Friday High Fives – 5.16.25
May 16, 2025
the latest
HI, I’M TERRA.
I’m a lifelong storyteller, nearing the final chapter of a 20+ year full-time career in the Army National Guard. These days, I’m building something new — one board, bolt and backroad at a time — slowly transforming a Ford Transit into a home.
This site is where I share that journey. You’ll find van build progress, road trip tales, quiet moments in wild places, and thoughts from the in-between.
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I bought a van
She’s a 2022 Ford Transit with all-wheel drive, a 148″ wheelbase and a high roof. She used to be a rental and, I think, was mostly used for FedEx deliveries. I went to Maryland to get her, traveling 3.5 hours on a train and then 45 minutes by car, past horse farms and mansions and rolling, rain-spattered hills. The plan, the one I’ve been hatching over the past several months, is to turn her into a camper van, a tiny home on wheels for me, Claude the Dog and the cats, Bitty and Edgar Poe, and then, all together, we’ll set off into the wild unknown. I finally settled on this plan last summer, but I’d been bumping up against it for years. I’ve spent more than 20 years in
April 5, 2024
March.
March gets such a bad rap, y’all. She’s brought us a lot of chaos over the years, including a global pandemic, but she’s my birthday month, and I love her. March is almost always a banner month for me, and this one was no different. I did a lot of things. I ran a half marathon. I turned 40. I spent time in a few of my favorite places with a few of my favorite people, and I made a big purchase that got me one step closer to where I want to be. the HIGHS Another sub-2:00 half marathon. Last August I ran my second worst half marathon ever and briefly entertained the idea of maybe not being a runner anymore. My dog had died a week before, I’d
April 3, 2024
5 Friday Favorites – 3.22.24
1 – MEGABABE’S GREEN DEO I made the switch to natural deodorant when I was deployed in 2016. I was in Kuwait where daily temperatures liked to hang out in the triple digits, and I figured if natural deodorant could take care of me in that environment, it could easily handle the comparative cool of Virginia. Over the years, I’ve switched brands a few times and used Megababe’s Rosy Pits for a long while and was generally pretty happy with it. It is baking soda-free, but would still cause an occasional underarm sizzle, especially right after a fresh shave. I saw their Green Deo recommended somewhere as being less irritating and made the switch and it’s kept me stink-free through a half-marathon training cycle and it’s yet to sizzle my
March 22, 2024
On 40.
Last week, surrounded by the beauty and magnificence of Zion National Park, I turned 40. It felt like a very big deal and also like nothing at all. Somewhere in my past, there’s a girl who can’t even fathom making it to 20, much less 40. For that girl, the present was so hard and so painful that it made thinking about the future an impossibility. Putting one foot in front of the other was the best I could do, so I did it, over and over and over again until I found myself moving forward, until I found myself with the space and safety to ponder the way ahead. I used to think that being an adult meant you had it all figured out. As a kid, adulthood was
March 19, 2024
Things I Bought Myself for My 40th Birthday
When I was younger, birthdays felt so stressful. I remember being anxious about turning 16, as if that was something significant, as if it was a ripe old age. It’s different now. I’m not quite 40, I still have a few more days to soak in the sunset of my 30s, but I’m close enough to know it’s not going to be a significant life event. Still, 40 feels like a big deal, partly because 30 was so awful. Two weeks before I turned 30, my almost ex-husband finally admitted that the real reason he wanted a divorce was because he was in love with someone else, someone who, incidentally, shared my name. I didn’t do much to celebrate 30. I went to a park near Richmond, sat on a
March 8, 2024
February.
February is such a short month. The runt of the litter even in her longest incarnation. All month, the brevity of February felt like it was looming over me, waiting for me to do something, to do all things. Mostly, February felt like it was chasing me. It felt like making your way up a rollercoaster, steady clicks ticking down the seconds, ticking away the time you’ve got left before a whoosh of effort drags you to the end, ready or not. I have arrived here, at this place I’ve been talking about for the last half decade. I am at the point of doing the things, of making the effort, of chasing the dreams I’ve talked about for so, so long, but sometimes the weight of it is a
March 5, 2024