Is there anyone out there who set off to walk the trail, at least in part, because they felt they had lost everything, and hoped to somehow restore themselves physically and in all other ways?
If yes, I would like to hear what the result was.
Life can be hard. Sometimes we have to take extreme steps to heal ourselves, to restore the balance.
Nunam Iqua
As a military veteran, I needed something to help dump the trash… I used the trail as a way to get a lot off of my chest and to re-discover who I am. It was therapeutic in many ways. Lots of time to think and clear the ghosts and skeletons out of the closet. Was I lost? No not really, I just needed to simplify and downsize my life. By listening to others, seeing different places throughout our country and taking charge of my own situation, it was easier to make it all happen afterwards. Physically? After living on the trail for 20 months and completing close to 9000 trail miles, the body is in better shape then ever before (for that I am thankful). Restoring the balance? Yes it sure did help but, realize this, I have witnessed many evils in my life… from genocide to war. There is evil out there on the trail too (I have hiked many miles with it and witnessed it first hand). Unlike the commitment to the service, when face to face with it, all I had to do to get away from it all was to head on up the trail.
B
In some ways I think the continuous exertion burns out the trouble, purifies us, and leaves us with a clearer view.
From the point of the view of the mind-body connection concept, it is said that in order to have healthy mind (spirit), one must have a healthy body, because they work together. Daily hiking would give us the necessary healthy body, from which would follow, the healthy mind.
Positive stress, physical exercise, breaks us down and rebuilds us in a stonger way. It seem to me that this is a good place to start.
Nunam Iqua
At some point in most every persons life there comes a time when the option of continuing along the familiar and comfortable path which one has been following for so long suddenly becomes the one path that for some reason or another is no longer available. Here one must make the tough decisions that will set the course into an uncertain future. One must choose carefully if further disasters are to be avoided, here is when hasty decisions are to be rejected and careful and clear minded visions and objectives are to searched for and agreed upon.
My advice to anyone who finds themselves in such a state would always be to take your time and to live one day at a time until the true visions and true objectives for the future make themselves known. This is a process that can take some time and one never knows when the fogs of confusion will lift. Only one thing is certain at a time like this and that is that at some point the path that is meant for you will show itself and that you will surely be able to acknowledge it as such.
I don’t say these things because I feel that I am some kind of profit, nor because I have a magic crystal ball that reveals to me the future. I say these thing because I strongly feel that they are true base on my own personal experience and tragedy. Here is a small part of my story.
After a long time of emotional suffering and running head long into one fiasco after another I decided that enough was enough. I had to find a way out of the madness that I had somehow put myself into and once again become the happy person that I had once knew. To do this, to try to find the direction that could bring me back to who I once had been, I decided to head into the one place that I loved with all my heart, I decided the enter into the wood and to stay there until the answers to my questions had been found. With the help of the silence of the wood and the ever changing flow of nature, and without all the noise and distractions of the civilized world, I was finally able to start to put together a vision for my future that fit my natural tendencies and yearning for the peace and harmony of my soul that I once knew. Upon exiting the wood, I put my vision into action all along knowing that my final goal was something that I could live with and live with happily.
To this day I do not regret my decision to enter the wood to find myself, for there is where I found my way back to me.
Here is a little bit of what I have so far wrote in my current trail journal, this is the true me and I do not shy away from a single word…
For me, I have found a no more rewarding method of fulfilling my spiritual needs and a no more meaningful activity worth spending my “unaccounted for” time in than to be walking in the woods. For me hiking is a spiritual thing, it cleanses my soul, it clears my mind, it invigorates my spirit, it unwinds my tensions and most importantly, it provides me with a less obstructed understanding of the life that I live and the world that I live in. For me the woods and the mountains are where I can feel free, a bit of Heaven on this earth come down to me.
Miguel
Miguel
Thank you for your openness.
In truth, I feel much like you do, or did. There are things to be worked out. Certain paths are no longer available to me, and everything seems to have fallen down, leaving only rubble.
One major question sits before me: How do I regain myself?
For the moment, I confess, I do not know.
What helps, is walking. Also, taking action to gather the pieces together, examine them, and see how they might best fit together now.
Suddenly, new questions present themselves: What is my foundation? What do I have upon which to rebuild?
And with that, inklings of answers come, followed by stirrings of hope.
Nunam Iqua
The AT ain’t majiick. It’s just a trail. Walkin’ is just walkin’.
If you’re gonna fix yourself then you have to decide to do it. Either on the AT or walking to the grocery.
Jack
I enjoyed reading “Hiking Through: Finding Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail” by Paul V. Stutzman. (2010)
Known by his trail name, Apostle Paul, the author had lost his wife to cancer, left his job to hike the trail. He does not try to convince or convert his readers, he just tells his story with good humor and inspired by the friends he made along the way. The back flap of his book states that Paul is planning a bike trip across America!
rambler
Boy oh boy! What else can I say about the utter lack of understanding, compassion and intellect that some human beings are so willing and capable of directing towards other human being in this supposedly advanced and civilized society.
I’m sure that I could find more to say than just “boy oh boy” but I choose to refrain.
Miguel
Miguel