Date: 2004-09-25
To: Reentry
Miles today: 0.0

So what¢s been going on? What¢s MY reentry been like? It¢s been quite easy compared to other hiker¢s experiences from last year and other years past. I feel that my reentry actually started back in Maine. My food intake changed, I got to experience driving a pickup at The Cabin for a few days, and thoughts from the old life started coming back in as the eventful day approached.My diet took some funny twists the first week back in the front country. Sometimes I wasn¢t hungry at all; and other times I just ate everything in sight. D©j Vu said this happened to her too. Right now I¢m pretty much back to normal, though I miss the intense cravings for¢¦ something - be it pizza, Ben & Jerry¢s, cheeseburgers, whatever. The craving really gave eating food a sensual pleasure. There¢s no more fantasizing about food either. Hikers LOVE to talk about yummy food while on the trail. Sometimes you want to beat people over the head with your Leki¢s because they start talking about food and you¢re still three days from town.Yeah, I still look at food and grade it on it¢s caloric fortitude and will instantly determine how long it will last in my food-incinerating digestive track. Oh, and there no friggin¢ Yuengling in RI or CT. I visited work, probably a bit too soon after I summited. Being around lots of people really freaked me out. Maybe it was because no one had a beard. Nah, just not used to it. I also visited my fire department the same day but felt more at ease.What¢s shocking? Being somewhere where there¢s a total absence of anything natural. Home and fire department had a certain level of detachment, but work in the city was way too detached from nature for me. I remember exiting the building I work in and as soon as I could see the sky I had this feeling of relief come over me. (oh, good, it¢s still there!) I¢m used to the wide-open cinematic view of the world.I don¢t live anywhere in particular and that¢s fine with me. For the next month or so I have some places lined up, but I¢m not really interested in getting a permanent home unless something really cool comes along. I don¢t want an apartment. Too big. I¢d rather rent a room or work-for-stay a room in someone¢s house. The trail has given me chances to create without using money. It would be very interesting to extend that to the, dare I say, ¢real world¢. Trail magic isn¢t just for the trail. Much like living on the trail, I want to keep a lot of mobility in my life. I believe having everything remain static all the time is backward thinking. Movement and change are paramount to happiness and creativity. Now, without a ¢home¢ I had to make some changes in how I approached the things I do.   To live in the front country it¢s good to have a phone - it (the urban environment) is much too big for shelter registers and word of mouth to get messages around. I now have a cell phone as my ¢home phone¢. At first I thought it was impractical and expensive, but now I see it as supporting my mobility. Since I¢m such a geek I needed internet access too. My computers with the 60 lb. screens are much to big to be moving from place to place and in and out of my truck., so I bought a high-end laptop for internet, graphics, watching movies, and gaming. It¢s a WiFi enabled laptop, so it can connect to WiFi hotspots for internet access. (a hotspot is where someone has shared their internet connection using a wireless router - think of it like an internet radio station that both sends and receives) But where to get this access? I either have to choose places to live that already have internet access or find some hotspots around town. So far I¢ve trolled around a little bit in my truck and found three good hotspots - all free. The firehouse also has internet that I can plug into so I spend a lot of time there too. (Right now I¢m sitting in the park beside the firehouse typing this on a picnic table. This is exactly how I¢d like to do my programming job. I just have to watch out for ants trying to climb into the keyboard.)There is some concern in me about work. Will I go back to my corporate job? Will I work at EMS? Will I not work at all? I don¢t know. My corporate insurance job has been a siren that has been seductively pulling me in all through this journey. It is the known world, very static, slow to change. It is a symbol to me, a metaphor for a part of myself that is uncomfortable around change and would rather keep everything the same instead of risking a step into uncharted territory. Risk aversion is what insurance is all about. I knew this before walking six months in the woods, the AT experience just made me finally listen to myself.