This Never Gets Easy

I’m back at my usual staging ground for trips such as these, the Maine farm that my parents bought back in the 70s and turned into their lab for all things growing.  When they moved out here from Boston it was, I can only imagine, a rather big step into the unknown.  This is especially true for my dad, whose farming roots go back as far as to whatever flowers his mom might have planted while growing up in Brookline, MA where there wasn’t a real pig to be seen or heard for miles.  Neither had any experience whatsoever with raising cattle or growing corn.  It didn’t matter, though, they dove right in.  They cleared all the rusty cars out of the fields, enlisted the multigenerational advice of entertained locals, knocked down the rotting half of the house, and proceeded, over the next 20+ years, to dump what must have amounted to several tons of cow and chicken shit and compost scraps into their garden, which now rates off the charts for nutrient content.  (They used to proudly display the Maine Soil Testing Service’s report on the kitchen bulletin board amongst the yellowed newspaper scraps of recipes.  It is now kept in a rather secretive-looking “garden book” near the dining room table.)  They went at their rural experiment with the attitude of bona-fide pragmatists, knowing that in the end, practical results would be their best teacher.  This, naturally, lead to some unique outcomes.  Just ask my dad sometime about the two-headed goat.  Despite being the new kids on the road, they weren’t completely uninformed.  If you look carefully in one of the upstairs rooms in their house, you’ll see below and to the left of the Hardy Boys a row of 1970s-era books with titles like Starting Right with Turkeys and The Forgotten Art of Building and Using a Brick Bake Oven. One idea that they had already learned and kept with them was that nothing beats a good book, even if it’s about how turkeys do it.

As I get ready to start what will be my third long distance hike and the final piece to what American distance hikers like to call the triple crown, I see now that my own approach to learning how to be a long distance hiker mirrors how my mother and father approached the farm many years ago.  My very first night spent camping in the woods was the first night of my Appalachian Trail thru hike.  I just dove right in.  Although maybe I didn’t do quite as much reading. And no two-headed goats…or moose.

There is one big difference between my hiking education and my parents’ farming.  Each year, farming seems to get easier for them.  Each time I have set out for a trail, the process has gotten incrementally harder for me.  In 2002, when I hiked the AT, I was between grad school and work.  I had zero commitment and no career.  To prepare for the PCT in 2007, I had to quit my job at the hospital and rent out my house.  Not tough, given the market for physical therapists, but still logistically more complex than in ’02.  This time around, I’ve really had to pull some strings and (maybe I’m paranoid) feel a little more negative pressure from an American cultural standpoint.  I’m 33.  Shouldn’t I be in the midst of a blossoming career and raising a family instead of running out to play in the wilderness?  It was OK to strike out on the AT in 2002, when I was right out of school, but almost 5,000 miles of walking later, I’m not ready to stop.  This distance hiking thing has turned into a lifelong addiction.  I’ll be a long distance hiker until I need a knee replacement and then maybe hike some more.  Or take up long distance sailing.  The CDT will complete what has been a life goal for me and, well, I guess most life goals require sacrifice.

But I haven’t even started yet.  Which is what this post, by means of many introductory paragraphs, is about.  I am completely thrilled, this time around, to have some permanent company.  April and I will be crossing the Canadian border together in just a few weeks and as you follow us along on our journey to Mexico you will most likely hear not only my rantings, but hers as well.  We’ve heard from many folks that couples hiking is a whole different ball game and we’re looking forward to developing a style that isn’t mine or hers, but ours!

Our route to the CDT is a bit complicated and due to scheduling I’ll be starting a week ahead of her.  She can’t get back from Hong Kong until the 16th of July, which would be a very late start from the north.  So, I’m shipping out to Butte, Montana to knock out the 100 or so miles to Helena before meeting her up in Billings, where we’ll rent a car and drive up to East Glacier Village, MT.  From there, it’s a long shuttle ride to Canada and finally, on July 20th, we’ll be on our way.  To illustrate, I’ve made a map.  I’m in blue, she’s in red.

In a lot of ways, preparations for the CDT are much the same as trails past.  We’ve got a large stash of gear waiting to get packed and sorted at April’s mom’s place in St. Louis, which will be an intermediary stop for both of us on our way to Montana.  We’re going with a lot of the same stuff I used on the PCT:  The bushbuddy stove, 15-degree down bag (10 degrees for April), and Granite Gear packs are all trail-tested warriors.  Differences?  There are more maps this time around as the CDT is still considered incomplete and following its route through four states over trail, dirt road, and cross country is supposedly much different than following the smooth, sandy ribbon of the PCT or the white-blazed route of the AT.  Navigation is expected to be a challenge.  To make things a bit easier, I’ve drawn magnetic declination lines on all of our maps to avoid us having to add/subtract numbers while under the stress of having to figure out where we are.  We’re carrying a compass, pretty low tech given the availability of GPS, but I’m very much invested in the idea of learning and enhancing a skill, trying to rely as little on technological black boxes as possible.  That said, we’re carrying a SPOT Satellite Messenger to beam our location to friends and family each day.  The SPOT is also around so that someone can find and rescue us if we get in trouble.  In addition to the SPOT, we’re carrying a Peek, a handy little texting device that will permit us to make live blog updates instead of the hand-written postings that had to be sent to Sam to transcribe in 2007.

Taken all together, I’m hoping this will be a thrilling journey for us to walk and you to read about.  For up-to-date info on our progress, check out the “map” tab at the top of this page.  As we’re able to get to computers, we’ll also be adding photos under the “photos” tab.  If you want to send us something, this might be a bit tricky.  As in trails past, the resupply points aren’t planned much more than 1-2 stops ahead.  I’ve found this allows for maximum flexibility.  If you really want to send us something, send me or April an email and we’ll let you know where we’ll be next.

OK, this all gets started in a few days with a 3:30AM bus to Boston…can’t believe it’s so close!