Into The Wild (ish)

So I was just sitting here at my desk after Christmas, working on some thing or another when my friend Matt calls.  Nothing out of the ordinary but about half way through the conversation he invites me on a trek with a couple of other old friends. A 36 mile hike/camp on snowshoes through the Adirondacks on the NPT trail.

Well, I had missed our every-other-year-post-christmas-hike-up-Mount-Adams because of family duties for the holidays. So I immediately said yes without even thinking about it and then went right back to working.  Over the next few days it slowly started to sink in. During some of the typically coldest days of the year in the northeast, I and three others were about to hike into a bit of trail from which there is no exit, only forward or back, breaking trail and sleeping in the open air lean-to's provided by the park service.  A feat I am woefully unprepared for physically, mentally and probably most importantly, gear wise. What was I thinking?

It took a bit, but I know exactly what I was thinking.  I am tired. I am tired of the constant battle of the last few years.  I am done with the trying to hide, to dodge a bullet, to sit here and brace for whatever comes next.  I am tired of the 09's and the 10's. It's time to move on it's time to shake things up.  To put myself into places and situations I am not entirely comfortable with. To get back into the creative groove, to feel better, to try to make things happen, to put myself back out there, and to ask the question: what would happen if?

2011, whether it turns out well or poorly, will be a year for me where I get active again.  Business wise, creatively, personally. The first decade of the new millennium is over, we can move on now. So I am making the choice to do so. It's not always going to be easy, or necessarily fun, but it will be enlivening for sure. And that is what I need, and probably a lot of other folks too.

A lot of it for me will be getting up and getting active.  Even pulling away from the desk for an hour during the day to get outside, regardless of the conditions.  Just to breathe and remember there is a whole huge world out there. It brings all kinds of perspective into all sorts of corners. For this hike I will be pushing myself physically and mentally. To prepare I have started running, and doing things every day to try to get my heart rate up. It's great, and it begs the question, why haven't I been doing this even without a goal in sight?  This hike will be 12 miles a day on snowshoes through unbroken snowpack with a 40 pound pack on my back. It will be merely in the teens during the day and at least the single digit negatives during the night. What will come of it?  Who knows.  Maybe just an experience. But that in itself, is really really great.

'Sides, better to do it now before the world ends next year (he wrote with a knowing wink).