Reflections on 2025 and looking ahead to 2026

Another year of being positively shocked that it’s over already and unaware of where the time has gone. Is it just the wicked reality of being a short life-spanned human or is something else involved here? 

I listened to an interesting podcast about how to slow down time (more specifically: How to Live a Long Life) from Radio Lab, one of my go-to science shows, and I think about it from time to time. The TLDR is that when we do the same activities on repeat, following a monotonous routine, time escapes us. We look back on those months/years, and the moments get lumped together in a blurry mush, nothing of note punctuating our memory. It’s when we break up that routine, when we are trying novel things, that it leaves a bookmark in the chapters of our lives that we can reference. When you have enough bookmarks, life feels fuller, longer. That’s why time felt slower when we were younger and why we have so many moments that we continually reminisce about from our adolescence: everything was new and exciting as we were exploring and learning more about the world and ourselves. As adults, we get stuck in a loop of comfort and routine, time slipping away.

As I think about my 2025, I think about the times when I tried new things and how I can do this more in 2026. And it doesn’t have to be a grand trip abroad or a wild excursion. I've really valued getting to know the next towns over, different hiking trails, new restaurants, and new skills. There is so much the world has to offer, and I just hope that I don't lose sight of this when life gets busy.

So, my year was a mix of going new places and hunkering down to code and write, trying to churn out my dissertation before May 2026. Looking back, the work grind was a blur, but there were moments of excitement throughout.

My favorite memories of the year were:

1. Wandering the narrow streets in old town Cuenca on our honeymoon

2. Dancing until sunrise at Grassroots with my friends (and swimming in the creek)

3. Night bike ride and sitting in a field watching fireflies

4. 30th birthday bike ride and beers during golden hour

5. Appalachian hoedown at the Floyd Country Store

As always, I share my month-to-month roundup to reflect on how I spent the year, with the help of my calendar and Google Photos to remind me of all the little moments.

January

The year started off in a radio station in Bozeman, MT. Uri's dad was DJ'ing for the local radio station, and we popped champagne and danced to Argentinian rock music (Charly Garcia is my #1 artist for the year, and I highly recommend!). The following days were spent off the grid in Yellowstone, getting a rare look at geysers and wildlife in winter with few tourists. Check out the Old Faithful eruption! I practiced more linoleum block printing and did some snowmobiling to repair an eddy covariance weather station out in the Adirondacks. Otherwise, the weekends were for skiing and hiking. 

February

Just like every February, we had a memorial hike for James's birthday, this year being 5 years since we lost our dear friend. He would have been 30 years old, the same as me this year. It’s a strange feeling to move forward in time and have a big life event occur, knowing your friend should also be experiencing that but is, instead, frozen in time. I’m glad I was able to share this weekend with Uri, Carrie, and Kris while working through those feelings.

Later in the month, Uri and I had a long weekend visit with my brother and sister-in-law in Maryland and explored D.C.––a great time for Smithsonians and art galleries. I started gearing up for a complicated eddy covariance tower build out in the Hudson, tidal systems being a devil to work with. 

March

This month was for our honeymoon! Uri and I escaped to southern Spain for a "warm and dry" vacation to get out of dreary, gray, and wet New York. Unfortunately, southern Spain was also experiencing weeks of rain during this time, but we made the most of it as we bopped around from Madrid to Cuenca, Valencia, Granada, Malaga, and Seville. I’ve stalled on writing about all of the trip reports, but you can read about some of them so far! Our favorite moments were Las Fallas festival in Valencia, El Caminito del Rey hike outside Malaga, and hiking around the old town in Cuenca.

April

Shortly after returning from the honeymoon, I traded in my dresses for waders to get hip deep in mud out in the Hudson. We had a rough time building our new eddy covariance tower, a few years in the making, but we finally succeeded getting it standing! There were also a few political protests this year which we attended, for the preservation of science and women’s rights. And Earth Week on my campus is one of my favorite yearly events: a full week of celebrating the Earth with activities, music, lectures, and an artist fair (where I sold my art for the very first time). During Earth Week, my article was published in Unearthed where I interviewed environmental artist, Sheila Novak. Uri and I also started working on our garden!

