Date: 2018-03-09
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Miles today: 0.0

It¢s still seven weeks before I start my hike, but I¢m already experiencing a series of ¢last time I¢ll do that before my hike¢ moments. They always take me by surprise and leave me a little disconcerted, as though I¢m flitting between two worlds, the world where I am respectable, married, church-going, and home-owning and the world where I am homeless, straggly-bearded, dirt-encrusted, perpetually-hungry and peripatetic. Will the real Ken/Sugarfoot please stand up? Of course, I¢m neither all that respectable at home nor so despicable on the Trail.  I took the car out on Saturday to run a few errands, including visiting the discount barber shop to buy the last hair products I would need before my hike. It¢s rare that I run out of shampoo and conditioner at the same time, but when it happens, it¢s definitely worth the drive for a 20% discount. On the Trail, I¢ll trade these things and my blow dryer for a small square of pack towel that I¢ll run through my hair each morning to remove a little of the accumulated oils and dirt. I also stopped at the gas station, certainly the last time the Outback will need fuel before my hike. I won¢t miss the smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes. That reminds me that I need to schedule the annual car inspection due next month. I¢ve started a things-to-do-before-I-leave checklist, a pre-hike bucket list.This past Tuesday was Vermont Town Meeting Day and my last election before my hike. Burlington is too large for an actual meeting, but we went to the polls to elect a mayor, city councilor, school commissioner, approve the school budget and approve the issuance of bonds for capital improvements. We also voted on a series of advisory questions ranging from global climate change, basing F-35¢s at Burlington International Airport, and increasing the age for the purchase of tobacco products. Every aspect of municipal life here is endlessly debated and highly contested. Apathy is not a problem. Indeed, citizens are required to hold at least two contradictory opinions on every subject and voice them simultaneously. I won¢t miss politics on the Trail. I haven¢t decided yet if I will studiously avoid news during my hike. It¢s hard to go cold turkey from the news but an interesting exercise, a reminder of how little the things we worry about actually affect our lives.  I trimmed my toenails last Saturday morning, hardly newsworthy, and I¢ll trim them again before leaving, but it made me aware that I actually have all ten toenails, a sure sign that it¢s time for a hike. How many toenails will I lose on this hike? Will I achieve a personal best and lose all ten? I¢ve never lost my big toenails before; that could be exciting. If you don¢t know, it¢s common for hikers as well as long-distance runners to lose toenails. A couple of days after I stub a toe against a rock or a root, the nail goes black and eventually falls off. It doesn¢t hurt and so far, there¢s always been a new nail underneath. I¢ve been wearing my hiking boots or trail runners as everyday shoes here, so maybe that won¢t happen this time. My toes are already nicely calloused.  At the grocery store last week, I bought the last Vitamin D that I¢ll use before my hike. My doctor doesn¢t support using multi-vitamins and agrees that I can suspend my vitamins as well as a minor prescription medicine during my hike. The only drug I¢ll be carrying will be Naproxen sodium, Aleve. It works much better for me than the ubiquitous Vitamin I, Ibuprofen, that most hikers use.  Does anyone else feel caught between two worlds in the weeks before a hike? A part of me feels like I¢ve already started the hike. The rest of me doesn¢t quite believe that it will ever really happen. This isn¢t the way it is supposed to be in the Hero¢s Journey. In mythology, there is either a portal or a threshold. Going through it or crossing it starts the great adventure, and it¢s not a dragged out affair. The Wizard shows up and more-or-less commands that it¢s time to leave the Shire, or Lucy stumbles through the back of a Wardrobe into Narnia. The portal or the boundary is a two-way street. Odysseus, Bilbo and Lucy all return to the peace of their respective hearths.  For Odysssus and Bilbo, the time they spent in their grand journeys has passed at home at well. Time spent in Narnia didn¢t register in England. I tried playing with the Narnia concept in my writing, having characters step out of time, do whatever they do, and step back into time at the exact moment they left, with no memory of having left, except that over time, memory leaks occur. I haven¢t gotten it to work, and Einstein would not approve at any rate.  If I were to leave Earth in a spaceship and travel at near light velocity, my watch would continue to tick and I would experience time no differently than if I had remained on Earth.  If I managed to find my way back to Earth, not at all a sure thing for one so directionally challenged, I would find that far more time had elapsed on Earth than I had experienced. My friends would all be very old and probably quite dead. On the other hand, if my spaceship did nothing but orbit the Sun at a stately pace while the entire Earth zoomed off at near light speed before returning to its placid solar orbit, I would be the very old person while my friends would have scarcely aged. I can conceive of no way for me to step out of time, have a grand adventure, and step back into time at the same moment I departed. C. S. Lewis was not a physicist.  My hiking speed won¢t be relativistic, so I¢m not worried about that. I would, however, welcome the illusion that the Appalachian Trail is a different dimension, where time is once again in joint, where I can welcome the sprite instead of cursing them.