A little honesty From the AT

I wrote this In June on 2014. While I was hiking the trail..



This is strictly from me. I sounded off/proof read to Rob but this is strictly my post:

The truth is most days I don't want to be out here. I think of home all the time. I want to be curled up on my couch with my car and popcorn I just made and a glass of wine. I want to be able to take a shower daily and put on different clothes. Not hike for hours up and down rocky or difficult terrain smelling like a women's locker room after the WNBA. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt and most days my only reward at the end of the day is a meal we get to rehydrate and sleeping on a blow up mattress that's about 2 inches thick. Some days I want to cast off my pack and jump in the river just so I can be cool instead of soaking wet from sweat, but we have to keep moving. 

So yeah, most days it's really not fun. 

But the things I'm taking away from this are exponential in the gravity of my life. I've learned to appreciate things so much more. The smells are phenomenal. Some days things smell like maple syrup, cotton candy or even just the sweetest flower fragrance that you could never get out of a candle. To go to sleep and it be quiet. Like really quiet, no street sounds or ambulances. The kindness of people who leave things for you on the trail or help you cause they understand your need to do this!

This trail; and I don't mean the AT, I mean the road/journey I am taking as a person, it's changed my life for the better. I have gotten a better way of looking at life. I know what is important. My faith in humanity is restored. 

I may not be a religious person and my views may not be the same. But the church people out here believe in the basics. I respect that and love them for that. They put out food and essentials. Not because they have to, but because they know the Hiker community is on a journey of love, faith (of whatever), spiritualism, physicality and outright stubbornness. And they want to do something that will bring ease to the Hiker soul. 

I can't even explain the feeling when you walk up to a 'trail magic' area. It's a combination of opening presents at Christmas but with the surprise of an unexpected gift for no reason. Sometimes it's placed and you get it when you don't think your day could get any harder. And sometimes you get it at the beginning of your day and it makes your whole hike. Sometimes you get there after everything is picked over but it's still an amazing gift to know that the thought was there, for you and others like you. And even though you may not have gotten any of the 'prime options' someone out there thought enough to recognize what you were going through and tried to ease your journey. I think there's a lot of society that's lost what just a small gesture of thoughtfulness and random kindness from the heart could do for the human race. I promise to take this away from this journey. To pay it forward to society, whether it's appreciated or not, and to be a better person.