The past and future journey: the long road completed

Day twenty-seven and beyond: my thoughts after the long road

Distance: At least 277.2 miles, and DONE!

Double hike on the long trail

It looks like I’ve hiked the Long Trail twice! The first time I did it on the road, with all the dangers and joys that entails. The second time I did it on my computer keyboard, remembering and recording all my notes and memories from that first walk.

As I wrote, I included many of the photos I took along the way, minus the two-day disaster when I fried my phone with my own sweat. I guess it was an “associated danger” that I hadn’t anticipated.

I have received some lovely messages from readers who appreciate my blog and the walk it describes. You know who you are and… thank you! However, I think I should add a sort of mixed epilogue and evaluation to finally conclude it. So here it goes:

Epilogue

How is my son?

After we saw the bear on the road, the rest of the trip home with my son Ben was uneventful. I wanted to get a sense of how he was coping with his cancer diagnosis. Understandably, he was frustrated to discover that his second surgery couldn’t be scheduled until late September. I wanted that damn thing GONE and I didn’t want to wait for that to happen. I agreed. You imagine it as something creepy and insidious, growing inside you, and you want it with all your might!

Other than that, he seemed to have a remarkably optimistic attitude about the whole thing. From my own cancer diagnosis, I know that the story you tell others and the story you tell yourself are not exactly the same. That’s human nature. Still, Ben seemed to be handling everything very well, without any hint of fear or self-pity.

I had deliberately booked my flight back to Washington State a day later, so I could have a full day with Ben and his family before flying home. You can tell I enjoyed sharing a meal with my two granddaughters from Vermont the day I returned!

Getting ready to return: packaging and hair

The next day I convinced Melody to schedule me with her hairdresser. My ponytail was a mess during my time on the trail and I suspected the only solution would be amputation. My hairdresser was lovely, but I was baffled as to how she could detangle me. The older beautician at the next stall pointed out a different hair product and said, «Try this, it’s magical.»

That’s how it was and my ponytail was preserved. Before I left, my granddaughter Iris even managed to braid it for my trip home!

It can make an amazing braid!

My suitcases were lighter upon returning, without all the freeze-dried food I had brought with me almost a month earlier. I was also missing a pair of hiking poles. With one broken and one damaged, I discarded them. However, I took them off the Long Trail to do so. After all, Principle Three of “Leave No Trace” commands us: “Pack it up, pack it up.”

Back in Washington… “good” Washington

I landed in Seattle late in the afternoon and took the bus to the Olympic Peninsula. It was great to see my wife at the bus stop!

The next three weeks were pretty hectic. Knowing how busy I would be and that we would be traveling, I didn’t even try to start writing my blog. Instead, I dove back into my off-trail life at full steam.

For example, on September 16, four days after my return, I had a half-day County Library Board budget meeting, a separate meeting of the Foreign Policy/National Security group in our Indivisible chapter, and a meeting of our island’s community association. It was like I had never left.

Except… I realized that every night, in my dreams, I returned to the trail in some way. Sometimes I enjoyed it and other times I was faced with a terrible situation, but night after night I got back on track! This was a persistent fixation; My first dreamless night was about ten days after I returned.

My health and Ben’s.

One of my tasks off the court was to monitor my health. I went to Seattle and had a body scan and blood test as part of my clinical trial. The good news was that I am still in complete remission from my leukemia. Hurrah! Whatever the meaning of my night sweats was, apparently that wasn’t it.

Ben had his “scoring surgery” on September 30th. This was his joke: “I will enter with a colon and I will exit with a semicolon.”

Travel and visitors delay my blog posts

Two days later, Lee and I flew to Europe. Our plans were a whirlwind: fly to Prague, train to Venice, train to Ljubljana, then van to Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Podgorica, Pristina, Skopje and Tirana. Yes, there are ten countries in less than a month. We returned on October 29.

Almost immediately after our return, we had a guest in the house for a week.

All of this is to explain why, although I flew back from Vermont on September 12th, I didn’t publish my first post-hike blog post until November 19th.

