Date: 2018-07-18
From: Monson Maine

To: Monson Maine
Miles today: 0.0

After departing the trail in Pennsylvania in 2016, I went back home in Colorado reflecting on the trip. I was both thrilled for the accomplishment I did and the experiences I encountered yet disappointed with myself for not finishing. As for those of you that know me, I always finish what I start and this was not me. I struggled to understand what got lost over the months that I am still seeking that kept me thinking about this. Why would I even consider finishing? What was it about the trip I miss? At first I thought sending Riley home when I reached Washington D.C. was the big factor as my hiking buddy was no longer with me. I missed his morning routine crawling out of mine or some other hiker¢s sleeping back he crawled into in the middle of the night and waking me up, or his afternoon romp around the campgrounds visiting all of the hikers but it was more than just Riley. Marilee and I would lay outside at night on our lounge chairs enjoying the star studded Colorado sky where I pondered if I would ever go back and finish. It was a hollow gratification as I could not really understand why I did quit other than the obvious that I was tired, bored and hiking from sunrise to sunset every day and was not fun anymore. Everyone would ask if I intended to go back and finish to which I would always say yes, yet deep down I was not sure if I at age 63 wanted to invest three to four more months on the trail. Early this year I made the decision to finish but the reality was my heart was not really in it and the only motivator so far was all the money I spent on new gear and the fact that I told everyone I was going ¢ Gee no pressure there! As much as the preparation moved forward I simply could not find a motivator and feared I would again stop for the same reasons. I decided to read my 2016 journal in its entirety non-stop, something I have not accomplished yet. After about three passes of the journal I began to see a pattern the cleared the picture up for me.I began 2016 with expectations of a great life adventure, exploring America and its history along the Appalachian Trail, visiting sites like Gettysburg along the way, interacting with folks from the deep south with their southern hospitality to the Revolutionary days of the east coast corridor to the industrial age of the Northeast U.S. As I read it was clear by my writings this trip was quickly becoming exactly what I had hoped for and every day was an adventure and I was happy. What happened?As I read I could see over time the trip changed in ways I did not understand until now. During the first third, my writings were clearly full of adventure and excitement. Commissioner bringing 12 McDonald hamburgers from town to the next shelter for all of us to eat to only be confronted by a hungry bear that decided he liked hamburgers as well. Riley after an exhausting hike jumping into a mountain river, backpack and all, running back and forth across the river from hiker to hiker mooching rubs and splashing everyone laughing and smiling at him. Heavy D bringing a rattle snake to the hostel he caught on the trail to cook it up ¢ which we did. Bear Wall standing in fear of his life when mama bear approached us to find her cub as we all ran away leaving just him with mama bear. Dr Longspoon and Sassy stopping to help me with Riley after his near-death experience of hypothermia.Over the months as I read, it became clear somewhere I changed the mission from adventure to logistics. The need to ensure I reached Mount Katahdin in the safe weather zone without risk of the mountain being closed due to winter snow quickly rose to the top of my hiking priorities. I saw I was beginning to panic by the midpoint as I was almost 100 miles behind my original plan and that safe zone weather window was quickly closing unless I picked up the pace. I already reached an incredible pace with my last week on the trail completed over 150 miles including my biggest day of 30 miles yet that was not enough. As I continued to read into the middle portion of the trip, my writings began to focus on logistics, whining from boredom and exhaustion from trying to go longer than I did the day before. No more did I plan shorter days to ensure I still had a daylight left at the end of each hike to enjoy dinner with others or a campfire, instead seeing by 7 in the morning I was already packed and off hiking until sometimes 9 at night coming into a shelter area in the dark. No longer was Riley frolicking around the campsite visiting other hikers at the end of each day, instead he would just lay down with his pack still on and fall asleep for hours ignoring the other hikers calling out to him. I remember going through Shenandoah National Park and missed everything it offered. My exhaustion was just as bad as in the beginning but I was no longer having fun or enjoying the trip. I allowed the finish to be the one and only reason I was still hiking. My writings by this time did not include the volumes of meeting people like Trail Angels or towns folks stopping to help or give me a ride to town to resupply. No longer were there any writings about family campers along the trail stopping over to ask me to join them for breakfast and listen to my stories of the trail. The truth was I simply had no new stories according to my journal, instead writing about the boring green tunnel, brutal climbs and descends, and Bataan Death Marches each day. My only real writing of Shenandoah was about the fantastic fireflies that blinked in sequence. Yet the green tunnels started the first day I began, and the brutal climbs were just as bad on day one and there were now in the middle of the trip.I remembered the movie ¢Into the Wild¢ a true story where Chris McCandless carved into a piece of wood the phrase ¢Happiness is not real unless it is shared¢. I came to realize that is what I was missing. By Harpers Ferry, statistically 75 percent of the through hikers had already quit. The original 8 hikers I met in the opening day had all quit, as did the numerous hikers I met early on. By midpoint only the serious hikers were left and from Harpers Ferry on, I never again saw any of the original people, or anyone I would meet one day see again either. As everyone was now on different paces the people you saw one night were not the ones you would see the next night. For all practical purposes we had all become nothing more than passing ships in the night. Conversations were more about gear, resupply points, and what laid ahead. Campfires became a rarity as most hikers went to bed as soon as dark set and many were gone before the sun even rose in the morning. Trail angels were all but extinct and small town America gave way to the industrial belt of the U.S. with major cities all around us. I realized Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) was right; happiness is only real if shared. In the beginning I would show my blisters and others would follow comparing and competing that had more blisters, etc. Those 20 to 30 something lost soul, pot-smoking, homeless hikers became an integral part of my trip and I missed them. Heavy D would take that snake and scare people with it, all at the same time firing up stories from everyone else. Yes we all commiserated together up but it was what made the day fun and was part of the adventure. We would play tricks on each other, or find a great reason like Stink Mouse¢s Shelter-clearing fart in the middle of the night to give a hiker a trail name. I would stop and actually sit with the Trail Angels rather than just take the food then keep hiking like I did later on.The reason I took the trip was to have an adventure that would last me a lifetime so that had to be part of the plan for me to finally get motivated to return and finish. I decided the first change would be to flip flop, meaning instead of returning to the point where I got off and continue northbound. Instead I am heading first to the end at Mount Katahdin Maine and hike south bound back to the point I got off at in Pennsylvania. This way I would get through both Katahdin and the White Mountains well clear of risk of snow endangering the trip. I also would have the advantage of hiking the hottest and wettest months in the cooler Northeast reaching mid America in early fall and enjoy the changing season as I hiked. I decided to not have a specific end date in mind that would require hiking a certain amount of miles per day, instead living and hiking in the moment. No more spending 20 minutes to see such great sites as Gettysburg. Instead I will generally plan to complete the hike around late October into early November or even longer if needed. But most important I will make the time to stop and smell the roses. This time when hikers asked me to join them on an off-trail expedition or side trip for a few days, I will say yes, or make my own plans to visit the sites I love to see. The only thing missing this trip of course will be Riley and I will miss him dearly but I owe it to him and myself to complete this trip and make it an adventure that I always dreamed up since my early childhood days where I would ponder following railroad tracks across the U.S. to explore.For everyone following my journal I want to say thank you and for your support and hopefully give you many hours of enjoyable reading about one old guy having a great time on an incredible journey and accomplishing a dream of a lifetime.Cheers, Weather Or Knot