May

May began with the Finger Lakes Freshet Challenge: 150 miles around Ithaca's state forests (or 500 miles around all the finger lakes if time permitted). It was muddy, rainy, and one of the toughest physical challenges that I had ever done, but I completed it! We also foraged for ramps through the month, making delicious pesto. Our garden rapidly started up as we weeded and seeded a 20 x 20 ft^2 space (thank you, Cindy!), and tending to this space was essential to my mental wellbeing––to cultivate, grow, and eat your own food is beyond rewarding. We visited our friends in NYC and then spent a day frolicking around the Storm King Art Center (which is way cool!). A highlight was dancing Zydeco at the Bike Bar in Ithaca, being surrounded by friends and great music, and we even moved the party outside and danced in the rain. The month ended with the 40-mile Dirty Hector muddy bike race in T-burg, my first truly timed race. Not surprisingly, I didn’t do well, but I finally can say I competed in a bike race (and had a blast doing it. Annnnnnnd Uri turned 29, celebrated with birthday bowling!

June

For as much as we’ve been to the Adirondacks, we have never biked there before. So, we had a silly mountain biking and lake swimming weekend with Casey and Kate. I then went back out to the Hudson to do more tower maintenance, and the song My Dirty Stream by Pete Seeger has been my go-to for all Hudson river work. At this point, Uri developed a sprained ankle, so I managed some solo excursions: towards the end of June, I cycled the Rothrock Rambler in PA, which is one of the few times that I explored my home state as an adult. It was a tough ride, socked in by thunderstorms, bugs, and heat, but it was exhaustingly rewarding (celebrated with whoopie pies)= watch video! A highlight of the month was a very lovely night bike ride on the Black Diamond Trail to see the fireflies, and it was pure magic–– we all ate ice cream and then sat silently in a field to watch the lights dancing. It was more fireflies than I had seen in years!

July

A group of friends and I traveled to the Gunks for a 4th of July trip in the Adirondacks, and it was a groovy time for outdoor climbing and camping. We cooked great food, sang karaoke, and swam in the creek (better than fireworks!). The Grassroots Music Festival was one of my most cherished moments, full of friends, epic music, and dancing all night until the sun rose the next day. I felt so incredibly full and complete, these being core memories I'll take with me forever.

I also turned 30! To celebrate, I joined a group bike ride with the FLCC and had a stunning golden hour where I felt positively giddy, climbing long hills and zooming down with the wind and sun beams on my face and through my hair. We celebrated with beers!

And our garden started absolutely popping! We had more zucchini than we could ever give away.

August

Early August, my cousin was married, and it was a fabulous time celebrating love and seeing family. Mostly this month, we were feeling sentimental as our time in Ithaca was coming to an end––Uri got a post-doc at Virginia Tech, and I would work part-time in an invasive species lab while I finished my PhD remotely. So, before leaving, we visited some of our favorite places in Ithaca as a final victory lap, reminiscing on 7 incredible years. At the end of August, we did The Big Move, doing our best to start promptly exploring the area and cultivating a sense of home. A highlight in VA was our 3-day ride around the Grayson Highlands. While we didn't see the wild ponies on this trip, it was a tough and exhilarating ~140 mile ride to scratch the adventure itch.

September

My favorite month! The changing leaves held on longer in VA compared to NY, and we enjoyed hiking on the Appalachian Trail, including Dragon's Tooth overlook. We mountain biked in Durham with Eve, getting to see more of the South and surrounding areas. My 1-year wedding anniversary with Uri was spent, unsurprisingly, at the PA Gravel Festival where we picnicked, joined group rides, camped under the stars, and felt the autumnal magic. One of the coolest things I did this month was spend a week on a boat on Seneca Lake, conducting deep water sampling to examine whether methane was leaking from the lake bed. This ended up getting covered by a few media outlets, including the New York Times!

