March 19, 2009: Twelve years ago today, I sat in a tiny hotel room in Georgia preparing for a long walk to Maine. Page one of my journal was open and blank and hungry for acknowledgement. Here is my first of almost 200 entries.
March 19, 1997
My first memory of the AT goes back to when I was about ten years old. Our family vacation that year took us to Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We spent a day up in the national park and were checking out the view from a lookout tower (Clingman’s Dome) when a footpath below was brought to my attention.
“Hey Dad, what’s the Appalachian Trail?” I asked.
“It’s a backpacking trail, 2,000 miles long,” he told me.
“Oh, where does it go?”
“Well, if you go that way (as he pointed to the left) it will take you to Georgia. And if you go that way (pointing to the right) you can go all the way to Maine.”
“Oh … Maine’s pretty far away, isn’t it? How long does it take?”
“It borders Canada. Would take months I’d imagine.”
“Oh … Can we go back to the hotel and go swimming?…”
The next time I heard of the AT was about two years ago and the decision to thru-hike came a year later. Up to this point in my life, the longest amount of time I’ve spent away from “civilization” is twenty-four days (in the Grand Canyon), but my longest backpacking trip has been only four days (in southwestern Virginia). So I am no backpacking veteran.
As of today, March 19th (1997), there is no real deep purpose or motive for traveling the AT. I’m intrigued by the adventure, freedom, and challenge it has to offer. And I anticipate making new friends and having some unique experiences. But what do I have to gain? I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’ll come away a little less confused about my personal and professional future. Or maybe it’ll give me the time to further develop my writing, which I’ve been steadily pecking away at in various forms for several years. Or maybe I’ll decide to continue my thru-hike around the world. Again, I really don’t know.
What I do know is that I’m happy with my decision to give it a shot and I look forward to a full day of reflection on top of Mount Katahdin in Maine this fall.
March 19, 2009
I remember during my trip how many times I heard people say to me, “Wow, I wish I could take six months off…it’s great you’re doing it now while you can.”
I remember thinking and even telling many folks, “You can anytime if you really want to. If you really and truly want it, nothing should stop you.”
I still believe that, but I understand now, in a way I didn’t then, how easy it is to let “life” get in the way of your dreams. I let that happen to me. I lost my way. It started when I made an amazing connection with an amazing woman and we started a family. I am by no means blaming “married with children” for the fact that I lost my way – I’m thumb-pointing here, not finger-pointing.
I blame my unconscious choices.
And while I see plenty of mistakes looking back, not all are regrettable… many were driven by virtue and boy o’ boy do I have two great kids.
But I set my independence aside and replaced my values of simplicity and freedom with “matters of consequence” (read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry). I had a wife. We had children. We were living in the “real world” and needed to establish security and stability. I pursued a career in marketing. I was “growing up” and being responsible.
That can really work, I think, for people who dream of a career in marketing., but I dreamed of being a writer and the champion of my own great ideas and stories that inspire people to join me in saying, “Holy Sh!t that’s interesting.”
So although we have two healthy and happy children, and although I have accomplished a lot over the years, I have struggled to maintain financial security and stability. The subsequent stress has left my wife unhappy in the marriage. To the point that she is done, a reality that was inconceivable to me until it hit me over the head like a ten-ton wrecking ball. Professional-alignment challenges and national economic uncertainty just add to the debacle. And though much of the world is in turmoil and there are a lot of people going through similar challenges, I have no one to blame for my reality but me.
So I’m gonna start taking my own advice by getting my sorry ass and troubled mind back into the woods on a much more regular basis.
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