How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.  It’s all in the details …

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

- Lao-tzu

Or 2190 miles, but then who’s counting!

A BIG part of planning for a six month thru-hike has NOTHING to do with hiking.  It has to do with my life before the adventure begins and how I plan to put everything in my life on hold, the details on how I accomplish this, and the logistics of which are a bit staggering.

So, I’ll start with a checklist, identifying everything that needs to be accomplished, and then one-by-one, work towards that last bite before the adventure begins.  I sure hope I have the stomach for it.  I’m sure after being on the trail for a month or so, eating an elephant will be no problem!

Downsizing - eliminating the unnecessary, unneeded things from my life. I recently started taking pictures of items that will not be a part of my life: furniture, kitchen gadgets, books, etc.  I’ve posted many of these for sale on Craigslist. If come December they have not sold, I will be donating them to a local charity.  My goal here is to become mobile again - fitting everything I own into or onto my Honda Civic.  I did this once before when I left Florida in 2010, but things tend to breed and multiple - not sure how that happens?

 
Storage - Finding a place to store the stuff I do decide to keep.  And then finding a place to park my car where it will be safe and hopefully have it with someone who can drive it once in awhile.

A car sitting for six months cannot be good, right?  I do need it to start up when I get off the trail.


Managing Debt - paying monthly credit card bills, a cell phone bill, auto insurance, vehicle registration, etc. Where will I have my mail forwarded to?  Without an apartment or residence, does that then make me homeless?  

Most of the details here can be handled by just being well organized and having a way to complete tasks whilst on the trail … which leads to ...

Staying connected -  I currently own only a prepaid ‘dumb’ cell phone.  I’ve never gotten connected or even wanted to be tethered to the end of a cell phone, but now, having a way to call family and friends and connect to the internet for maps, reservations, ordering replacement gear, blogging, paying bills, etc. will be critical to my mental and physical wellbeing.  Also a little music and taking photographs could be incorporated here.  Researching cell phone models, brands, and service plans does not sound like fun, but will be another necessary item on my to-do list.

Travel - The logistics of getting to the trail-head start in Georgia and from its terminus in Maine back to wherever I stash my vehicle and belongings.  Not sure how I will handle this one.  Worst case - take a train or bus to the town nearest Amicalola Falls State Park and then either hitch or hire a shuttle service to get me to the trail.  Best case - have a family member or good friend available to get me from wherever to the trail-head and see me on my way.

Support & Resupply - I can imagine that hanging out in the woods will at some point get old … and lonely.  Hearing from family and friends will be important.  Planning when and where I can get mail will be like shooting at a moving target.  Hopefully like shooting an actual weapon, I will get better at this as time passes.  I can guess where I may be at any point in the near future, but weather, fatigue, miscalculation in mileage or other unforeseen factors may change the reality of my current location.  To help with getting mail, and mail-drops for food and equipment, and to add a little piece of mind for those that do care to know what is going on with me at any point,

I have recently purchased at SPOT Gen 3 satellite tracking/messaging/SOS beacon.  I’ll setup and activate an annual subscription in mid-October and begin testing it this fall.  It should update my location at a specified timed interval, allow me to send out an ‘I’m okay’ message, and give me the ability to send an SOS monitored signal for help in the event of an emergency.  I will make my current location via this beacon available on my blog under, “Where’s Kurt“.  I will also list here my planned USPS locations where I will be stopping to check for and receive mail and packages.

Eating an elephant is a BIG task.  The details are important.  

If you can think of anything I’ve forgotten, or have helpful ideas or input, I would very much like to hear from you.  Want to help out?  Let me know how you’d like to be involved, or just check-in or drop a note in the mail, or a comment on this blog whilst I’m on the trail.  It will take a village to get this middle-aged, adventure crazed man all the way from Georgia to Maine!

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

- Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

- The Other One

Delicious autumn!

I’ll start and end this post with quotes appropriate to this transition between seasons ...

"The season for enjoying the fullness of life ― partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth."
― Denis Waitley

Another season has past us by.  Summer is gone and the hint of fall is in the air.  Cooler evening temperatures and the beginnings of color in the leaves.  Light breaking the dawn a little later each day and the sun setting just a few minutes earlier each evening.

My 10 week fall CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) started this first day of autumn.  Red leaf lettuce, arugula, green beans, ripe golden and red tomatoes, and baby bok choy filled my basket.  Autumn is a time for harvest, for provisioning for the winter, for sharing the bounty of the summer season.

The equinox happens when the equator passes the center of the sun. This is when the north and south poles of the Earth are not tilted towards or away from the sun, as at other times, but are aligned so as to give, theoretically, the same amount of daylight in both of the Earth's hemispheres.  The word equinox is derived from the Latin, meaning equal night.  The pagan festivities around this event were replaced on the Christian calendar with Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, which is celebrated on the 29th of September.

Plans for my thru-hike next year continue, but the pace has slowed.  This time of year is about celebration and festivals and the harvest.  

Last weekend I volunteered at the Hoppin John Bluegrass and Fiddler’s Convention, enjoying musicians young and old and sampling eleven Hoppin John recipes in this 9th annual fall tradition.  

This coming weekend I’ll volunteer and help with setup and preparations for the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance, building dance floors, erecting the main stage, setting up large dance tents, and cleaning the outdoor kitchen.  Hard work, but more fun than anything - a spirit of community with others anticipating a great fall festival.

The first weekend in October I have a backpack planned to test out gear, new hiking boots, and trail recipes.  October 8-11th is a time of relaxing and enjoying the cooler fall days at the Shakori Hills farm with music, great food, community and friends.

Summer is gone, and autumn has just begun ...

“The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

― George Eliot

If I give up on the Appalachian Trail I will ...

This is another question that Zach Davis, in his book Appalachian Trials: A psychological and emotional guide to successfully thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail considers important for anyone considering thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I've spent some time sitting with this question. It is a tough one, because, like most people, I hate failure! Sometimes I think we shy away from things in life because it is possible we might not succeed. All of the reasons against this planned thru-hike boil down to a simple four letter word that begins with an ‘F’ …

and all of the variations this can take including …

• fear that I am not physically or mentally strong enough to hike 2,184 miles
• fear of failure
• fear of injury
• fear of quitting my job
• fear of hunger and not having enough to eat
• fear of what I’ll do afterwards
• fear of ticks and lyme disease
• fear of bears, snakes, cougars, spiders or crazy people
• fear of sleeping in the woods alone
• fear of not being warm enough
• fear of boredom (awake, eat, hike, eat, hike, eat, setup camp, eat, sleep - repeat!)
• fear of the unknown
• fear of ______________ … you fill in the blank.  

Please let me know in the comment section what fears are stopping you from your next adventure?

 All of these are REAL fears. They are not all my fears, but ones I imagine someone contemplating this thru-hike could face. Some of them are my fears. Perhaps I'm afraid to say which ones.

I hope that facing some of these fears makes me a stronger person, a wiser person, a more humble person. I hope that I come out the other side of this adventure changed (and I am sure I will be). I hope you will join me on this adventure. Hearing from you will help me stay connected, brighten my spirits, and allow me to share with you!

Let's begin today! What fear are you willing to face?

'In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.' 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

- The Other One