It begins

3/30/17

Location: Amicalola Falls State Park Campground

Miles: lots by airplane and shuttle; about 1 by foot

Food: airport sandwich for breakfast; lunch was a couple of snacks through the day; dinner was buffet at park lodge

Starting conditions: Pack weighs about 35 pounds. I weigh 210 pounds. My hair is short and well kept. My beard is neatly trimmed. I am confident.

So it begins. After a long set of flights out of Anchorage in which I got about 2 hours of sleep, tops, I landed in Atlanta. I barely had time to get my luggage and figure out where I was when I had to rush to catch a train to a station where I would meet my shuttle that would take me to the state park.

I had planned on setting up camp right away and start the trail in the morning, but that is not how it worked out. My shuttle driver dropped me off at the entrance to the park, which was a solid mile away by trail to the campground. So after putting on my pack and getting my photo taken by the stone arch at the start of the trail, I started walking up the hill to the lodge and campground. It was way warmer than I anticipated– its not a good sign that I am sweating so much and it’s not even April yet– but otherwise it wasn’t too bad. I set up camp, had a hearty meal in the lodge, and came back here to write and get ready for bed.

I feel like I should have a bunch more philosophical thoughts right now since I am on my way to fulfilling​a crazy dream of mine, but I am seriously​ jet lagged​ and can only think about how much I need sleep. I’ll have more thoughts tomorrow when I am on Springer Mountain

Starting Something

3/29/17

Anchorage, AK

So today is a pretty big day. Today is the day that I am leaving Anchorage for the summer to head down to Georgia to go hiking. I am going to hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2200 miles of it—from Springer Mountain, GA to Mt Katahdin in Maine. Crazy,

So why am I doing this hike? Well, it has been something that I have dreamed about doing for many years now. Always in the back of my mind as being something I would want to do in the future, but never really got around to actually putting much thought into. But then last fall a number of factors came together to make going on a through hike seem like a much more reasonable idea. First, mainly the presidential election happened. This really shook me and caused me to rethink a lot of things. At the very least, it showed me in a very real way that life is not as predictable and orderly as we all like to think. It also led me to decide that this year might be a good year to take a summer off from being a government employee for a while. But beyond that, I also realized that I might never have a better time to do this. One of these years I will likely start to grow up and be a real adult with a real, permanent job and maybe a wife and kids. These things would make it very tough to take an entire summer off to go hiking. But right now I have none of those things. Right now, I have freedom. I probably won’t have it forever. I should make use of it while I can.

Okay, that’s all well and good, but seriously, why am I doing this hike? There are any number of easier ways I could enjoy my freedom. What kind of craziness inspired me to want to do this hike? For some people it is all about proving themselves—college kids wanting to prove their strength and ability or older retired people wanting to prove they still have it. Others hike for a way to reset their life—a way to get away from personal demons that have haunted them. Others do it do find themselves—to do the Thoreau thing and just go out into nature to escape the modern life and find out what in life is truly necessary. All those reasons are all well and good, but they are not really me. That is not why I hike it. The only response I have been able to really come up with over the last couple of months to satisfy the “why?” question is: “Because it is there.” Is that enough of a reason to do something like this? I think so. I hope so. Let’s see how this goes.