Off-trailing it

What if you got what you wanted? Could you deal?

Hiking the baby up a dozer line in an ill-chosen long-sleeve shirt.

A quick note to everyone who’s new here: Welcome! Thank you so much for subscribing. I sometimes write about plants, or climate/fire issues; and sometimes I just write about what I’m going through and feeling. This is one of the latter. Thanks for reading!

The trailhead was empty. I couldn’t believe it—a sunny Sunday in March. Spring: the one season when Redding, California is tolerable, mild, and overrun with flowing water. The season when fair-weather hikers descend briefly upon Whiskeytown’s rock-cobbled trails, soon to disappear until winter.

It was empty, so I swung the Subaru around and parked. As I was loading the baby into the front carrier, though, a car pulled in.

I scanned its windows: Dog? Yep.

Fuck.

It used to be the odd canine that triggered our rescue pup’s bouts of fear-based aggression, but since the baby was born, Rookie seems to be protecting her from the whole world. It would be cute—except it’s scary.

I snapped the last buckle to secure the baby and took off down the trail. Within five minutes, though, we had run into another group with an off-leash dog, and before I could reach them, the two dogs were snarling, teeth clamped to each other’s necks.

(Once, when we lived in Santa Paula, a then-more-amiable Rookie approached an older lab at a swimming hole. The owner, a stout man in suspenders, shouted, “Ruger, no!” Then he turned to me, face livid. Seconds before the dogs collided, he bellowed an angry disclaimer: “NOT friendly!!!” I’ve thought of this so many times since).

As I hustled Rookie away from his latest scuffle, I decided: Fine. We’re going off trail.

I crossed the road, turned onto an old dozer line, and began to climb a hill, threading between manzanita bushes and sweet baby conifers that had begun to look like a tree farm seven years after the Carr fire swept this land black.

Hiking off trail was nothing new to me; in fact, I knew this dozer line, knew the grassy former road bed that connected to it on the far side of a drainage. In my Avenza map for Whiskeytown, a tangle of colored lines tracks my many leg-scratching blunders into the trail-less parts of the forest.

Walking off trail, I’ve stumbled upon the ruins of a gold miner’s stone chimney. I’ve found connections between creeks, old roads gone fallow, secret caches of wildflowers.

What was new was going off trail (and beating brush) with a 20-pound baby trying to take a nap on my chest. Also new—and even more uncomfortable—is the sense I have of being off-trail in life.

To be “off trail” is not necessarily to be lost, especially if you’ve spent a lot of time in the outdoors. If you’re a half-decent woodsman, you can route-find while knowing basically where you are and how to get back. To be off trail is to diverge from the established route while remaining in a known watershed, or between familiar ridges.

That’s how motherhood feels. And publishing a book. I’m somewhere vaguely familiar, but I’m not following any path I’ve ever taken before.

Actually, the life circumstances confronting me in 2025 may go beyond route-finding, pushing me to the brink of “disoriented” or even “lost.”

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My tried-and-true path, for years, had been: “Wayfaring gal struggling in obscurity to become a writer! She barely makes rent and is often embroiled in personal dramas, but boy is she fun!”

This wasn’t just a route through life; it became an identity. So deeply ingrained was the idea of difficulty, of trying but never reaching my destination, I didn’t even see how “struggle; struggling” was the way I thought of myself.

Now, I have a strong partnership and a baby (and a ridiculous neurotic dog, but he counts). Like…I always wanted a family of my own, and this sure looks like one? Our daughter, who turned six months this week, is a delight, her happy shrieks and hiccuping giggles a contagious joy. Having an infant isn’t easy (understatement of the year), but - and I fight not to utter cliches here, but the cliches are so true - I’ve never felt a love this big. It fills my body like a warm golden light.

And now, after two-plus decades of wanting to be a writer, of working and revising and pitching and taking rejection after rejection upon rejection, I have a book coming out in June.

Not only do I have a book coming out, but it’s with a major publisher. And there will be an audiobook that I get to record (weeping emojis!), and a small book tour, and this week I recorded my first podcast interview. And and and…

Who knows how the book will be received when it comes out, but many of the things I’ve dreamed of for decades are now happening. The book being published at ALL is pretty much all I ever wanted. I’m incredibly lucky.

So how do I feel? Over the moon with excitement and gratification?

Nope. I’m terrified. At best I feel neutral, sometimes numb. At worst, sleepless and fretful and miserable. I know that good things are happening, and I tell myself to be grateful—I am grateful—but I can’t seem to feel good. I don’t know how.

So deeply uncomfortable is the notion of arrival or success that when the first reviews of my book started to trickle in, I ignored the 70% five-star ratings and focused on the one Goodreads user, we’ll call her “Martina,” who had given me three stars (granted, without explaining why, which just seems rude).

