Notes from the Other Side: A Perspective on the Jaunt

Yes. You caught me. Fine.

I freely admit it.

I've been putting this off. But I can't postpone any longer.

It's time for the final AT post.

I waited a while. Sorry. Thanks for your patience.  I tried, you know. Tried to sit down and get this written. But after a few frustrating attempts I decided that I needed a little distance. A dash of perspective.
I thought that maybe a few weeks after being done, with my aches healing and a mind occupied with anything and everything other than walking that I might get emotional distance neccesary to really write about the trail.

But...it's all still too big, even with the immediate sensations already fading into the haze of memory. So I'm just going to have to take a bash at it anyway and hope for the best.

People keep asking me, "so...how was the trail?" And inevitably I sigh and stumble over my words until I settle for something like "it was far worse and far better than I ever imagined it would be."

People seem satisfied with that, even though that sentence is a magnificent failure. But nobody wants a three hour answer in the middle of the Kroger parking lot. Mostly they just want to know if it was worth it, to which the short answer is: yes.

But I'm assuming that if you are reading this, you might have the stomach for the long answer. So here we go.

Let's start with how it feels to be done and go from there.

First of all, my body doesn't know quite what's going on yet. I knew that healing would take a while, but I foolishly thought it would go a little bit quicker than it is. My knees are still tender and stressed. Stairs are a bit of a challenge. My feet are still in rough shape...dry, peeling, and calloused no matter how much or often I slather them with lotion.

I want to eat a lot. Not huge quantities, in fact, my portions are much smaller than they were pre hike. But I want to eat ALL the time, and I have trouble turning down food,  even when I don't really want it.

I am still very tired. I easily drop off for naps, at any time of day, for hours at a time.

I feel okay when I am moving around, but any period of inactivity is rewarded by instant stiffness and the return of the "hiker hobble". It takes me a long time to get up from chairs, out of bed, and to bend over and tie shoes.

My body, in short, is still hiking. I don't know when it will stop, but surely it will be soon. It has to, at some point.

The good thing is, I haven't gained any weight back, though I feel sluggish and doughy. The pants don't lie, though. Still plenty of room in a size thirty waist...a continuing source of amazement. I like my new body and I am highly motivated to keep it. I just have to find some exercise routines that baby my knees. Probably weights and yoga...especially yoga. You wouldn't believe how inflexable I am.

My sleeping rhythm is one thing that has changed to reflect my new circumstances, for which I am grateful. It's nice to be able to stay up past eight without collapsing in the middle of a dinner. (Although falling asleep face first into soup does have some advantages. You are almost certain to get at least a few calories while asleep, which is very efficient.)

So that's the physical side of things. Pretty straightforward.

Now for the other stuff.

I was an emotional wreck when I finished walking. I don't mind saying it, it's a pretty common symptom. Maybe if I had been in better shape to begin with, maybe if my family hadn't suffered a loss, maybe if it weren't for Sandy, maybe if it weren't for these things I would have finished in jubilation and triumph.

But the overwhelming sensation that rushed over me at the top of Springer Mountain was a flat kind of relief and a mild sense of accomplishment, not much more intense than how you feel at the end of a long day when a difficult task at work has been completed succesfully and with skill.

Don't get me wrong. If I had the choice to make over again, I would still choose to hike the trail. In a heartbeat. It was amazing, and hard, and frustrating, and grueling, and exciting, and cold and hot and there were bugs and views and mountains and trees and great instances of overwhelming beauty, both natural and human.

It was better and worse than I ever thought it could be. Hell, I don't know. It was the Trail. If anyone could describe it perfectly, no one would walk it.

So is it any surprise that I wasn't quite sure how to feel at the top of Springer? Other than relief? Who wouldn't feel relief after that experience?

Is it any surprise that I still don't know how I feel?

I do know a few things for sure though. My emotional transition back in to the real world continues to be rough.

Everything is too fast, too loud, and too crowded. Houses are too small. Everything else is too big. There are too many smells, most of them bad, and wow, did you know how absolutly UGLY everything is?

