Welcome to my blog.
Expect reflections on long distance hiking, hiking culture, nature, creativity and my undying love for backrests.
All tagged appalachian trail
“Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping. The latter happens all the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again--and art is all about starting again.” ~David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art and Fear
They may have been talking about quitting art, but the sentiment is the same for long distance hiking.
What an amazing opportunity solo hiking will be for stretching outside of our comfort zones, especially for the solo hiker who knows how to be alone.
I’m 15 weeks out from stepping on the trail.
But I've been busy with indoorsy things—researching gear, making freezer bag meals, bingeing on Goliath and Catastrophe.
And it suddenly dawned on me...
So I'm getting real about my training plan.
A big part of preparing for a thru-hike and setting oneself up for success lies in getting your head right.
Once you’re prepared mentally and you’ve wrapped your head around the fact that it’s going to be tough--maybe even the hardest thing you've ever done--then you can make some choices about what you’ll do, or what you’ll carry, to vanquish misery.
Some of it fits in your pack. But some of it doesn't weigh an ounce.
One of the ways I get prepared for something epic like hiking the Appalachian Trail or starting a business is to gorge myself on every shred of information I can find.
I take classes.
I give the internet a reason to exist.
Here are a few things I've found particularly genius this week
Don't tell my tent, but I'm having a clandestine affair with a hammock.
It was a tough decision to make. I thought it through, trying not to let my emotions get the best of me. I crunched the data--weights and costs. Pros and cons. Whoopies and webbing.
It's all here. Plus, the one thing it ultimately boils down to when deciding between a tent and a hammock.
Way back at Liberty Springs Tent Site, we chatted with Quinn, the Caretaker, a lovely young woman who didn't seem to mind answering questions she'd probably been asked a thousand times about what it's like to spend the summer using a privy that "flushes" with mulch.
She asked me to deliver a message to a boy at the Guyot Shelter. Of course I said yes! What fun to play a tiny role in a White Mountain love story.
She entrusted me with a tiny square of paper folded a couple of times with "Jimmy" penned elegantly on the top.
I tucked it into my hip belt where I knew it would be safe and off we went. It would be two days before we reached the Guyot Shelter.
The question was: would the note survive the trek?
