Day 1 - 4/4/09 (Sat)
as some of my journaling was done with bullet points, to be filled out at a later time, i will asume that now is that later time and put some meat on the bones of my thought. on many days i did in fact jot down complete thoughts but for day one it is almost completely in need of filling out:
Day one:
- i feel that, while this endeavor will be challenging, i will enjoy the physical aspect of it…the challenge presented by the ups and downs of the mountains.
- i am a swirl of emotions to start. from a busy week of final preparations and a nearly sleepless night of packing i carry to the car ride to springer: excitement, a mild fear of the unknown, and the knowledge that i still have no clue what i am getting myself into. more excitement mixed with a wide eyed curiosity in my first miles. my strongest emotions now as i journal by headlamp in my tent are directed at the fact that i am without a thesaurus. i’ve grown so dependent on my mac dashboard that i fear i must run out of vocabulary without one.
- a mile or so into my hiking i passed a tent near the trail in a small clearing. two sets of boots outside, and one quite smaller than the other, led me to assume that a couple was within, and in my mind they were spooning in zip-together sleeping bags. i jumped ahead in my life to the day that i could do the same and smiled. this much time in the woods is going to keep me coming back i am sure.
- a short time later i passed by a middle-aged asian man. he looked to be well used to the trail and i assumed a local. now, here you will have to excuse me because i have a terrible tendency to reference romantic comedies, or “chick flicks” if you’d rather, in conversation. as the man passed i wondered if he, like j-lo in her enjoyable turn as the wedding planner, could see through us. (to clarify: her character can tell by looking how long a marriage will last quite accurately.) i wondered how many he had seen start out to hike the trail. can he see the thru-hiker from the ones who will stop a week or month from now?
- this thing, this huge undertaking of months, for which one has prepared hours on end and put so much effort toward before one has even really begun, this thing…it has a very anticlimactic beginning. a girl at the park office directed me to a counter, where another girl was to guide me through registering as a thru-hiker. i presented myself proudly at the desk with six months worth of aren’t i impressive going to live in the woods and all and said, “i’m thru-hiking”. she had the nerve to remain uninterested and with a casual offhanded wave pointed me to the sign in. a worn little spiral notebook with only one other name for the day. as the other name was that of an aussie i did feel that some of my coolness for aspiring to be a thru-hiker had returned, because heck if foreign people do it too it’s gotta be sweet. but i did have a bit of a cool bubble burst.
- i will tell you a story. this is not my story. i am borrowing it from james smith, and he in fact borrowed it from a book. there was once a man who decided to kayak across the pacific. he hopped from island to island and was met typically by friendly people native to the islands. on one particular island he met with a group of slightly less enthusiastic hosts. they were not mean, but neither were they very helpful. he did though sense something odd about their manner and prepared himself to leave as soon as he could manage it. the tension he felt finally displayed itself at his departure as a young boy ran from the jungle and flung a spear at he and his boat. while the child was restrained away by the older islanders and our traveler paddled away from any danger, he was caught in a moment. one of those moments where people like himself find the thought in their mind, “what am i doing? where am i?” he was alone, kayaking on the pacific, being chased by a boy with a spear…what was he thinking being out here? but, soon enough, he remembered that if he were not here he would be at home, sitting in traffic, daydreaming of doing just the thing he was doing now. and so he paddled on.
