Two weeks from tomorrow is still my target date to start the AT despite the recent return of nasty weather. I hope winter is blasting itself out and things will be mild come the start of spring. Today I did my first complete gear check to see what I may still need before I go. I think I'm ready. The first picture is all my stuff and the second picture is what it looks like when it's all packed. Pack weight before water is 32 pounds which is not bad with five days' of food plus winter gear. I will shed a couple of pounds when the weather is warmer but I'm not sacrificing comfort (such as it is) for a pound or two of savings. Thank you to those of you who have offered recommendations for my trail name. I think I'm going to wait until I have been on the trail a few days before I settle on one. Give myself a chance to shift into "wilderness" mode and see what resonates then. Keep those suggestions coming, though.
A different kind of journey
You probably thought I was done with this blog. So did I, actually. But in the many months since my last post, I did a couple of things I thought worth mentioning. One, I hiked almost another 400 miles of the AT in parts of New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia accompanied by either Jusmel or Speedbump the whole time. My son Zack shared the trail through part of NY. As much as I liked hiking alone, hiking with a great partner is better. Two, I wrote a novel. I didn't manage to hike the entire trail in one year but, much to my surprise, I did manage to finish a book based in part on my experiences on the trail. It is called Hitch's Story. It is the story of a young man who returned from Vietnam in1968 and decided to walk the war out of his system by hiking the AT. He walked away from his mother and brother and was never heard from again. Until now. His younger brother, now 65 years old, receives a package in the mail with Hitch's war medals and an old, fade...
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