[Cdt-l] A bit of CDT navel grazing.. ;)

[Slyatpct at aol.com]

Have maps and guidebooks, will travel...  
 
Sly
 
In a message dated 11/16/2007 11:19:52 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
spiriteagle99 at hotmail.com writes:

This  post hit close to home for me.  It's been almost 20 years since my 
first  long distance hike.  It changed my life in a lot of ways, but especially  
in my inability to settle to normal life again.  I want, need, to be  
traveling.  That's been true my whole life, but developed into a very  different way of 
life after I hiked the AT the first time.  I love  exploring new places and 
am most fully alive when I am traveling. I  especially love spending time in 
the backcountry, the more remote the better,  but I have discovered that I can 
get a lot of pleasure out of visiting  beautiful places in a car, plane or 
train as well.  As long as I am  moving, I am happy.  It is both a blessing and a 
curse.   

I remember talking with Rainman in the kitchen of Cindy's house  at an ALDHA 
Spring Steering Committee meeting several years ago.  He  said, "Maybe if I 
hike the CDT I'll finally get it out of my system."  We  laughed.  I think Mags 
had the same hope.  

Seems the  more you wander, the more you want to wander - at least for some 
of us.   After a few years of being homeless, I feel the need to nest for a 
while, but  only for a short while.  The wanderlust hits again remarkably quickly 
and  soon we're making plans for the next trip.  As I get older, the hiking  
gets harder.  I've abused my body badly over the years.  But I can't  stop.  I 
can't imagine settling down for good, ending my wandering.   At Halloween as 
a kid I was almost always a gypsy.  When I grew  older, I took off the 
costume, but continued the lifestyle.  Being  rootless has its problems, but at this 
point in my life I doubt I'll  change.  

Ginny


 



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.backcountry.net/pipermail/cdt-l/attachments/20071117/98465952/attachment.html