Posted on

Poignant

I still imagine hiking the Appalachian Trail.  There is not anything specific about it that I need to see or do, but the thought of it, walking a 2,200 mile trail all in one go, is something that has appealed to me all my life, since I first heard about it.  I think I always expected I would get to it eventually.  From time to time a snippet pops up on my cellphone; someone’s account of their experience that day on the trail.  A lot of people now post reflections of their time on the trail, real time.  I don’t follow any one person in particular, just whatever pops up.

The last one I read offered a perspective that hadn’t occurred to me.  The first day off the trail.  After months on the trail, when that has been your sole focus in life, walking that trail; what do you do when it’s done.  What happens to you and your identity?  The account I read started off with a list, with each item crossed off:

I am a thru hiker

My name is To Go     (Trail Names sometimes appear out of conversations along the way.)

I’m heading North

I’m going to Katahdin

I’m just passing through

I’ve been on the trail for 6 months

I started in Georgia

I walked 2,000 miles to get to Maine

All crossed off.  Her account went on from there, about reclaiming the life she had before the trail, and the story was fine, but that moment struck me.  Now What?  That identity, the trail identity, your focus for so many months, it’s suddenly gone. 

Posted on

Angel’s Wagon

We have this neat tradition here at Sandpipers.  Periodically, during the season, the Park will call Angel, and he’ll bring his trailer here and drop it up front for a few days.  People can put anything they don’t want in the trailer and Angel will come back and haul it away.  If there is anything in the trailer that Angel can use, he gets to keep it.

Well, it’s not the season yet. And we’ve cleaned out our shed over the last few weeks.  We hired Angel’s Wagon so we could fill it up with all the junk we took out of the shed.  He parked it right in front of our house for us.

(Never mind the van, it’s just parked there for the moment.  It’s not hauling the trailer.)  We started with a couple old barbecue grills that are way too big to throw away, they have to be hauled away.  We’ve already got the grills loaded in the trailer.  We brought a giant pile of other stuff to put in Angel’s wagon, but that stuff is going away about as fast as we can bring it out.  The neighbors are stopping by to pick treasures out of our discards.  Some of it actually is good stuff, but duplicates, and we don’t need duplicates.  We’ll see how much more stuff we can get out there again tomorrow, and how much actually makes it to the wagon.