for your feedback/ideas on my planned footwear and what I should be downloading to my Kindle ahead of time.
And if you missed it from this past week:
We talked about How to Make a Bouquet in Garden Study (which includes all the cut flower fillers I grew this year to start experimenting with bouquets)
And this week’s episode of is all about the labor and networks of romance writing — and how Kindle Unlimited has both supercharged and fucked over the market:
