We are all tired.
At a certain point, walking more than 15 miles a day every day for five months is used in you. In addition to the physical aspects that cause more persistent pain and tiredness, there have been growing mental and emotional battles.
Less than a week after the cheese left, Fail announced that he was also going to leave the path. Cheese was already missing, but I had weeks to prepare me mentally for his departure, and we were knowing that we could remain friends after the path. Fail’s departure was less a slow preparation to leave the path in favor of something else (Faculty of Law, Cheese), and more than an excessive elastic band. Fail has been fighting with pain and rotating injuries for months, and has repeatedly said that he is really just on the road because he likes to go out with us. Otherwise, he does not like hiking and wants to be at home. Despite his protests and complain week after week, I am not sure that any of us would really believe that he would resign.
And then he did.
The loss of faults came in a shit moment for me, personally. It was one of my first friends on the path, and he and the cheese and the fetoker were my original tramilia from Hot Springs, NC. That is around 1300 miles of walking together, and 4.5 months of getting to know each other, which on the road is a long time. I never waited for him to leave, and after the cheese was gone to the remaining tramilia that would take me some time, jumping next zero to follow my own rhythm for a week, with the intention of mentally restoring and processing other frustrations that involves spending 24/7 with the same people for weeks.
In recent weeks while we prepared to send cheese, the dynamics of the plot became a little tense and communication did not flow in the normal way. What was once easy and fun to go on an excursion with friends day after day became increasingly alone, which is not always bad, and I could spend more time with Mountain Dew in the process, which was a big thing! Taking time only in the forest can quickly change space to think and process to turn in circles without resolution, creating imaginary scenarios where everything goes wrong. It is important to bounce other people’s ideas and receive comments for those crazy thoughts when you have the opportunity, and I am grateful for Mountain Dew for hearing me talk about many of the same thoughts for the last week.
Mountain Dew was also taking a while only after losing his last member of the original tramilia. We cry together for our cheese loss, and when Fail told us that he left, we cried together and we squeezed each other when we feel blame because our friend leaves as soon as we headed on the road.
It turns out that the path is like the rest of life. We have entered the era of friends and emotional difficulties. The path is only the background of our daily life here together, and it is as easy to create problems here as anywhere. Unfortunately, not everyone finds the strenuous walks through the forest and on the hills every day to be soothing, cheerful or worth it in any sense. By failure, he caught him for longer than he always wanted, and now we will hit the rest of the way without him.
Mountain Dew and I made a rainy pack in Manchester, Vermont on Fail’s last day. We met him in a city restaurant with Gaslight and Roadhog, trembling with the cold of our wet clothes after having left on the wet day and accidentally we walk through a Beaver Bog off trail trying to take a shortcut. The video called Cheese, who fails soon, since they will be temporary rooms until Cheese finds a place for himself in his new city.
When Becky arrived to collect and take him home, it was all I could do to contain my tears. We embrace and he assured me we would see each other again. Of course, knowing that I can really hang out with him in the future helps with sadness, but at the time of losing one of my oldest paths while I already felt the mental pressures of being on the road for so long … well, I was sad. Real bother, knowing that I will not have my long -term hiking friends at the end of this trip.
But we move on. Roadhog and Gaslight choose to continue their walk together at a slower pace, planning to finish the path at the end of September. Mountain Dew and I are opening our own path together now, going through Vermont and even New Hampshire soon. While we advance alone, we decided to take it easy and give ourselves the time and space to relax for a moment. After heating and cleaning in a local shelter to spend the night, we took a walk to a path head that would be just a 2 -mile walk to a lake. There, we spent the afternoon and night, trying to calm our hearts and exhausted minds, while we also allowed our bodies to rest longer.
The lake was beautiful, and in fact it was relaxing to be able to establish a camp early in the afternoon and. Fair. Cool. I took a nap, we enjoyed dinner with some new friends (somehow, although we have been on the road for 4.5 months and we continue to follow the same direction at approximately the same rhythm, we continue to meet new novo hikers!), And I died about my combination of emotions that flooded my brain since recent weeks.
After weeks of more than 15 miles a day (when we were not zero in the cities), he was tired of the feeling that the path was just a path to walk and that the path itself was not offering much so it was worth decreasing, it is not that it gave us the time to reduce the speed by much when we had places to be. In recent weeks, most people with whom I speak have the same opinion: let’s decrease speed. Let’s enjoy the trip. Let’s make a 2 mile day to a lake and relax while We are on the way.
And we did so.
We will arrive at Katahdin, even if you are not with the people we expected.
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