Day -261

One of the traditional homecoming activities my mom enforces is Editing My Stuff.  I've always been a collector of things small and useless which have important symbolic, sentimental meanings.  I tuck them away in shoe boxes and suitcases and rubbermaid tubs piled up on the top shelf in the guest room closet.  Eventually these things (plastic skeletons, pens that have run out of ink, advertisement badges, ribbons of all sorts, notes scribbled on napkins:  "I was here, you weren't.  Call me!") lose meaning.  Mom doesn't like to store these boxes of garbage, but she's sensitive, so the getting rid of process has taken years.  This year my assignment was "Get rid of all those old t-shirts and boxes of crap upstairs"  Ok.  Turns out those boxes of crap were my old journals from about 6th grade on and all my papers from junior and senior English. The titles were things like "Connie Chatterley: A Woman Awakened"  or "A Journey Worth the Loss of Six Toes:  A Review of Pride and Prejudice",  in which I concluded Pride and Prejudice gives the reader a satisfaction upon actually finishing the book that I think can be compared to the satisfaction of a mountain climber reaching the summit of Everest...and though one may have lost six toes along the way, when asked why the journey was undertaken--why this book, why that mountain--"because it is there."  Oh boy. 


I also found these scrawled notes from the first backpacking trip my dad took me on when I was about 11.  [sic] througout

Fig. 1.  On the river age 11

It was a rough morning. Trees down all over the trail. Landslides and crawling up hills. But nothing as beautiful as this treasure goes ungarded. Lucious greenery. Thimble berries. The rambling of the river. The wind. The dew.



It is about 9pm. Everything is all buttoned up and ready if it rains. It rained earlier about 6 or 7. We can't go down the trail any further so we are going to hike out in the morning. We are spending the night on a little beach. Dad built a campfire. [blah blah blah nature is lovely and beautiful...unbridled 11 year old enthusiasm]

Day -263

"Hey!  What's this?"  My nephews have spotted my new hammock hanging between the porch and the garage at my folks' house.
"Oh, that's my new house, what do you think?"
"That's a house?"
"Sure, I'm going to live in that when I hike the Appalachian Trail.  Do you want to get in?"  The boys emit some excited squeals and flap their hands like ducklings--I pretty much feel the same way about the hammock.  The boys, ages 8 and 6, take to the velcro trap door like fish to water.

"What's the Appalachian Trail?"
"Well, it's a long trail in the woods from Georgia to Maine"  They nod, like they know what I'm talking about.
"So you're going to walk that whole way?"
"Yes."
"Carrying all your stuff?"
"Yes"
"How long will that take?"
"How long do you think it will take?"
"A few weeks?"
"No, more like five months.  Want to come?"
"Oh, yes! But only for three months because we can't miss school"  That's my 8 year old nephew, he is a serious student.










I talk them into going on a hike with me the next day.  I took them out to a little patch of forest north of town.  We explored a creek.  Found a frog and some sticks.  Climbed up a ridiculiously steep hill and walked for about 1/2 a mile before my 6 year old nephew expressed his dislike of "All this walking".  Maybe long hikes aren't in his future, but he does have an aptitude for plant identification and taught me a thing or two about the flora of the area.