Off-Grid, Underfunded, and Now on Substack

First, thank you. Truly. ❤️

So many of you have been following along here for years, through fire lookout adventures, dog stories, horse stories, and whatever else I’ve thrown at this site. I originally created TrailChick to share travel stories with family and friends. Somewhere along the way, it evolved into an encyclopedia of fire lookouts and something much bigger than I ever expected.

This site isn’t going anywhere.

It will always be my home base for fire lookout pages and resources, trip reports, and everything that's already here will always be here. I’ll keep updating lookout pages as I can with new photos, history, and whatever I learn along the way.

But something else has been brewing for a while.

Three weeks ago, I very unexpectedly lost my tech job.

For years, people have told me I should write more. Share more stories. Write a book. Start something. I always had a reason not to—too busy, too distracted, too whatever. But when life rearranges itself without asking your opinion, sometimes it hands you an opening you’ve been avoiding.

So I finally said yes. I’ve launched a new Substack: https://whereinthewildischris.substack.com

I’ve always loved to write. I wrote stories in school. I almost majored in journalism before getting sidetracked into tech. So maybe this is just me circling back to something that was there all along.

I don’t have a perfectly polished plan but that’s never really been my style anyway. What I do have is a lot of stories:

• Fire lookout adventures, including life staffing Goat Peak
• The horses I somehow “collected” in my late 40s with zero prior experience
• The off-grid homestead I’ve been building one small piece at a time
• The time I drove a 1.2L car from London to Mongolia
• And the simple joys of a quiet life in a beautiful place with some pretty funny critters

If any of that sounds like your kind of thing, I’d love to have you along for the ride.

I’ll be starting with weekly Fire Lookout Friday posts (the first one is already live) with plenty more to come, including the full Mongol Rally diaries.

If you’re able to support the Substack with a paid subscription, it genuinely helps keep the stories coming and helps keep the herd fed. It also fulfills a lifelong dream of writing… for a living (gasp!)

If you’ve enjoyed following along here, I think you’ll like what’s coming over there, but if Substack isn’t your thing? That’s okay too. I’ll still be right here.

Thanks for being here. It means more than you probably realize.

—Chris

At First Butte fire lookout in the Methow Valley with the herd.