The Inaugural Vert

For the past 8 days, I’ve gone on a day hike.

This is possible because in April of this year I quit my job, packed all I could fit in my RAV4, and took the scenic route from Vermont to Washington state. I’m now untethered by the 40-hour work week, minutes from stunning vistas, and inundated with possibilities. Excessive hiking was inevitable.

It's been two weeks of this, and as freeing as the unemployed life is, the pressure of adulthood is setting in. I need a job, a community, and a goal. These haunting thoughts have come for excitement of being somewhere new, slowly replacing my "ooos" and "ahhs" with "ahhs" and "eeks." I spend most mornings writing cover letters and researching employers, and when my eyes are burning from blue light and I've had enough financial panic for the day, I take to the mountains. Out here, alone and energized, my entire body is engaged in one goal: up. And just as my heart cleans the oxygen in my muscles, the hike cleans the jumble in my mind. This is what I need to my process my shortcomings and accomplishments, and with the gunk out of the way, it’s where I have my best ideas.

On Tuesday, June 3rd, I left at 4pm to climb 5 miles to a small lake. I cleared 1,150 feet and back in just under an hour and a half. When I was spotting salmonberries and oyster mushrooms, my pace was even. When I recalled the stagnancy of today’s job hunt, it quickened.

That morning, I put on my well-dressed-without-trying outfit: beige high-waisted shorts pretending to be a skirt and a sage faux corduroy shirt from Goodwill. I even parted with my baseball cap for the day, which is how I told myself that this was serious. The goal was to plant myself in the heart of my new city, feel inspired, and use my fake skirt to attract a job. The bus dropped me near a sleepy coffee shop, and I sipped on a milky cold brew I couldn’t afford while refreshing job boards on my laptop. Apparently, Bellingham needs doctors with PhDs or warehouse workers for minimum wage, not editorial assistants.

I took a walk, certain I'd stumble upon a job poster or two. I circled downtown and read logos, menus, and concert promotions, but there was a glaring lack of hiring signs for East Coast transplants like me. Even in my fake skirt I felt gullible.

Discouraged, I retreated back to the bus station. Stopped at a crosswalk, I looked up to see an older man reach out his car window and offer me a bouquet of purple asters. I shook my head at first, but something about the perkiness of flowers next to my sinking gloom appealed me in a literary kind of way, so I accepted.

Since I left Vermont and my bookmaking job, I've missed words terribly. I miss tackling projects and watching books grow from Word documents to bound pieces of art. I want something to build, to nurture, to experiment with, to be bad at, to get better at. I'm worried that the jobs available to me in this beautiful place won't meet that need, at least not right away.

And so, halfway to the lake, my trail of thought led me to a name of a blog I probably wouldn’t write. It was inspired by a challenge my subconscious had already accepted: hike every possible day. Why not go all in? No matter what, wet or dry, cold or hot, sick or not, I’d take to the mountains. I have to be realistic, though; I know that eventually I’ll have a paycheck to earn. To get ahead of failure, my daily jaunt can be any length as long as it's at least one mile and vertical. And so, I introduce to you The Daily Vert.

"Vert" comes from the Latin word "verto" which means "to turn." In English, it's used to indicate a change in direction, such as the change in "vertical" elevation. It also could mean transformation, like in "convert," or when “inverting” your life by moving 3,041 miles away from home. "Vert" also, astoundingly, means green vegetation.

It was this revelation, post-hike, that got me to open my computer and begin typing. It's almost 1:30 in the morning now, and I'm still typing. That's a good sign.

Another motivator was the interaction I saw on the bus back home.

I was facing forward, and in front of me was a row of accessible seats backed against the window. Spread across two of these was a woman in a stretched-out T-shirt. Wrangling a little dog, she scolded in a smoker’s rasp, "I swear Clive, I've told you a million times and I've had it with you. The second we get home, I'm putting you in the basement, and you'll stay there all night. Alone."

I snuck glances, but mostly I kept my gaze to the window. Her head was up, and she was looking for eye contact. She was loud.

A few stops went by, and two college students came aboard. One, masculine-presenting, sat next to the loud woman. The other, feminine-presenting, sat next to me.

"I told you to sit," said the loud woman. "I said sit! SIT!"

"They’re so cute," said the student next to her. "What’s their name?"

“This here’s Clive. He’s a pain in the ass," she said.

"But he’s worth it, isn’t he?" asked the student.

"Yes, he is," the woman agreed.

Their conversation took off, and in moments they had found something in common: they were both practicing Christians. They shared where they were baptized, and the loud woman explained that she got clean because of god. Now she helps others do the same. "God is real. And he is amazing," she said.

