A Final Note from Missouri

May 2012, in St. Charles, Missouri, getting ready to take
a 20-mile walk for the first time together. So long ago…

The Road goes ever on and on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where sun has never shone,

By streams that never find the sea;

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.

~J.R.R. Tolkien

Tomorrow around 3:00, Zachary and I will board a plane that’s headed to San Diego, the first step of our great adventure. We’ll hang out with my sister for four or five days, hoping to hit the Pacific Crest Trail either next Wednesday or Friday. 

I’m not sure how much I’m going to be blogging for a while. I will have gobs and gobs of blog-worthy material (Lord willing!), but I don’t want to distract myself from the PCT hike by trying to “keep up” and mess with technology. I think this trip will be much better if I soak it all in, journal personally along the way, and then piece all my thoughts together after the trail is over. I hope to post an extended day-by-day blog series about the trip after we get back to Missouri. In the meantime, I may post something every once in a while, but it’s best not to count on any sort of consistency.

My writing sounds matter-of-fact and unemotional because that’s how I feel right now. This trip is surreal. It is by far the most surreal trip I’ve ever taken. How can my brain find a mental box to fit a trip that involves walking 2,600 miles and sleeping in a tent for five months? Right now, I just want the packing (oh, so much packing! more packing than I can stand!) to be done. 

In the meantime, I write a couple more words from this town, my town, with a roof to shield me from the wide open sky, and deciduous trees, and Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken, and a charming 18th-century historic district, and the sense of home in every unexpected temperature change or blooming magnolia. And then I’m back to packing. Oh, so much packing.

Love you guys.

~~~