Date: 2013-05-25
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

Ok boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, I have a few minutes until I need to get on the road to Rolling Thunder in D.C. So, let's talk a little about my history.I said before that I have wanted to do this thru hike for a long time. The thought of the thru hike has probably been floating around through my mind since about 1974 when my church youth group first hiked Grandfather Mountain. As I became an adult (unless you ask my mom), life got in the way of the things that I desired to do as opposed to the things that I had to do, and that dream got filed away for future reference. So we go through life and somehow forget that we should be Living life instead of just existing and "getting by". I traded my life of adventure and exploration for an existence of fruitless labor and domestication. Just in case you don't know, when you work for someone else's dream, you are not working towards your own. So, this part of my quest began in May of 2009 with the death of my father from cancer. That would have been bad enough but my mom was suffering with cancer also. She died Halloween morning 2009. We used to joke when i was younger about which one of us kids would get to "trip over the cord" when it was time for her to go; I guess I got that opportunity. My mom lost her sight about June that year before she died and my wife and I were her caregivers for that period. We had help from a lot of people, especially our church folk, but needless to say, it was not easy. So, after I lose my mom and dad in 2009, I come home from work in June 2010 and my wife is floating face down in our backyard pool. Although I was able to get her out, made the 911 call and did CPR, she had already been in the water way too long. Her heart was started again before the ambulance took her to the hospital but her body gave out over the next several hours. I made the decision to turn off life support that next day about noon and she was pronounced dead shortly after. When people ask when she died, I have a little difficulty because the day I found her in the pool, she had already died. But officially it was the next day. At the hospital, when it was time to turn off life support, every one there was saying their goodbye's and no one could really understand why I felt that my gooodbye had already been said the day before. I had had so much to deal with the last few months that I realized that before her body ever left the house the day before, she had already died and that even though her heart was beating, she had not survived. We, as humans, never want to give up on something that we think we should have control over. This life and death thing should not be someone else's decision. We should be able to say who lives and who dies. The justice system does it every day so why can't we? So, needless to say, my life and circumstances changed dramatically over those thirteen months. Enter, my wife to be, Kathy. Kathy is like no other woman that I have ever met. (Kathy, when you read this, don't get a big head.) She is able to allow me to do the things that I need to do for me, but also to keep me grounded enough to accomplish the things that I need to do for us. She would not ever tell me that I could not do something, even if she didn't think it was the best idea, but would always help me to see her point of view and maybe make me relize that there was a better way to get it done, or that I really didn't need to do it at all. ENTER- the Appalachian Trail. I know that she does not want to be by herself for six months while I walk around the countryside. I really do not want to be without her either, but she has no desire to walk this trail, she does not like hiking and her idea of camping out includes a hotel. She is also not physically able to do this trek. So, the idea resurfaced about November of last year and I really started planning by reading and researching to see if I thought that I would be able to have a good chance at completing this quest. My gear purchases began this year and I have already had one shakedown hike. I plan on at least two more before next year's departure date and I have talked my grandson and his girlfriend into going with me on those. We will see where this quest takes me and how far I can make it. I have already said that if I am unable to finish this because of a physical problem, it will probably be because of my knees. But, as I said after my first shakedown hike, now I know what I need to work on.The journey is the destination.