It’s weird because for the most part I don’t really consider myself to be an outdoors person at all these days, and yet oddly enough there’s a very small part of me that finds the idea of taking a very long hike through the wilderness to be intriguing.
And by long, I’m talking about weeks and weeks long… 😯
The thought came about once again this afternoon when I stumbled across this blog from a guy who hiked the Appalachian Trail from Maine down to Georgia. It reminded me of A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson that was recommended to me years ago by my biology teacher back in college … if I remember correctly, Bryson didn’t actually end up finishing the trail, or maybe he did it in sections by coming back, but the tale was really funny and would make for a fun story to write if it hadn’t already been written before.
There are a lot of logistical things that would probably hold me back from ever doing something like that – first and foremost, I’m not sure if I could physically handle walking 2100 miles even spread out over the course of a couple months! Hell, I woke up with sore arms after carrying Christopher around Disney yesterday, though I suppose it’s something that you probably have to condition yourself for. God, I haven’t been hiking in ages…
And then there’s the responsibility factor – I’m not in my 20’s anymore … I have a mortgage, and a wife and son, and bills to pay, and hilarious things on the Internet to write. Being gone for a month or more straight would put quite the strain on all of the above, not to mention if I somehow managed to accidentally get eaten by a bear or something throughout the process!
Plus, I don’t think that I could go without Internet for that long, although that blog guy seemed to post every day so maybe sporadic cell signals every so often would be enough to keep up on things, and writing is typically more productive to do offline anyways.
I don’t know … it’s an interesting idea for someday in the future, I suppose. Maybe once I get in a little better shape and responsibilities are a little more flexible … it’s funny that although the idea of camping isn’t really appealing to me, I think just the idea of getting that far away from people is what sort of draws me to the notion. Nothing but miles upon miles of open trail and the wilderness to entertain you along the way. I’ve always wanted to put together a proper travel blog to journal about my life’s travels – the blog series that I did for my and Sara’s big road trip a couple of years ago was like that and turned out to be a lot of fun.
Hmmmmm…