Intro

It's a quiet January night as I write this. Winter has been relatively light on snow, until now. I had feared this would happen, based on the past several winters not really showing their true colors until late in their regularly scheduled seasons. Of course this year would be no different. It's not as if nature itself is going to give me a free pass as I make my final preparations to depart for the Appalachian Trail's southern terminus at Springer Mountain, GA - with the lofty (and some would say ludicrous) goal of walking 2000 miles north to Mt. Katahdin, Maine - in a mere 6-7 weeks. 

To say I am a new hiker would be accurate. To say I am a new camper would also be accurate. I have, however, engaged in as much of those activities as possible in the past two and a half years since I decided on this goal.  Backpacking - the art of stringing both of those activities together, with the added challenge of carrying what you need to survive for months outdoors - that is an entirely different beast.

So to set out my first time actually backpacking, on a thru hike no less, on the most famous foot path there is .... I can see why so many of my associates, friends and even family members are dubious of my chances, to varying degree.

To be fair, I have had many "flashes of inspiration" in the past - possible project ideas, career change dreams and so forth - that never panned out.  Primarily because they were parts of the many peaks in the whole peak-and-valley nature of clinical depression and living with two anxiety disorders.  When riding the manic highs that some don't realize occur with depression sometimes, a hastily concocted idea or concept can often seem like a lifeline to me.  

If only I can do this, or do that, I can feel good about myself, I can earn enough money while not being in a constant state of terror inside, I can finally relax and feel like I found a way to function in this world that seems deliberately designed to keep me at a distance, afraid to interact lest my flaws be discovered and announced.

But those come and go, regardless if the ideas had any merit to begin with.  Not much ever really stuck over the long haul, not anything I had the willpower or skill to see through at least. The things that did stick, they stuck in a ... vague manner.

Creativity is important to me and has been for as long as I can remember. Art was my favorite and most zen of activities as a child.  Writing stories became my first true dream, and perhaps the one thing I may eventually manage to do something with in the future.  

But the well is empty, and it has been for a very long time.  My writing for these past twenty-plus years has been mostly on social media, on message boards and bulletin board systems before that. My writing became a way to attempt to exorcise and organize my jumbled and tainted-by-mental-illness thoughts.  

It was (and is, to be honest) a lot of anger, disappointment and cynicism - just spilling out of me in the forms of rants and tirades.  In my mind I thought I was George Carlin or Bill Hicks angrily and passionately throwing truth to the masses... but in reality I've just been the digital version of the crazed bum wearing sandwich-board signs and shouting as people pass by trying not to make eye contact.  

I'm 42. I'm a week away from my divorce being finalized.  I left my job eleven days ago - a job I was lucky to have, but hated nonetheless - and I'm packing in my cramped attic rooms that I've been renting for the past two years.

If this was just a flash in the pan idea like all the rest, none of those things (except for being 42) would hold true. It's too late to call it off now. People have to take me seriously now, no?

Sure, I suppose I could get cold feet and take the money I've saved and try to find a new life somewhere else, with the money giving me a cushion for several months as I try to find work.  Sure... it's not as I never thought of that.

But that would be just... cheating myself, really.

No other goal in my life, save maybe my hormones in my 20s, has motivated me enough beyond daydreaming and talk and into so many drastic, forward-moving actions. That counts for a lot, to me. It can take a lot to get my ass in gear.

To reinforce the concept, all I need do is look back at last June when I spent two weeks camping at the summit of Mt. Greylock.  On that trip I finally saw the A.T. firsthand, and even hiked on a stretch of it on my 8 hour journey to the summit of the tallest mountain in Massachusetts.  Reaching the summit of Mt. Greylock was an indescribable moment for me.

I consider myself agnostic, if not outright atheist, but making the summit and looking down to see a whole town beneath me (a town which I would spend many hours in the following day on a seperate misadventure to get back to my campsite!), I felt very much where I was supposed to be.  

Climbing that mountain was full of dozens upon dozens of challenges.  With the summit in mind and daylight a concern, the only options were to tackle each challenge as they appeared or to turn around and head back down - facing all the former challenges again on the descent. After pushing through one, two, seven, twelve such obstacles - panting for breath as I sit on my haunches after a rock scramble or keeping balanced across rickety bridges through a quarter mile of swamp - my confidence starts to build.

Victories, these are all little victories and they start racking up towards a bigger victory - the summit! 

My life has been peppered with countless challenges, as well... but I rarely got those victories. I never got to string them together long enough to see any real summits.  My four decades have been filled with a lot of self doubt and failure. And despair.

Standing atop Greylock and seeing the entirety of North Adams, MA stretched out beneath me, despair seemed a distant and foreign idea. It had no place here, not with me and not in this place.

Were I to just hit the reset button and get another shitty and soul crushing job and struggle making rent while constantly fending off panic attacks and bouts of suicidal thoughts in the hopes that I could create yet another comfort zone to retreat to while I wait for it all to just end - what would the point have been of these last two years?  

I have to go. It's where I need to be right now.