Field Notes: Storytelling Expeditions is “an ongoing project series of storytelling expeditions.” The face behind it is NYC-based artist Tess Rowan. She is a composer, lyricist, playwright, theatre-maker, drama student, and hiker. Her trail name, a special name given to you on hikes by your “tramily”, says it all: storyteller. Above all, she is a storyteller.
Her latest installation of the project is Field Notes: A Long Trail Odyssey, which captures Rowan’s experience of hiking a 272-mile route across the oldest long-distance hiking trail in America. On June 1st, 2025, Rowan began her solo trek across the Long Trail, a trek the length of the state of Vermont. Since 1943 and as of 2025, only 5,000 people have completed a full thru-hike, a term coined for when someone hikes a long-distance trail in its entirety. Rowan, in working on and completing this project, has joined the ranks.
This isn’t Rowan’s first time writing about the subject and the people who shape it. Static: A Morse Code Musical, a piece she began writing at fourteen, also takes place on the Appalachian Trail and explores similar intersections: sound and nature. “I began writing a story about the Appalachian Trail not knowing that this trail was over 2,000 miles long and only 30 minutes away from where I grew up.” In high school, she became interested in hiking and backpacking, a means of research for a curious (self-described) “theater kid.” But it quickly became so much more than that.
Now, Rowan is a senior at NYU Tisch studying Drama and minoring in Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology and Producing. After spending a few years in the city for college and feeling eager to connect with the outdoors and its stories, she decided to go on her first thru-hike. With the help of an NYU Community Engage Summer Grant, Rowan was able to develop Field Notes: A Long Trail Odyssey. Since its inception in her Sophomore year, Rowan has gone on to also thru-hiked the Colorado Trail, developing radio plays, multimedia projects, plays, and interviews as she goes. The upcoming Field Notes: Across Natural Skyscrapers captures this experience of this thru-hike.
When listening to Field Notes: A Long Trail Odyssey, it’s hard not to fall in love with the magic of the piece. At the start of the radio play, Rowan invites you to take a walk of your own as you listen on a pair of headphones; I chose to listen alongside a walk at McCarren Park.
I couldn’t help but want to close my eyes and escape into the rich world on display, but as I put one foot in front of the other, I also knew that this wasn’t just something to sit back and relax on; this was an active work to engage with, which asks things of you and gives even more back. It asks: what is the distinction between audience and performer here? Aren’t we all hiking and engaging? It gives: a feeling of connection, even without having met a single person you feel like you suddenly know so well. And as Rowan goes, she asks essential questions of everyday life, even when not on the trail: what do you actually need to survive? What is it that will bring us real, sustained happiness? Will I always feel this alone, this scared, this free?
There are moments where Rowan connects with fellow hikers, mainly in shelters for brief overnight stays. These moments feel particularly special because for so much of the journey, she is alone with her thoughts and experiences.
For example, Rowan discusses being approached by someone named Cedrick, who tells her that he and a friend have been following her through her logbook entries and attempting to catch up to her for days. Rowan admits that “I’m not sure if I should be creeped out by this, but I’m really just excited to have maybe made a friend.”
The lines between what is societally acceptable behavior and what is not in making a new friend are the same on the trail and in life, only here, the connection is more sparse, and therefore more exaggerated.
In real time, we get to see people connect over walking, an activity we all do all of the time but rarely stop to think about. We get to see it happen in an unconventional theatre space.
Where else might we find connection with one another, if only we paid attention, or explored further the intersections of the things we love but haven’t historically connected? What might we find in that secret, unknown space?
You can find Tess Rowan on Instagram @tessrowan and at her personal website, tessrowan.com. For matters related to Field Notes: Storytelling Expeditions, please email storytellerfieldnotes@gmail.com.
