The Kids Still Amuse Me

Last week my friend Lisa stopped by to pick something up.  She opened her car door and something blew out in Kiersten's direction so she ran and picked it up.  It turned out to be a Wegmans receipt.  Lisa says, "Man, I spent a ton of money at Wegmans this week."  Kiersten looked at the receipt and said, "I see that."  Lisa and I died.  (For the record, it wasn't even that much money.)

This morning Oskar and I were walking to the school bus.  He held my hand and I said, "Aw, that's so nice.  You never hold my hand anymore."  He said, "Well I'd like to but you always have a lot of people around you."

Welcome to my life, folks.

Trail Magic

In the year 2000, I read Bill Bryson's book "A Walk in the Woods" and I loved it.  I had hiked on the Appalachian Trail before but didn't necessarily realize that it stretched across so many states or that "thru hiking" was a thing.  But I finished that book and dreamed of hiking the trail myself.  I even made plans with my husband and father-in-law that we would start planning for a thru-hike in the year 2005.  And then things changed.  By the year 2005, my husband and I had two small children.  By mid-year I was pregnant with our third. So this was a dream that was going to be on the back burner for a while.

But last fall, those dreams were given new life.  My little brother informed me that he was thinking about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I was so excited for him. I offered to help him with mail drops and I enjoyed many a long discussion about gear or logistics and otherwise trying to live vicariously through his hike. I read Cheryl Strayed's "Wild".  We talked about trail names. I was a mixture of pride, envy and enthusiasm.

On April 5, his friend dropped him off at Amicalola Falls and he hiked the 8 mile approach to the trail head. And he's been doing his thing ever since.  Well, sort of.  At some point he started mentioning that his foot was bothering him. Then three weeks ago he called to find out if there was any way he could get picked up to take a little time off, to let his foot rest up and possibly get it checked out.

He spent nine days off the trail - nine days which felt like an eternity to him.  But he got xrays and saw a doctor and was able to rule out a stress fracture - which was his greatest fear. The doctor suspected that he had strained a ligament but it wasn't something that needed to keep Jonny off the trail.  So now Jonny needed a ride back. He suggested I join him for a couple of days of hiking.  It was something we had been planning on all along but suddenly it was really going to happen.

The timing was a little tricky because I was tied up for the weekend but we were able to work it all out for my dad and myself to join him.  We took off on a Monday morning, after getting my kids on the school bus.  Six hours later we were parking our car and hopping into a shuttle to get to where we wanted to start hiking.

Rockman and Big Sis

I only had three days on the trail, but in those three days, I quickly realized that, although I really enjoyed Bill Bryson's book, it didn't leave me with an accurate picture of the thru-hiking experience. Hiking the Appalachian Trail is an amazing physical accomplishment that requires mental fortitude and tenacity.  That part I understood. It takes a special person to be able to be able to trudge along, day upon day, through good weather and bad, sleeping in the elements, drinking from streams and digging cat holes in the woods.  When you get a bunch of those special people together, all overcoming the same obstacles and hurdles, something magical happens.  In our few short days on the trail, we met so many interesting people.  Everyone had a story.  Everyone was a character.

In AT vernacular, trail magic is when someone performs an act of kindness or charity for hikers.  But I think the trail magic is more than that.  It's the spirit and camaraderie that you feel on the trail - a force that binds the hikers to one another and helps encourage them along towards their destination.