I mean, really...is there anything uglier than a strip mall? Power lines? Urban sprawl? I know, I know...some of these things are inevetable, the price we pay for a cushy and well fed life. And I certainly don't mind hot showers, flush toilets, and meals that consist of more than noodles or taters. But I submit that only SOME of the uglyness is out of our control, and that the rest is merely carelessness and lazyness.

In any case, I know that I missed the trail today, really missed it for the first time with an ache deep in my bones. And I was standing in the middle of an outdoor mall, surrounded by shoppers, with crappy Christmas music playing over the loudspeakers.

It's a far cry from Katahdin, or McCafee Knob, or even a little glade with a spring and a path winding through the woods, and the sound of the wind in the leaves, and the loons crying at sunset, and...and
..

...and so on.

I am happy to be back, happy to move on to other adventures, first and formost being married. But I know that I will spend the rest of my life seeking out windy peaks, and peaceful valleys, and clear springs.

You should try it sometime.

The trail taught me two things. I'll talk about them briefly and then I'm done.

The first is this: all control is an illusion. Remove a few trappings of civilization and control over your circumstances vanishes. If you run out of food, you are hungry. If it rains, you are wet, no matter how much goretex and eVent fabric you have. If it snows...guess what? You are cold AND wet. Where there are streams you cross them and where there are mountains you climb them. This is life. Stop complaining and start walking.

It doesn't take a philosopher or a poet to see how this can be applied to every day life, although I suspect as time wears and I continue to be well fed and warm and dry the lesson will be harder to understand. Still, I have to try. It's a lesson worth learning.

Here is the second thing I learned. The world is a big place. Huge really. Amazingly, brilliantly massive.

"Wait a minute" you say. "Hold on. Isn't the world a small place? What with cars and planes and cell phones and skype? It's been shrinking since the nineties, that's what the folks in the know say!"

And yeah, you have a point. But consider this. I spent nearly five months of my life walking from Maine to Georgia. I stepped foot in most of the states on the east coast, many of which I'd never been to. I looked at things most people don't get to look at.

AND I SAW NOTHING.

Not in the grand scheme of things. I didn't even see a tenth of my own country, much less the world. You don't even have to take cars and planes out of the equation and STILL the world is vast. Are you "well traveled"? Have you been to Europe, or Austrlia? Good for you. You still haven't seen one millionth of all there is too see...and isn't that amazing? Isn't it incredible?

So don't let people tell you the world is small. It might be politically, or technologicaly...but that just doesn't mean anything. Not really.

If you still don't believe me, leave your car in the driveway and try walking to the grocery store one day.

It's a big world out there.

So that's it.

In July of 2012 I stepped onto a path in the woods. The path was one foot wide and two thousand miles long. I walked along it for four and a half months. I drank from springs. I sweated. I ached and shivered. I popped blisters, watched hawks migrate from the tops of mountains, and startled several bears. I made good friends and realized just how selfless many people can be. I had long conversations about every concievable topic, missed my loved ones, and spent great quantities of time in perfect solitude. I had wacky adventures and a few nervous moments. I was blissfully happy and perfectly miserable.

I completed something that only a quarter of everyone who starts it completes. And I did it faster than most of the people who complete it.
But mostly I was just a body in motion. I walked. That is what I did.

I just walked.

Happy trails
--Andrew

THE END

*AFTERWORD*

Thanks for reading, folks. I enjoyed writing this blog. Hope you enjoyed reading it. It was cool knowing ya'll were along for the ride.

So it looks like my vagabond life is just beginning. Shortly I'll be moving to Ohio, but that's just a pit stop. In a few years Rach and I plan on working overseas, and we plan on traveling frequently even when we are on the home front. In addition to that, I have many more outdoor adventures planned. (Colorado Trail? PCT? New Zealand just completed a trail!)

Anyway, what I'm saying is I'd like to keep writing. I can't promise that my life will always be blizzards and pooping in the woods, but my upcoming adventures in the world of part time holiday retail employment are sure to generate some material.

I'm notoriously bad at keeping blogs, so no promises. But I'm gonna give it a try. Your best bet is to subscribe by email so you get notified whenever or if ever I post. Get a friendly neighborhood geek to show you how, if you don't know.