Date: 2005-02-17
To: Thoughts
Miles today: 0.0

Only 23 more days left until we start the approach trail to Springer Mountain! And I only have 3 more nights to work at my job. As more people realize that I am leaving work to walk the trail they have questions about safety (from bears, snakes, other humans, cold, rain, etc.) and they look at me like they cannot understand why I want to do this. It is difficult to put into words. It is not something I have dreamed of doing for all my life like so many others; only since May of 2003 when Mike and I decided to do it. Along the way, as I mentioned in an earlier journal, we decided to walk for Outreach International, an organization that helps the poor all over the world to help themselves. Now, with Mike not being able to retire until July, I will be walking by myself about half of the time. We had committed to OI and I felt like one of us had to be out there starting. OI designed pledge forms for us, had an article written by us in one of their volunteer newsletters, had another article about our AT WALK FOR HUNGER in another newsletter, and on their website they have the same article. And what is so neat is that there is a small map of the trail on the pledge form and the newsletter article. If anything keeps me going it will be that the more miles I walk the more $ OI brings in. I am hoping that all of those that have heard about our walk through OI will be reading this and sign our guest book. (Look over to your left and click on "sign" in the Guest book and "view" at what others have written). After you sign we will receive the message on our pocketmail composer on the trail when we download our messages from our cell phone and it will indeed give us much encouragement and moral support to keep taking one step at a time until we reach the end of the trail.As for our gear selection I have come to the conclusion that no matter what we have there will always be someone that says something else is better. Until something proves wrong for us through trial and error we will stick with what we have. I am satisfied even though we do not have a lot of experience at cooking on our alcohol stove, filtering water, setting up and taking down our tent (especially in the rain) we will manage as well as anyone else out there after a few weeks. We are not going to be out there trying to see how fast   we can get from one point to another and I think that the low mileage days we have planned shows that. After a few weeks I hope that we begin to feel that we are beginning to get our trail legs and we can then start picking up a few more miles a day at times. A co-worker asked me yesterday what I was most afraid of and I said I was afraid of how my body (knees, hips, feet, and back) will respond to the vigorous strain I will put it through every day. But thanks to all of the advice (especially from all the people that have walked this trail before--whether it was a thru-hiker, section hiker, or someone that attempted a thru-hike) I know that we should listen to our bodies and take time to enjoy the views and the peace and freedom that comes from just being able to be out there in such a setting that so few people get to experience. Most people I know will probably never do what we are doing and if they follow along with us on our journey through this site we can maybe help them to feel like they too are walking it. I hope we can journal adequately to let them see it through our eyes. This journal will be for those people, especially. I want them to feel as I felt over the last 2 years when I followed certain others on their journey. And when the time came for them to end their journey by climbing the great Mt. Katahdin it was like not wanting a good book to come to an end.I have been thinking about the things I will miss this year while I am out on the trail. For one thing I'll miss picking strawberries (I LOVE strawberries). I'll miss watching the wild plants and flowers bud and bloom in our wetland down behind our house. I never thought of this until I was walking the dogs the other day and remembered a few years ago discovering a little flower that we did not know the name of. We discovered that it is   a trout lily. There are so many things to see and discover every year as we walk through the area. I'll miss seeing the Baltimore Orioles that come back every year to build a nest in a tree next to the house. I'll REALLY miss seeing our grandchildren. BUT I know that I will be able to pick some blueberries, see trout lilies (and many other flowers we don't see here in our back yard), all kinds of birds and other animals (including bears, I hope, and skunks, porcupines, moose, etc. and even B. Orioles) along the trail and we'll be able to talk to our grandchildren on the phone.   Everything that I will miss this year will be so much more appreciated next year!So as time draws closer for our walk to start I am excited, anxious, and feel so unprepared in so many ways. But that will all take care of itself eventually. The thoughts and feelings that I have read in so many other journals echo my own so much it seems that there must be some kind of magic (genetic?) link that ties us all together. From all the different backgrounds and life experiences we all seem to be having similar thoughts and feelings about the trail. This quotation is one I got from Aloha Annie¢s journal. I really like it.¢Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn¢t do than by the one you did do.¢ Mark Twain, Autobiography