I was consumed with Martina for 24 hours. Obsessed.

There were layers to my response. I’d think: She must be right. The book is bad. Or: Maybe it’s a character judgment. I am bad. After all, the book chronicles some of my worst behavior. Ugh, she’s right: I’m an asshole!

Part of my reaction was ordinary vulnerability. After all, it’s pretty scary to put your life story out there for the world to judge. But beneath all that was the pesky thought that Martina’s singular assessment must repudiate the praise of a dozen others. I was completely focused on the negative.

Why? Because that’s where I’m used to living: rejection, striving, close-but-not-there-yet—an underdog battling the odds and defying the detractors. My comfort zone is NOT getting what I want.

This is part of why I liked being a hotshot so much: wildland firefighting was uphill both ways, sleeping in the dirt, and insufficient pay for risking your life. The job was hard, and being a woman added a layer of adversity. On the other hand, at its best, hotshot life offered profound camaraderie in the face of that difficulty, a wholesome sense of belonging. But it was a struggle nevertheless, and boy do I love a struggle.

Seeing one mediocre review, a cruel little voice gleefully whisper-shrieked, Yes! Three stars is all you deserve.

But was that true?

On the flip side of Martina is Jean. She has an account called Jean’s Book Bag. She lives in the Midwest and looks pleasantly round-faced. She read my book, really liked it, and gave it four stars; then, later the same day, she changed her rating to five stars, explaining that she couldn’t stop thinking about the memoir after she finished. I was delighted that someone who appeared to have such a different life from mine could identify with the story. A writer’s dearest hope: connection with a stranger.

Then there’s Sebastian Junger, the bestselling author of Tribe (an amazing book, if you’ve never read it), who found an advance copy of my memoir by chance, read it, and loved it so much he reached out to my publisher to offer an unsolicited blurb and initiate a friendship with me. Who is that kind?? (Sebastian Junger, that’s who).

I could list other examples, too, of positive responses and incredible generosity — friends pushing my book to their book clubs or women’s groups; a stranger who works for a bookseller in Oregon, who wrote to say that she too has an alcoholic father and that my story “made her feel less alone.” I wept when I read that note.

“What is the evidence saying?” My therapist asked.

“It’s saying,” I said reluctantly. “That there are more Jeans and Sebastians than Martinas.”

So far, people are responding well to the book, which isn’t even out yet. Almost more important is the kindness with which those I love—and a handful of strangers—have treated my work. And a great team of agents and publicists is helping me. I am beyond lucky; I am well-supported (another reality I don’t know quite how to parse).

So far, too, parenthood is more of a delight and less of a burden than I imagined. So far, life is working out right now, even if I’m sleep deprived and my postpartum body can’t quite fly into certain arm balances I used to be able to do in yoga.

Even if some people hate the book, and inevitably they will, I’m still fulfilling my dream and giving my baby raspberries on the belly. Things are…good?

When you’re hardwired for struggle, how do you convince yourself to be okay with things going well? How do you teach yourself to ENJOY finally arriving at that longed-for destination, rather than focusing on one negative review? How do you stop creating a struggle to fixate on?

(For me the new hardship is: “Oh no, I don’t have enough time to parent and also be a writer!” Which is on the one hand valid, but on the other hand, I’m technically doing both things…so I may not have the time I want, and I may feel like taffy stretched between two poles, but there is - technically - enough time for both. As long as I write with one thumb during contact naps).

If y’all know how to end the struggle addiction, please tell me. My best guess is “gratitude.” Meanwhile, I have a therapist and a journal and some very sweaty yoga classes and some medium-hard hikes, and I’m working on it. Updates to come.

For the moment, I am totally off trail here, off script. And, as usual, I’m wearing way too many clothes for the weather.

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In plant news, I started our veggie / flower garden from seed in a tray by a window. Within five days, the cucumber plants had germinated and were bolting, while a few flowers had begun to peek through the soil and the pumpkins had nothing showing.

This week I supplemented my seedlings with a few strawberry plants from the local nursery, and we’re off to the races. In cedar boxes! Be still my heart, the smell!

Meanwhile, such concerns are largely a distraction from a country falling steadily into totalitarianism and weather heating steadily toward the summer’s usual boil.

I’m skipping reading/listening recommendations for now because, to be honest, Ed is watching the baby and he’s singing to her loudly, off-key, and I can’t focus. Lol.

So I’ll close with love for all of us, for this struggling country, and for anyone who’s out there succeeding and unable to enjoy it. Water your plants, break up your dog fights, fill the raised beds with soil. The season will turn, inevitably, and we’ll change before we can see it ourselves.

Love,

Kelly

PS—Shameless (eh, not totally shameless) plug: If you want to preorder my book, Wildfire Days, you can do so here or anywhere books are sold. Thank you so much!!