Thoughts and preparation for the Hike

Thoughts and Preparation for the Hike

There are two levels to my preparation for a long distance hike. The first level relates to my inner process, and the second relates to the technical aspects of getting ready for the hike.

The Inner Process: It has been 10 years since I did my Thru hike of the Applachian Trail. It has been 5 years since I worked on the AT in New Jersey and ran my marathon in Las Vagas. After the marathon, my hip began to seriously deteriorate, leading to a hip replacement 2 years ago. I went from 5 years of yearly heavy duty exercising, to 5 years of slowly and steadily becoming a couch potatoe physically. Yet, as I worked more as a therapist, I exercised my brain more and more. Yet, as I approached my 70th birthday, I progressively felt like my life was over or coming to an end. Looking back on the process, there was a gradual void starting at age 65. During the months of my 69th year, I realized that I had never thought about my life beyond 70. There was a void in my consciousness relating to the future past a certain age. During this time frame, I was working for two psychiatric clinics one in Janesville and one in Madsion, totaling about 50-55 hours a week. My focus was on helping others. I took that responsiblity seriously and whatever I could to assist others in their quest to feel and behave better. While at the same time, I did very little to take care of myself. Gradually, an image began to form in my awareness. It started with me looking back over the journey of my life. The view was a landscape made up of jungles, valleys, rivers, swamps, and mountains all of which I had struggle through and survived all of those obstecles, and now I was standing on a ridge with all of those trials behind me. When I turned around and looked forward, I saw a large plain in front of me. I knew that somewhere over the horizon there was (is) the OCEAN of LIFE. In my personal spiritual philosophy, the OCEAN is where we came from and where we all return -- the cycle of birth and death. Once the above image and view of my life settled into my awareness, the logical next question is, "what do I do on the journey from here to there?" I also realized that to do anything, I needed to have an open time space This awareness lead to the realization, that to create a space, I would need to retire from my work.

This was a difficult decision, because I felt a responsibility to my clients, and the idea of me "abandoning" (which meant that I referred them to other therapist) them was very distasteful. I experienced various episodes and levels of guilt. Once I concluded that I would create a time space for myself, I had to decide what I was going to do. Doing a long distance hike of at least 500 miles was my primary thought. I had been talking about doing the El Cameno pilgrimage trail in northern Spain for 3 years. When I started looking at 500 mile trails beside Spain, I came across the Bruce Trail in Canada, the Grande Trail in AZ and NM, the Finger Lakes Trail in New York, and a coastal hike along England's coast.

According to the FLT Conference, only about 20 people thru-hike the trail each year. The total number of thru-hikers in the trail’s 48 year history is a mere 289. The trail takes about six to seven weeks to complete, and it’s easy to go an entire week without seeing another hiker.

The Technical Process: see next page