Date: 2009-12-11
To: The Journey Ahead
Miles today: 0.0

ATTENTION: May I ask that if there are any STUDENTS still following this journal, that you have your parents or teachers read this final entry before you as it deals with some adult situations that you might not fully understand.Hello Everyone and Season's Greetings! I would like to present you with some post-hike data about my Thru Hike and make some concluding remarks.I spent 169 days on the Trail, April 1 (Approach Trail) to September 16 (Katahdin). 152 of these days were hiking days, 17 were "zero" (rest) days. I spent 107 nights in my tent, 24 nights in a shelter, 8 nights in a cabin (private or hostel), 11 nights in a house (private), 11 nights in a hotel (alone or shared), 7 nights in a bunk house (usually hostel), and 1 night in a hut. On the trip, I went through 8 sets of Aqua Mira water purifying chemicals (each purified 80 Liters of water), 6 8oz iso-pro fuel canisters, 5 4oz canisters, 5 sets of headlamp batteries and 3 bottles of DEET. I saw 68 Deer, 19 Bear, 57 Snakes, 3 Moose, 1 Fox, 1 Raccoon, 14 Turkey, various lizards, turtles, grouse, beavers, etc.Everyone asks how much it cost. Here goes. Gear $2045 ($1190 Pre-Hike, $855 On-Trail), Lodging $682 ($38 for paid campsites), Mailing $237 (Thank You to Charlie, who paid for ALL of the maildrops which I estimate to have been about $300), Resupply $684 (on trail) $200 (maildropped food), Laundry $25, Travel $91 (Shuttles) $85 (Airfare) $65 (Bus), General Spending (Town Food, Beverages, Ice Cream) $1238. Total $5384 (Ouch!)This final journal entry may seem a little overdue but I really wanted to get a little further away from the giant experience of my AT Thru Hike so as to better understand its impact on my life. Immediately after finishing the hike, it was difficult to talk about it to other people. What did you learn? Did you grow? How did you change? As you all know from reading about this adventure, not many things in my life are easy and nobody was handing out giant packets of wisdom on the top of Katahdin for me to tell people about. For me in many ways, the journey continues as I get further away from Katahdin and each day I learn more, grow more, and change in relationship to the man I was when I began that journey. This week a particularly special journey continued for me as I reunited with my hiking buddy Scarecrow for a three-day hike in the Catskills. You may remember Scarecrow as one of my favorite friends from the Thru Hike: we met the first day at the foot of the Approach Trail and hiked together until Damascus, nearly a month later. You may also remember the crazy weather that we hiked through day and night on our hikes, so me telling you that we experienced over a foot of snow and temps in the low twenties Tuesday night would probably not surprise you! But the great thing about this hike is that it happened--we took the initiative to get together and continue our friendship outside of the perfect sheltered environment of the Appalachian Trail. I consistently found it sad to be saying goodbye to people I liked so much on the Trail. Saying hello to Scarecrow again after we both reached our goal was a feeling as big as standing on top of Mount Moosilauke celebrating that first venture above treeline.One of the reasons that Scarecrow and I were such fast friends is that he is a contemplative person. "Jason, weren't you going to write one last journal entry...?" My answer to this was that all of the other journal entries were for you all--my friends, my family, the students, those I have met from afar. This entry is for me (or rather for all of us) and I didn't feel that needed to get info posted ASAP like usual. But since he asked, I thought it was maybe time to get going on this last page. And I'm glad that I waited because, even though it was colder than I can possibly describe to you this week in the Catskills, it was the perfect situation in which to reflect and look back on this last chapter of my life. Provisioning, wearing my beloved hiking gear, smelling the familiar sweet forest air, searching for trail markers on various trees, and joking with The Scarecrow; this all made it easy to remember what I loved about and learned on the hike. Hiking the Appalachian Trail is fundamentally simple. I know that there are millions of details involved in a hike like this and I faced working through them every day. But when you get down to it, hiking is simple in comparison to the complexity of real life. My worries were usually logistical: do I have enough food to make it to Neels Gap? My starboard pole lost its tip--can I make it to Kent to get it replaced? Can I make it across the Franconia Ridge in between thunderstorm bands? My worries in real life are far more difficult: Am I on the right path in my career? Am I spending enough time with my family while they are healthy? Will I ever find love? I like to think that the six months I spent on the Trail not only let me enjoy the therapy of working through the details of my hike, but also taught me to be able to take on my life's challenges a little more systematically. And I like to think that the discipline of dealing with an emergency with no emotional reaction (like having a plan fall through and being twenty miles from anywhere with no food and having to make an emergency run into Palmerton PA) will help me face life's huge unexpected challenges with calm and effective reactions.   