01.21.21

 "Things between things" in life create a lull and general restlessness that renders my type contrarian after awhile. There's too many intrigues and rabbit holes and distractions in the Real World for this kind of constitution. I'd rather not, but then it happens in this wayward sporting way and there I am in the middle of another lull. 

   The truth is that when I go back to nature I go home. It's one of the few things that has made sense where humanity seems to have semi-deliberately failed. My reaction has been to get lost in as many reveries as possible; to turn off the left brain and ponder at length. It has brought me back The Trail as many trails eventually do. Is it a full circle? I don't know. I stare at gear lists and tentative windows of time and watch the precipitation reports and trail closures and detours and engage with the same wayward kids that lurk in hiker forums, asking questions with obvious answers to see what everyone else thinks. That's the reality of any thru hike, which is hard enough to define. It's more of a dance; an energetic thrust from conception to action.

    The AZT is on. As usual I play my cards close and and ruminate, slowly turning course despite a million other Things - like a great ship that has finally found the jet stream. There are loud creaks in the lower decks and the sails flap around madly for a moment and the whole thing bends and leans and the waters churn around her and then everything uprights at once and rises from a grimace to steadfast resolve before the amber sun. All the little details and detritus from the former year and the loose ends and endless mindless data trailing behind like a garbage truck...somehow it all forms into a great picture of Something Else. Suddenly I'm a precise, tactical human who knows exactly where a million puzzle pieces lay and why. It baffles even me but there it is and here we are less than six weeks away from the AZT and as usual, there's many many feelings involved; feelings that once again, I can't relegate to any standard box outside of the knowledge that These Things do inexplicably cast many degrees of light and shadows all over one's periphery. All things change. Everything is in motion. 

   Once again I'm tasked with understanding just what I'm doing. Again the sidelines begin to buzz with curiosity; after a year which has tested everyone to such degrees and separated so much wheat from so much chaff. After another loss of another friend. I don't know where I ultimately wound up with everything. I know that adventure brings us together. I'm better that way. A better human. I know people that are barely aware of what's happened in the Real World this past year. I know people that didn't make it. I know people living in almost constant fear. I know people just trying to live their lives to the best of their abilities with the information they've got. I suppose I fall into the latter category but I'd rather be in the first.

    My dreams have been absolutely nuts lately. More hyper-realistic time-bending carpet rides with symbolic overtones that take me days to digest. All these things tend to happen when I'm approaching some conscious change in direction or focus. Trails are impossible to actually know until you're upon them, walking and sweating...smelling the air of different climates. Different dirt under different trees. All I know is that we are now approaching that ineffable place again. And then, after all the 'planning' it's still impossible to know from one day from the next. All you know is that you head north. 

    For the first time in my life I'm able to off and do one of these things with some measure of financial security on the other side. They're even bundling my paid sick days and vacations together which is almost half the trail. I'm in karmic debt to people I can't possibly repay but I save them lots of money by doing what I do. Fair enough. And then what? 

    The energy from the last saunter has dissipated into golden embers and memories. Pictures in folders, on the walls of family and friends. This is something brand new, even under its familiar parameters. There are no two equal days on any trail. There are few, if any repeating themes and artifice. 

    All I know is that two years after jumping off the last trail and around 3-4 PM, I got The Shift: Whatever energy that tells you to Engage; so it's time.