October

Virginia is a wonderful time in October, full of live bluegrass music and peak leaf on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We enjoyed local beer and music at a farm brewery, biking through the trails around Blacksburg at sunset, and traveling around the stunning countryside (Virginia is highly underrated). We hiked to McAfees Knob with our friend Xopre, one of the most photographed placed on the AT, and the New River Gorge. We later camped and biked in the Pisgah National Forest with Eve, a gorgeous area full of granite and quartzite that literally sparkles and covers you with a magical dust. Of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to partake in a classic Southern experience: we jammed to music at the Blue Ridge Country Folk Festival, learning how to make moonshine and how to dance Appalachian clogging. Halloween was for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which we were thrilled to have Xopre have their first experience there, hehe.

November

Even in VA, the weather turned dreary, though less so than New York. We returned to Grayson Highlands to finally see the wild ponies, by foot rather than bike this time. We backpacked/camped for a long weekend, pushing our bodies in a way we hadn't in a while. The Floyd Country Store has been a true gem for us during our time here, to immerse in genuine and authentic Appalachian bluegrass/Americana music. We took my parents to the Friday Night Jamboree and then Uri's parents for an evening of flat foot dancing. For the first time, we hosted Thanksgiving at our home, and we decorated our own Christmas tree. It's hard not being home for the holidays and sharing the merriment with my family, but we cultivated a little bit of magic in our own home just the same.

December

The end of the year finished wildly. It turns out that finishing my PhD and working a part time job at Virginia Tech is a lot of work, and I felt very overwhelmed for much of the fall semester trying to balance the load. Mid-month, I traveled to New Orleans to present my 3rd dissertation chapter at AGU, which was an overwhelming week at this mega-conference. While here, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. John Francis—after witnessing the catastrophic consequences of a major oil spill, he gave up driving in cars for 22 years and speaking for 17 years, walking around the world to raise awareness for environmentalism. I felt incredibly moved by his talk, and I was thrilled to have him sign my book!

Then, Uri and I traveled to my parents' house for Christmas and New Years. Though it was a rainy and muddy end to the year, we stayed cozy inside, catching up on much needed R&R. At midnight Dec 31st, we ran around the porch outside in the snow banging pots & pans to ring in 2026.

On the docket for 2026

The upcoming year is a massive one. I will defend my PhD in April and then obtain my degree in May. Afterwards, I am backpacking with my dad for a few weeks in Spain, hiking a portion of the Camino de Santiago, one of my dad's life goals. Given my free time, I am excited and thankful to have the opportunity to join him! After that, Uri and I do The Big Move Part II to Montana so that he can begin as a tenure track professor at Montana State. However, before he formally starts, we are biking the Great Divide with our friend Casey, a route that runs from Banff, Canada to the Mexico border. This is a route that I am particularly excited about since it is mostly gravel and forested, offering a more backcountry/mountain experience compared to the heavy pavement, road-cycling tour that Casey and I did previously. I know that it sounds like an intense vacation, but hopefully it will counteract all the years of sedentary, screen-based graduate work (fingers crossed). I think it's exactly what I need.

I am beyond grateful to have these opportunities to travel and take some time off of work before jumping back into the work force, but I am quite nervous and anxious as well. I'm on the job market, and I don't know what kind of career I will have or what I will do in Bozeman, so the uncertainty is unsettling. We also want to buy a house, but we find ourselves stressed about being homeowners, especially in a place that doesn't have the type of property that we want or that is affordable. Likewise, it's also tough to move far away from home (for me) and go to a place with no friends or community, but I know that part of the excitement comes from finding and cultivating that.

Despite these concerns, there are a number of little things that I want to continue to pursue in my spare time that makes me happy: practicing my Spanish, writing more environmental freelance articles (I have an upcoming one about fireflies coming out!), reading more books (check out the next books we are reading for our book club!), and finding more time for artwork (I'm trying to finish embroidering my fanny pack). In 2026, I also hope to learn an instrument––I've been gifted my dad's guitar and my brother's banjo, both which really excites me! Finally, I want to make a conscious effort to watch fewer videos on social media (of the TikTok style) to make time for moments that are more important.

That's a wrap, folks. Have a safe and healthy 2026, and, please, let's do our best to be a little kinder to others, ourselves, and the Earth this year!