Date: 2013-07-28
To: What Happened
Miles today: 0.0

Hello Everyone,It has been a very long time since I've done a journal. I'm sorry that I left a lot of you in the dark. A lot has happened since the last log. It has been a very emotional few months. Since having to get of the trail it has been VERY hard to think about backpacking at all. I had become very depressed and unhappy about the conclusion of my hike. However, after a few months, I'm finally feeling better and things are starting to look up. Lets start at the beginning of the hike and work our way up till now...++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++During my years of high school, the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail was consistently running thru my head. I had the spirit for that kind of adventure. Being on my own, and taking care of my self far away from society for months on end was an exiting idea. I knew,that being away from society would make me feel better about myself and show me there is still good in the world. As I went thru high school, I experienced little tastes of what the trail would be like. Trips across the country with scouts showed me the hidden parts of America. I realized the beauty of our national parks. Thru this I was slowly turned on to backpacking and exploring the country from the perspective of walking. Soon enough the Idea of a thru hike turned into a dream, then a reality.During 11th grade in high school I was talking to one of my best friends, Tucker Wesphal. I told him my about my dreams of thru hiking. It took no time for his eyes to light up. He told me that him and his brother had thrown the idea of hiking the trail around, but it was unlikely to happen because his brother was going to college at the time. After that we continued to talk about the trail. I started to see there was real passion in Tucker and that he was a determined person. We decided to make this trip happen and before we knew it March 2013 was on the calendar as a start date.12th Grade passed with great anticipation. All of my excitement and energy came from the trail. I wasn't interested in parties, or college, or other things 12th graders are interested in. No for Tucker and I hiking was the essences of life itself. On weekends we get together and dream of hiking. We would plan like crazy even though it was so far ahead (being only the years 2011-2012) at the time. As graduation came there was a sense of being released from a cage. Finally I could do something for me. Not my parents, not school, not for a job, not my country. Hiking was just about me. This is something every kid should experience in their life. Absolute freedom.But freedom didn't all come at once. Even though the time for the trail was close there was still a lot of planning and training. The next year consisted of working, community college, and lots of running. The anticipation became unbearable. I had to get out, away from home. I was so ready to take care of myself. Finally after waiting and waiting the time came to hike the trail.Caribou and Dovetail became our identities, and on that day 2/23/13 we left Amicola falls for the biggest adventure of our lives. You can read about each day of our hike in previous logs. More than two months of good times. For the rest of this log and the next log I'm going to fill you in on what happened and reflect. Then I'm going to do a log on future AT experiences!First, lets do the sorter of the three topics. Filling you in on why our hike ended the way it did. For me (Caribou) I experienced signs of planters, sesimoiditist, and soreness on my meditarsals (Sorry for all the misspellings. the point is my feet hurt). I was not to happy on the trail at the end of my hike. I had experienced this sourness for several weeks and was getting very old. I think my feet had a lot to do with why I got off the trail, but really I know in the end it was mental. I wouldn't admit it then but I will now. I was tired, not only physically but mentally I was tired of my feet hurting all the time. I was still able to walk. I could have gone on but I knew the trail was about smiles not miles and at the time it was not smiles.I came home from the trail in a definite state of denial. I thought that I could fix my feet in a few days and get back on the trail. That was not the case. I tried twice to get back on and both times I failed because of the pain in my feet. After, the second time I was really upset. It was really hard to over come the sense of failure. I felt like I let not only myself down but everyone around me. It took time for me to heal from this scar but I did and I will talk about it a lot more in my next log that will reflect on what I learned.Right now I'm working full time and learning how to cope with this experience. I'm going to college in the fall for landscaping and can't wait. I'm glad I get to be outside working on grooming nature. I love reading journals of my friends on the trail making it to Maine. Its also really hard to read these journals at the same time because I wanna be in Maine with them having a kick ass time. All the same I'm glad to have had this experience because its in our lows we find our highs.About Dovetail, I don't want to speak for him. I'll try to encourage him to do his own log, but he isn't to much for logging haha. I will tell you he had to get off in Pa doing about 300 miles more than me. He had feet problems too.I will be writing my log which will reflect on all I learned from this experience soon.Stay tunedCaribou