In the Beginning...

I promise this post will not contain a list of begats.

I grew up watching the sun set over Wiley Shelter, the Appalachian Trail Metro North stop and Bull's Bridge out my mom's front window. Even 15 years after I moved to Boulder, Colorado to get a MA at the University of Colorado, the rolling hills and valleys of New England are what I paint, and what I see when I close my eyes.

On early church retreats at Bear Rock Lodge, we used to get up on Sunday morning, or rather in the darkness before, to climb the trail across the dam that outlet from Bear Rock Lake up to an east facing stretch of cliffs to catch the sunrise. I used to run up those rocks because they were sure beneath my feet. I found out much later in life that the trail joins the AT in the notch just south of Mount Evans, before you climb onto the long cliff walk leading south to, duh, Bear Rock Falls a section that remains, to this day, some of my favorite walking on earth.

So perhaps an attempt at a Thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail has been ridiculously overdetermined from the time I was a child. From my first conscious attempt at AT backpacking, when I was just out of college, through 10 day adventures that have allowed me to cover the Trail from it's first entry into CT to the summit of Stratton Mountain, the AT has been the place where I meet the best example of myself, where life slows to the rhythm of each step, where the endless critical monologue that Lao-Tzu calls the watcher finally takes a nap.

Why now though, good job, wonderful partner of 15 years, house, dogs, mortgage...? Well the answer might be in the question. Or it might easily be answered by the fact I just turned 40 and for the last year I realized that life is a line segment not a line. I have had a few difficult nights coming to grips with the fact that this consciousness, into which I have invested a lot of time and effort, will one day, soon enough, go silent forever. MID LIFE CRISIS anyone? But I think it makes more sense in terms of this being the last act of my youth, of my life lived principally for myself. Andie and I plan to marry and have kids soon, so she looked at me one day as we were discussing things we want to accomplish, and she said, "this might be the year that makes the most sense." She was right. I will do this last great solo adventure, and then I plan to make my decisions based on the well-being of my family. A monumental and necessary change to move fully to adulthood.

It is also no small consideration that this adventure will likely whittle away at the some 100 lbs that I could easily afford to lose.

In the end though, it comes down to one important motivation I've learned in my travels: there are always many reasons not to do something, all you need is one good reason to do something.