Alright, I have decided it is time. Not that I have become “reflective” as I said previously, or that I am now sufficiently acclimated to home, more that I am just bored and this somehow makes me feel ever so slightly productive. Oddly enough I am not sure who I am writing this for as I am sure no one is checking this thing for updates now. Anyway, I will try and make this short and concise, meaningful and deliberate. First I would like to thank everyone who followed me along my PCT journey over the last 5 months. It was a great joy, as I have said before, to come into town and check my comments on here; every one of them spurring me onward, northward. I would not have finished if it wasn’t for all of my friends and family, period, nuff said. I have never written punctuation before, it doesn’t work all that well. Coming back home has been great and odd. Great, in that I am home, duh. Odd in every other sense. Nothing seems to have changed, I fell right back into my pre-trip patterns; wake up, eat, check email, check facebook, run some errands or workout or shower, or all three, lunch, think of some task I should get going on, do half of it, dinner, TV, reading, sleep. Repeat. I have a hard time figuring out how I go from here, how I maintain my once strong and easy “on trail” attitude, how I incorporate the changes I felt I made in myself, but have yet to see play out back in “real life”. I am hoping that in writing this I will inspire myself to get going NOW and start seriously planning my trip around, over, and through the world. I am hoping that in writing this I will re-ignite the spirit of living life that I managed fairly well on trail. I realize that the trail is not real life in a sense. I worried towards the end that similar to my summers at camp, it drops you back into your civilian life fairly abruptly. So here I am. I have decided just in writing the last two sentences that my mission is now to make this life into the one I had at camp and on trail. Live feeling free, making some money, and enjoying the ride. Wow, that was all a little too much, but mostly true. I am selling the rest of my stuff that I deem un-needed. On Thursday I will go up to see Jarell and family, the second week in November I will see Landshark & Caterpillar, and Anna. After that who knows, it’s off to the races; around, over, and through the world. I’ll see you there.
JWC off the PCT
Some thoughts before departure...
- I am still not a vet, doctor, lawyer, dog trainer, cia agent, fbi agent or a navy seal so...walk
- I am doing this for the challenge of course, and I hope to gain a confidence that comes with this type of endeavor. But also I hope to gain some new knowledge about the world and the truths that reside in it.
- Am I walking to "find myself"? Or just to take a walk. You decide...and you'll probably be right.
- I'm not in the best shape of my life, but I do have a lot of new great gear so....
- After living with my parents the last 2 years, it makes perfect sense to walk 2650 miles - alone.
- Yes there will be bears, cougars, rattlesnakes and scorpions both imagined and real along the way. I'm definitely more worried about those imagined.
- Am I scared? Not as of yet, more of just a constantly increasing anticipation. But check back with me on the 3rd night in the desert.
- I tried to keep my pack fairly light, but I definitely would not call it ultralight. Somehow when I added up all my ultralight gear and put it in my ultralight pack, I ended up with just slightly heavy.
- My biggest concern for this trip is that I get too hungry somewhere along the way, my brain goes awol as it usually does when I get hungry and subsequently you never hear from me again...I'll try to eat frequently.
- I am not Christopher McCandless. This is not Into the Wild.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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