maybe this is a love story...

“Maybe this is a love story?”

 

As I sat down to write up my first day on the AT, it felt a lot like one. I spent the weeks before this hike preparing and discussing ad nauseam - the merits of a specific sock choice, the essential qualities of a good shelter and the wicking properties of various fabrics…with one very patient man. There is no way for me to convey his lack of interest in hiking without a visual so please visualize yourself the last time your IT guy went on and on about the server settings or your grandmother shared photos of her adorable cats, and yet I found him responding to my out loud musings about water treatment systems...responding with facts that only Google could arm him with. I listened, hesitantly at first, as he weighed in on my gear, my hike plan, my mail drops. I found it all curious, given that my prep was usually done in isolation. Not even my closest friends, not even my own mother, could feign interest to this level of minutia. I felt cared for - which was a double-edged sword considering I was preparing to run off by myself into the woods. Missing someone was not an option. 

 

As the day count until my departure dwindled, this man kept offering up more and more help. He offered to drive me up to my starting point, hours away. I could cancel my shuttle. He would ship my mail drops and would even hand deliver me one a week into my hike as I passed through Hot Springs, NC. He would even, he announced, hike me a few hours into my trip - to make sure everything was ok and I was ‘good to go’. I relaxed more and more with every detail that he took on. My job was easy, he would launch me into the woods the way the rockets boost the space shuttle, and I could just float along into a peaceful orbit. This is not the way my life normally works, I have always been very independent and self-sufficient to a fault. Relying on someone could lead to needing someone and I have never been comfortable in that space. Something was changing and this man seemed to be at the center of it. Ok, if you are lost and thinking "I thought this blog was about a solo hike on the AT?" I promise it is...sort of. Let me back-up...

 

My torrid affair with solo hiking on the AT began about a year ago. I was turning 40, married, kids, career I loved…all the things that are supposed to happen by the time you are 40. I was happy, always. I have the best family and friends that a person could ask for – there was no drama. It was peaceful and easy and perfect. It should have been enough. But something wasn’t clicking for me. I wish I had a better explanation of it – or even a better understanding myself to offer you, but I really don’t. It seems so flippant to say, but I needed to tear apart my perfect little world just based on a gut feeling. I want to point out something here too…I could have just ignored the feeling. It would have been SO MUCH EASIER to just bury that little ache inside me. I promise you, years could have passed – in fact, years had already passed, and I could have had good days and bad days – days where I hardly noticed the ache and days where I woke up to it filling my entire body. People do it everyday (I am guessing maybe even some of you reading this do it) and I could have stuck it out. But instead, on one of those “aching” days, I fell asleep in the car with my family and when I woke up I said aloud “I could hike the AT.” To this day, I do not know why it occurred to me or why I said it out loud, but I insisted we drive directly to the Outfitters where I bought my backpack. I had no knowledge, no plan…but I had a backpack. And so it began…

Within a couple of weeks I had planned my first solo hike, a week on the AT. I had, at that point, never even slept in the woods. I had to research and buy all my gear and food and I spent a week walking and talking to myself, reflecting on the life I had chosen for myself and who I wanted to be from that point on. I came home from that trip and began the process of deconstructing my life. I ended my marriage. I wrecked my finances. I impacted my kids. I destroyed my ex-husband. As my world crumbled all around me, I felt nothing but peace. I looked at all of the changes and I knew in my heart it was what I was supposed to do. I never doubted the decision, not for one second. Pausing here to reflect on how truly terrible divorce is – the flywheel of evil that picks up speed and draws everything and everyone in as it goes. I initially felt I would not mention my divorce on this blog, but it has become part of the narrative of my life and I don’t think any of this would make sense without at least acknowledging. I would never have imagined the pain and negativity that my ex and I would inflict upon one another…I had envisioned how this would all go and I thought I had envisioned the worst-case scenarios and was prepared. I was not. The year that followed was the most hostile and emotional year of my life, and I am saying this as someone who never felt regret, someone who knew they were making the right decision and never once waivered on that, no matter how ugly it was. I thank the AT for that gift – the gift of knowing I was doing what I needed to do. 

 

One year later, I was setting out to hike again from a very different place. My home was a mess, my kids away half the time. I had given away half of every dime I had ever earned and much of what I would earn in the future. I had just endured an almost year long divorce process that involved a lot of humiliation (my ex works with me…enough said) and more name calling that I even knew I was capable of. And I was the happiest I have ever been. Part of that happiness was a product of making some pretty brave choices…but another part of it, a powerful part, was this man and the new world he has opened my eyes to. 

 

So, this might in fact be a bit of a love story, a surprise one. I might learn a little bit about myself on this hike and a lot about love. I am excited to tell the tales, so I hope you will join me.