Once I got going, I was disciplined. He didn’t post every day, but it was close to that. I missed most of a week during Thanksgiving in California and Mexico, which seems forgivable. One night I didn’t post we had dinner with friends and saw the Christmas lights in Blyn, put up by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. My cover photo is from that visit. When it became clear that I wouldn’t be finished by Christmas, I focused on the New Year’s deadline. On December 31st I posted about my last day on the trail.

Long-lasting health problems

The only lasting injury I suffered was to my left pinky finger. This was the result of the sudden and violent fall on August 21, just the sixth day of my hike. Three months later I still couldn’t make a fist and when I tried, my pinky cut painfully over my ring finger. An x-ray confirmed that I had broken it. Well, I knew it, but why didn’t it heal? The little jerks were painful and what if I caught my finger in the sheets at night? Yeah! I finally started occupational therapy.

Laverne working on my swollen knuckle.

Wrap to help reduce swelling.

My OT Laverne and I have been making progress and she has made me optimistic that I will regain most of my mobility and lose most of the pain. Good!

After surgery, Ben had a port placed in his chest and is receiving chemotherapy via infusion every two weeks. If all goes as planned, he will be off chemo in May and Lee and I will fly to Vermont to take care of the girls while he takes a celebratory trip with his wife. So be it!

That’s the epilogue, what’s the rating?

Assessment

Here are seven final thoughts on my Long Trail hike. May 2026 bring us all joy and satisfaction, peace and renewed hope!

• The Long Walk was much more difficult than I expected. The distance was not daunting, nor were the ups and downs. However, I simply wasn’t prepared for the ruggedness of the trail. The steep, rocky ascents and descents often felt more like a climb than a hike. Sometimes these challenges were a lot of fun, but I would have enjoyed them more if I had been prepared for them. I wasn’t. If you’re thinking about going and are used to western trails, expect your daily mileage to drop a lot.

• The feeling of achievement you get is proportional to the degree of difficulty required to obtain it. This was the virtue of such a hard path. I feel like I accomplished something important and I’m proud that I persevered to complete it.

• There is almost no way to say this. It completely, totally, and absolutely Sucks that your son, in his 40s, is diagnosed with colon cancer. Having it run simultaneously with a Long Trail hike is a little strange. It gave me hours to think about life and death, sickness and health, when I wasn’t trying to avoid sliding down some crazy rock. The blessing is that he lives in Vermont and I was able to see him and his family several times during the course of the hike.

• In 2024 I did the Wonderland Trail. In 2025 I wanted to do something a step beyond that, without committing to a “triple crown” through a hike. This effort fits that project. What’s coming next year? I am now in tune with the concept of the “Triple Tiara”. Having completed the first of three on the Long Trail, I am seriously considering trying to add the John Muir Trail and the Colorado Trail over the next two summers. Both have great snow potential, so a later summer hike is probably what I’m considering.

• Ben’s illness reinforced something I already knew. All plans are tentative. Maybe I can do those two hikes. Maybe I only drive one. Maybe I’ll have a massive heart attack and collapse tomorrow. The fragility of our existence on this small ball that rotates through the universe should not be a cause for fear. We are all going to die. What matters is how we live in the meantime.

• The lesson I learned on my last day was a good one. It helped me that day and is worth repeating for a lifetime. To remember, it was two words: «practice gratitude.» When I think about it, I accept a vision of how we treat each other. I imagine a world where we see each other through a lens of caring and compassion. We are grateful for our common humanity, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, or any of the other illusions that cause some of us to go blind to our common humanity.

• I thank the Trail Angel, the “Spineless Cougar” who helped me. He gave me a Gatorade, a hot dog, a phone charger, and some medical supplies when I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and hurt. He didn’t ask for anything in return. In my view, “practicing gratitude” means being Trail Angels in the world, in our countries, societies and communities. It’s not easy. As human beings, we often get angry, bitter, and cynical. We can very easily follow leaders who possess and encourage these traits. However, as we strive to heal the world around us, we heal ourselves. What pursuit, on or off the path, is more valuable than that?