Quite nice photographs, but your attempt to put some sort of deeply thoughtful super-intellectual gloss on this is ridiculous. A talented photographer with a good eye for composition is instagramming their trip through the American wilderness. This is not necessarily any more than what a backpacking tourist does and not necessarily any less than what Ansel Adams did. Why not let us judge by the photographs themselves (some are lovely! others are thought-provoking!) rather than layering onto it several thousand words of portentous froofraw?

Does anyone edit the Stranger anymore? This piece is about 3000 words too long.

All the best stories never get told.

I will agree with her that the wilderness leaves less to fear than people. I've been 3-4 days out from the trailhead, on my own, with less fear than camping on my own one night at a makeshift campground off Beckler River Rd up Stevens Pass when all the Forest Service campgrounds were full. Have to camp at a trailhead without an established campground? I feel much safer sleeping in my car than setting up a camp.

@1 sums it up nicely.
I would be less kind. But I really don't need to be since the article above does that quite well on its own.
Robb says:
"As our culture increasingly pressures us to maintain a personal 'brand,' be in constant contact, and Snapchat every moment, maybe it's not just our geographic wild spaces that are endangered, but our internal wild spaces as well."
but then -
"Robb has been responding to the sublime [of the 'wild'] by Facebooking, Instagramming, tweeting, blogging, and transmitting instructions to 3-D printers elsewhere."

so wild.

And to call the PCT wild is like calling McDonalds haute cuisine. I've crossed paths with the PCT many a times and I'm always thankful for its highway like ease of not having to think where I'm going before I dive back into the wild. Where there are no paths. And most definitely not the most well trampled trail of them all.

There are so many in our community who are doing so much more to enable wilderness or even the fact of the Pacific Crest Trail itself, why not give them the column space rather than some self serving artist?

Many, many people blog, tweet, and instagram about their PCT thru-hikes every year. Aside from the plastic neon rocks, not a single thing that Robb is doing is original- she's simply marketing it as though it is.

Kate Niederehe,is of the PCT Class of 2014. She actually walked to the south of Washington State before she was blown off the trail by a HUGE Snow storm in October of last year. She went back and finished the trail in Four weeks this summer. She sould be very interested in your journey. She hiked to raise money for The Canyonlands Field Institute and DC Kids.

Getting sponsors to aid your lack of $ to buy food and supplies to hike the P.C.T. is a study of an overzealous young person with nothing else to do and looking for someone to pay for an adventure. The trail has been open since '93 and many people have walked the entire distance without financial help, just for their own personal gratification. To get financial aid to do this should benefit some animal rescue, environmental concern or possibly getting rid of the republican party would be a start before I would donate to this cause.

UGH...this is all such a total snore people,honestly...just how big of a fool are these characters playing folks for, it's all so low brow-Jen, Robb, and all of it.

Oh, and Jen likes Robb so much cuz Rasputin told her to...FYI

Is "Rasputin" the man that wears orange cashmere, hobnobs with the rich and whose power animal is the vulture?

Whoa! An articulate comment that questions the originality of Robb's work and then another that questions that question get pulled! (17 and 18).

Very Stalinesque!

These were legitimate questions, Jen.
I am embarrassed for you. Your thin skin is very telling here.

I assume the other pulled comments were also critical of your uncritical love for this rather bad art work?