Date: 2008-05-22
From: Alec Kennedy Shelter

To: Rt. 11
Miles today: 11.9

There is something in the comfortable familiarity of seeing white blazes along the trail that sinks to a subconscious level when walking. In effect, your mind registers that you are in fact still on the trail, yet you don¢t pay a lot of attention to the indications. On Thursday, May 22, at just over the half-way mark on the AT I left those familiar white blazes. I didn¢t have a dramatic climb or finish, I simply walked off the trail and re-entered civilization after hiking 1115 miles. There are several reasons I did this. I know this was kind of an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, yet towards the end I had lost my love and joy of the trail. For the past three weeks or so I really enjoyed only one or two of those days hiking. Yes, the rain contributed to some of those feelings, yet on the one or two sunny days I felt like I was simply plodding on without any true joy. By ¢joy¢ I mean the love of discovering what is over the next hill or around the next bend. It is relishing the aroma of the flowers and being amazed at the floral diversity surrounding me. It is the love of solitude and the time for introspection. For some reason I just wasn¢t experiencing any of those things anymore. I have learned now that my family had been having a truly difficult time without me recently as well. When I considered all the costs of staying on the trail, and I don¢t just mean monetary costs, I believe the misery I was experiencing and the misery my family was experiencing outweighed the attainment of getting to Maine. I knew once I stopped hiking there would be no going back-at least not for quite awhile. I also know the trail will still be there for me at some later time should I choose to take another journey. I stopped hiking just outside Carlisle Pennsylvania. I stepped off the trail, walked down Rt. 11, and checked into a hotel. Later that day I rented a car to drive home in. The next day, when I drove into the neighborhood here, I was overwhelmed by a sense of finality and defeat. This was not the ending I had envisioned when I started out. There was no celebration and no sense of completion. I guess I¢ve just changed trails and am now just following a new set of blazes extending before me in my life here at home. While I was hiking I knew that as long as I felt I could go another day I needed to. I told myself for three weeks that things will get better. Eventually I grew worn out wishing for a different hike than I was currently hiking. Some might say that as long as I am unsure of myself I should continue hiking. I don¢t know if that¢s true or not. If the trip changed me in any way it is that I learned how much I love my wife-much more than I ever realized or maybe expressed to her. I also learned how much I love my girls. I have learned that I can live fairly simply though I will never take for granted a hot shower and clean clothes. I enjoy sleeping outside so don¢t be surprised to find my sleeping bag out on my deck even in cold weather. I would like to think I will be a better employee since I won¢t be so focused on this trip anymore. I know that for the past 20 months or so that has occupied a lot of my mind. In conclusion, I believe I made the right decision, but that¢s not to say you might sometimes find me staring out at the mountains daydreaming of being out there again. I sincerely appreciate all who have supported me in their words of encouragement and prayers. There is a part of me that feels like I¢m letting you down, but I also know that I am hiking my own hike and not someone else¢s. The quote I have included in all my journals is from my favorite poem ¢Ulysses¢ by Alfred Lord Tennyson and I do see all experience as an arch whose margin fades forever and forever when I move. I take to heart the way Tennyson ends the poem with ¢Though much is taken, much abides and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are: one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.¢ Ken aka Hardbound