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.