"Yes," said the student. "He is."

I'm not much of a believer, but I was captured by how their small talk turned so quickly to meaningful dialogue. I had avoided this woman, and here she was, engaged in a moment of kindness and connection with a stranger, the friendly student who said hello. Why didn't I do that? Why was I so quick to assume trouble, so averse to talking with someone I hadn’t yet met?

It occurred to me that the girl next to me was an opportunity. But when I turned toward her, my first thought was, "No, not her." But why not her? She was the opposite of the loud woman, actually. Quiet, unintimidating, tucking herself in to take up as little space as possible. No, the problem wasn't her. The problem was me.

Soon we arrived at campus, so the friendly student told the woman it was his stop and offered her his name. The woman gave her own, and with a firm shake of his hand, said, "It was so lovely to meet you."

After the students disembarked, the seat next to me was empty, and my view of the woman was again unobstructed. She looked to her travel companion seated across the aisle and said, "I'm happy to be here. I'm just so happy to be here with everyone." Her smile was real. Clive leaped back into the aisle and she didn't yell at him. Then she looked at me, and I moved my gaze just slightly in effort to convince her I’d been looking over her head the whole time.

"Those flowers are beautiful," she said.

I smiled. And although it's silly to accept a compliment on behalf of nature, I said, "Thank you."

I usually grin and nod at hikers I pass on the trail, but I rarely say much more than a quick "hi." Starting conversations with strangers is hard for me. I'm pretty shy, afraid the other will reject my proposal of conversation or I’ll embarrass myself by saying the wrong thing. The curious part is, though, once I'm in it, I’m immersed. There's something thrilling about talking to someone I know nothing about. They could be anyone who’s had any kind of day before just now, and they came the opposite direction, yet here they are at the same place and the same time as me, and here we two are having an exchange of words that'll go somewhere unknown.

I realized this when sneaking in pre-work ski laps at the resort. At 8am on a Monday, it's just me and the retired guys. And even though there's no lift line, they'll skate themselves out of breath just to get on a chair with someone. And they're happy to be the first to speak because they love this part of their morning. As for me, I like that these rides have a limitation. There's no awkward "Well, I guess I better get going..." because the lift decides when the talking stops and the skiing begins. But between the loading and unloading, it’s a speed date, and whether my companion is insufferable or fascinating, eight minutes is all I get and my imagination fills in the rest. Talking to strangers is amazing because anything can happen. Maybe I’ll never see them again, but maybe I’ll have a great story to tell, make a new friend, or get a job offer on a ski lift (true story!). The act is full of possibilities, and it can be the perfect inspiration if you let it be.

Back in Tuesday evening, thinking about the happy lady on the bus and the old guys on ski lifts, I reached the little lake and began to loop around it. At the first clearing, there was a hiker sitting alone on a rock, looking out at the water. They had short, spiraled hair that grabbed golden hour and glowed. That curly head pivoted 45 degrees toward me, then back at the lake. I continued passing, and they turned again, 90 degrees this time. On the third rotation, there was an upturn of the lip, and then they were out of my view. I thought, Was that an invitation? What if I had paused to say hello? What if I had said, “I like your hair”?

On my way down, I passed another hiker. I added a little more tilt to my smile, a notch more volume to my hi, and an extra frame of eye contact. It wasn’t much, but it’s a small step in bridging the gap between myself and the many people who float through my universe.

It's true that I'm struggling to find a job that suits me, but it's also true that I'm not using all of my resources. If I expect the community to provide for me, I better join it. It's not just about networking, it's about contributing to something bigger than myself, and it starts with connecting to people who live in and love the same place I do. I should tell the taproom server I like their earring. I can ask the guy behind me in line at the post office how his day is going. I always wonder what booksellers are reading, so why not find out? These small extensions are immediately rewarding, but they’re also an investment in all of our futures. Isn’t human connectivity everyone’s ultimate goal? Don’t we all want to lift each other up, relish the comfort of companionship, and feel understood? And to think that the first step is as easy as turning to another person on a bus or a trail and saying, “Those flowers are beautiful.”

This is why I write, really. I write to understand myself, others, our world, and the connections that tangle us all up in each other. And that's really what I figured out on that hike. No matter what job I find, no matter where I go, I always want to be exploring how I exist in the world and on the trail. And just as importantly, I want to explore how I share this world with others. This is not a stagnant study; it’ll evolve and shift the same as everything does. The thing about vertical is that it measures the change in elevation—whether that's gain or loss. While we can only hope for positive change, there's only one thing for certain: it'll be daily.*

vert tracker : 10,698

June 3 2025–June 10 2025