The community of the Trail is completely unique to any community I have ever been a part of. I assumed that the Trail Community would be like a community on a ship--a closed community of people that spend every moment of their lives together working, eating, socializing. On the trail, the community is ultimately open-ended and I often thought of it as linear. Every day of the entire trip I met people who I did not know before. Often I knew of them, from trail registers or from the endless supply of 'news' that gossiped its way up and down the trail via campfire discussions each night. Some days I met people who I said goodbye to the next day and never saw them again. Some days I met people who I walked with for weeks on end. In this manner, I met Scarecrow, Solar, Bird, Trampoline Sean, Mostly, Top Shelf, Gezza, Lunchbox, Juice, Mammallamma, and Nature. To my absolute dismay in each of these situations, it became clear to me that I would have to say goodbye to them, too. After feeling the solemn loneliness of saying goodbye to each of these friends, I had to view this as a microcosm of life. Friends go in and out of your life like ships at a busy port sometimes. It is up to you to grab hold of them and make those friendships happen. This is why it is so monumental that Scarecrow and I hiked this week in New York--subzero temps or not--this is a step in the right direction for the future of our relationship.Unfortunately, certain members of the Trail Community caused me great grief as I hiked on my journey. It drove me crazy to see and hear some of the things I experienced: hikers littering shelters with religious cards telling everyone they are going to Hell, hostel owners who allowed drug sales (I'm talking crack, not weed) on their premises while their employees aggressively propositioned guests for sex, and my favorite 65-year old woman hiker who ran around Trail Days showing the scars on her wrists she had sustained by picking up a bear cub as if they were the bleeding scars of Christ Jesus. (She didn't make it to Maine and she did not deserve to.) I felt angered that these people weren't shunned from the community because to me they were ridiculous. Not only couldn't I believe the things I saw them do, but I couldn't believe people still talked to them or patronized their businesses. Lesson number one is that anyone that starts hiking the AT from Springer Mountain in April is automatically beginning their hike in a circus. During the first five hundred miles of the hike you can and will see everything imaginable from people who elect to save weight by not carrying food or a sleeping bag, to a guy carrying a 93 pound pack with three weather radios. There is no doubt that there is some element of eccentricity (craziness) in anyone who decides to hike for six months in the woods. Unfortunately, there are also people there who have no place else to go, and the trail is in many ways a homeless shelter during this time so you are just going to have to deal with it and keep your eyes peeled. Lesson two is that I needed to remember that the mantra of the Trail is "hike your own hike" and this pertains to the Trail just like it does to real life. As long as nobody is bothering or endangering you, who cares where their journey leads? There is always going to be somebody wasting trees to tell you in writing that you're going to Hell; there is always going to be somebody selling crack; there is always going to be somebody showing off the fact that they are stupid from the foundation of their being. Sometimes you just need to take care of yourself, and lead by example.The further away from Katahdin I get, the clearer it is that hiking for me is a metaphor for my journey through life. So many of the important lessons learned on this trip ultimately translate to real-life situations. There were obstacles that stood in the way of me reaching my goal that I had to slave over, under or around (the exhausting climb over Pond Flats comes to mind). There were events that made the journey miserable at times (like a 70-year rainfall event that flooded Massachusetts and caused us to have to swim through it). There were times when I absolutely didn't know how I could go another step (like when I was laying on the ground convulsing in pain after falling on McAfee Knob). There were terrific people who I was lucky to have shared extended periods of the journey with (like Mostly: we not only hiked alike but we thought alike about many things). There were moments of profound revelation (sitting atop Mt. Madison and feeling like I was witnessing the work of God first-hand) and moments of tremendous jubilation (reaching the first stop at Neels Gap, having doubted hundreds of times that I would make it the first 30.7 miles) I cannot help likening this journey to my journey through life which is full of comparable sensations, difficult obstacles, wonderful relationships, unpredictable weather, and unexplainable faith. It is just as important for me conduct myself now as I did on my hike. I must be vigilant about paying attention to the details of myself and my surroundings so that I can make the easiest passage forward. Finally, the Appalachian Trail is a metaphor for giant goals in life. I wrote about setting that goal and moving ever-so-slowly toward it each day and finally after so much time and effort finally fulfilling that goal by standing atop Katahdin. This is an important life lesson for me and I feel that my hiking experience will help me to be at peace with the seemingly slow progress it takes to get great places in life. We are usually results-driven people and it is hard to settle for 8 miles one day when the goal is 2178 miles away. Setting goals is difficult because there is always distance to cover to reach a goal. But I cannot imagine my life without having set the goal to hike the Trail. Looking back now, those two thousand miles seem to have went by in an instant. Anyone who is 'on the fence' like I was for the last two years, I urge you to get out there and begin hiking--maybe not the whole thing but just get out there to see if its for you or not.So here ends the story! This one, at least. Thank you to everyone who was a part of this incredible journey. Whether you were meeting me out there and treating my poison ivy, or reading journals every night imagining what it would be like to be out there yourself, you were a part of this and I cherish your involvement. Nobody could make it out there alone (yes, another metaphor). Anyone who is considering a hike in the future PLEASE consider using me as a resource so I can begin giving back a little. My email is posted on here so get in touch and lets talk about gear or planning or lets go on a practice hike. And who knows? Perhaps there is another epic journey for Sailor J somewhere in the future? Until Then!