Eating Elephants

As I lie in my tent listening to the 20 mph gusts of wind come and go I tried to reflect on all the emotions leading up to getting on the trail, as well as my first day/night on this 6 month trek. Suddenly I started to feel alive again! I was overwhelmed with happiness in the sights and sounds that I had encountered in both Tennessee and Georgia on our drive to get to the trailhead. I was accompanied with great friendships by way of my sister, one of her dear friends, and my brother in law. Unsettling, I also came face to face with a trembling fear of failure. A fear that maybe I made a massive mistake, only pushing me into an abyss of darkness and blindness.

Flip the page forward from the first night of Monday March 6th, all the way to Friday March 10th. As I lie down after a wonderful day hiking, ending with a warm bon fire and warm conversation with strangers. I was paranoid the flaps of my tent would surely come apart on this night, not to mention the rain was sputtering on and off every 30 minutes. With a violent shivering that I actually began to work up a good sweat as well, I can only help but smile. This is something I signed up for and have begun to completely immerse myself in the idea of making it to Maine.

As even the hard nights may entail sleepless stressing until 4 a.m. there is still a sense of “whatever it takes”. A sense of how much can my physical limitations withstand, and when physical limitations come to a bare minimum, how far will my mind stretch in order to grant me success on this journey. I’ve already heard so many life changing stories. Some have been to severe their employment and just take a hike, literally. Some have been to grieve over a loved one lost. Whatever the cost has been to push us onto this grueling trail, each and every hiker begins to believe, why not me?

This leads me to my final thought. Something that I wrote in my notes a few weeks ago, however, the moment seems right to add them into my blog:

I often wonder about life and death. Is death really so terrifying that we should ward off the inevitable doom, no warm embrace for what could be the most peaceful serenity any of us will ever know? Is life really so miserable that each and every day we become more and more immersed into the machine, the repetitive and monotonous wheel of a stagnant life? What is it that truly drives people? Is it the terrible gloom and thought of infinite darkness, or is it the hope, the spark, that something truly remarkable could happen in the flash of an eye. After all, most of us aren’t truly afraid of flying, however, where you lift off and where you land are two totally different monsters.