We said our good-byes on the side of a gravel road at 9am on Saturday morning. My daughters were unmoved – more irritated to have been drug from bed and forced to sit in the car for 2 hours on perfectly lovely morning. I made quick work of saying goodbye, knowing my emotions were damned up and I didn't want to risk starting this all off from a low, sad place. I was actually pretty calm and excited…considering I was about to take my first step from safety and comfort into what was complete unknown to me.
I don't think I have ever spent the night in the woods. I have only camped back when I was a 6 year old and that was with my family on a beach. What a strange place to find myself…completely alone and carrying everything I would need for the next 7 days. I struggled into my pack (for the first of 200 times over the next week. Putting that thing on was never easy and I looked ridiculous EVERY time) and started putting one foot in front of the other.
At that moment – I didn't know that a week later I would step back off the trail with the same lack of hoopla and feel differently about myself and the world around me. I didn't know I was going to be so happy and so comfortable being alone and focused and just simple and at peace. Or that my very first experience coming off the trail would rattle me so much that I wanted to escape back to the trail as a safe haven. 
Over the course of the week I pushed myself physically and mentally without a second thought and I lived without things I thought I needed without missing them. It was just what I had to do and it was mechanical and beautiful. It was not perfect – but it was actually a powerful thing to have no power at all. I could not stop the rain, nor could I escape it…I could only accept and cope.
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