Date: 2023-08-31
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

It¢s been a week since we returned home and my feet have still not landed on the ground. Kerry, Felix and I have been sitting around eating, drinking and sleeping and not much else. Kerry and I lost 50 lbs between us, mostly in the first month, then we seemed to stabilize, or at least we were eating enough at that point to maintain our weight. Felix, on the other hand, gained 2 lbs, all muscle, as far as I can tell. Already a very healthy dog, he just got a little brawnier and a lot stronger. We need a rest, but Felix is ready to keep going.I don¢t know what I expected when we started this journey. We made no plans other than to buy our plane tickets, Oakland to Atlanta, Georgia, via Denver. We had no expectations, we just thought we would keep walking as long as we were enjoying ourselves. In the end, we kept going even when the going got rough, first with the rain and then the terrain. I remember early on listening to some young people talking at a shelter about their hike expectations. For us, it was always just another walk, a new journey. One of the things that surprised me was that we literally walked through mostly contiguous forest for more than two thousand miles. I don¢t know what I expected. I thought the land would change over such a long distance, as it did, sometimes dramatically, on the other long trails we have hiked, but the one constant was the unending and glorious forest. Even when we had ¢views¢ from mountain tops and ledges, we looked out on more forests, it was quite daunting. We walked through or near many small towns, villages really, and I did not expect this. I have always thought of the East Coast as more urban, which I¢m sure is also true. I just did not expect to see so much country. That probably sounds ridiculous, but for me it was very enlightening. It gave us a feel for how people live and their values.One of the wonderful things about the Appalachian Trail is its connectedness to communities both on and off the trail. It made it possible for us to travel without a plan, to stop when we wanted to, to buy food, get out of the rain or just take a rest day. We met many wonderful and kind people. People who had no reason to help us or even just be nice, it reinforced my belief that most people are decent. I also learned that the trail has room for the not so nice people¢¦if they are not good people in their off-trail life, the trail sadly, will not change that.Most of the hostels and many of the motels we stayed at were run by people who put their hearts and souls into their work, they went above and beyond the business, and even though we only knew them for a day and sometimes two, they treated us as valued friends. The difference between these ¢homes¢ and those for whom it was just a business was immediately noticeable. I¢m still processing this. I suppose it¢s like the difference between those who truly love their work and those who are just in it for the money. Don¢t misunderstand me, they all have a right to make a good living, but attitude makes a difference.There were so many people who provided trail magic in the form of food. I now see that all those hot dogs and hamburgers we ate in the southern states must have made a big difference to mitigating our weight issue in the early days. I have no idea how we would have managed without it. As much as the food, their conversations and stories really added to our journey¢¦.I¢m looking forward to re-reading my journal and re-visiting those stories. People we will never see again, but whose lives touched ours for a time.There is a special place in heaven for all those people that helped us in other ways too, I don¢t want to call them out here, there were many and I don¢t want to miss someone, but when a perfect stranger takes you home with them or gives you a ride or helps just because they can see you need it, it touches you deeply. There were other hikers who helped us from time to time as well, who helped when we needed to lift Felix over a boulder or who gave us a place to tent in the rain. I find myself wondering would I do the same thing if circumstances were reversed? I like to think so, but I have to admit I had not given it much thought. Kerry and I have been mulling over the question, had we known at the beginning how difficult the terrain would get in New Hampshire and Maine, would we have attempted it? We¢re not sure, it¢s probably irrelevant since we didn¢t know and we¢ve now hiked it. We are a little proud of ourselves¢¦we had not planned on literally rock-climbing up mountains, which just goes to show that sometimes a leap of faith is a good thing. On that note, I¢ll end my reflections for now. Thank you for sharing our journey and be sure to look us up if you make it to Oakland, California. We plan to stay home for a while!