...and get back truckin' on.

I'm back on the trail after a long week recharging at home. My new ultralight pack and summer sleeping bag reduce my pack weight a few pounds. Switching out winter clothes for summer clothes further reduces weight. I traded my low hikers that gave me nasty blisters for a trusted pair of boots that should last at least a few hundred more miles. I think I am ready for the next big leg of this adventure.

I made a pretty big decision while I was home this week. Since my calendar is mostly clear for, oh, the rest of my life, I am not going to try to complete the entire 2190 miles of the AT this year. Instead I hope to hike the 800 miles from Springer to Buena Vista, VA, between now and early August. That will give me about 1350 miles for the year. Then I will take ten months to rest up (and regain some much-needed body fat) before I attempt the final 850 miles of the trail from NJ to Maine next year. This plan allows me to significantly reduce my weekly mileage. I'll walk 12-15 miles a day instead of 17-20, and I'll take at least one nero or zero day every four of five days instead of once a week.

This hike is supposed to be a walk in joy - serene, stress-free, challenging but not obsessive. It is a quiet journey of self-discovery for a guy who is on the cusp of a new life. But the self-inflicted pressure to finish the entire trail this year has been a slowly growing weight that all the ultralight gear in the world can't make up for. I remind myself that it is the journey, not the destination, that makes this hike joyful. Giving myself permission to spread this adventure over two years (or even more if I want to) lifts that heavy weight from my back. I already feel the lightness of my hiker-being strolling through the forest - a feeling I had earlier in the hike but seemed to lose a little with the blisters and the mountains of Virginia.

Who knows? I may decide I am done walking long before I get to central Virginia. But when and if I decide to stop my hike, I will do it consciously with the awareness that I already accomplished most of what I set out to do. My destination has never been the top of Mount Katahdin. My destination is a deeper understanding of who I am and who I want to be for the last third of my life on the planet.

I am not there yet but I think it may be just over the next horizon.
Just over the next horizon...





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