... one month later...

“There is more to us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps

for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.”

Kurt Hahn*

I was out and about in Dayton today… went to a job interview, hung out at the GS council with a great friend, bought some cake making stuff, went for a run, harassed my (very lazy) dog… the things that make up my life these days.  It was a beautiful day… and suddenly, mid afternoon I realized that it has been a month since I stood on the top of Katahdin.  A whole month!  How did that happen?  I have been back in Ohio for 2 weeks.  Two weeks!  How did that happen?

One month has passed.  In some ways it feels like a lifetime.  In some ways it was yesterday.  So where do I stand a month later?  One month later… I don’t want to forget how alive I felt on top of Katahdin.  How huge of an accomplishment I felt I had achieved.. One month later I don’t want to forget how beautiful that moment was… and how hard I fought to get there.  I proved a lot of people wrong… I proved myself wrong.  I never quit or cried, I never gave up or gave in.  I met amazing people, I fell in love with life and living again.  I remembered to live in the moments, as hard and ugly or beautiful and wonderful as they were.  I remembered what it means to be passionate about living your life.  I remembered what it means to be peaceful.  I remembered what it means to live your dreams, as ridiculous and unattainable as they seem to others.  I remembered what it is like to do life with people who “get it” when no one else does.

Mostly I remembered what it was like to be happy.  Some days I feel so immature and selfish.  Some days I feel really irresponsible and my bank account says I am getting to be pretty desperate… but man was I happy on the trail.  Not just because I had no responsibilities or tough decisions… not because it was perfect and easy… but because I just WAS happy.  I’m trying hard to hold onto that.

Honestly?  I want nothing more than I want to be back in the woods.  I think about it, plan for it, pray about it and dream.  My life made sense there.  I felt ALIVE every day.  It wasn’t easy or pain-free.  It didn’t always go the way I thought it would.  There were days that were frustrating and hard... but it's a beautiful life being a hiker.  Beautiful.

I am trying hard to keep remembering the lessons I learned on the mountains of the east this summer.  It seems like a dream.   I wish things like that I had taken more pictures or kept a better journal.  I sometimes wish I had turned around on Katahdin and hiked south all the way to Georgia… just to breath in a few more days/weeks/months in the mountains.  When I was hiking people would say “is this the first time you have thru hiked” and I would say “this is the ONLY time I will thru hike” and yet now I think almost every day about if I would do it again… and some days I really think I would.

Maybe I am just nostalgic for the mountains and the simplicity and my friends.  Maybe I just want to be back in that place that made me so happy with people who understood. 

My camera wasn’t always working at the end of the trip (much like everything else electronic in my pack) and I would stand on mountain tops and stare at amazing views and tell myself… this one is just for you Carly, this one is just for the memory… you get to keep this one.  So much of my hike is that way in my head.  I get the memories… I can’t put them into words or show a good picture.  I just get to keep them for me.  I relive them when I am driving or when I am trying to sleep at night.  The memories won’t ever be as amazing as the experience.  Yet I am blessed to have them.

People in Ohio don’t always understand (some do!) or even care much about my big hike.  It doesn’t fit into their lives and the busyness, and I get that.  Sometimes I allow myself to be shocked how very little people care about the last 6 months of my life…. until I realize how selfish it is to even think that.  I had this experience, I lived the dream, I can’t expect everyone to be as amazed by it as I am.

And so, I find myself here, one month after Katahdin… I don’t miss a lot of the nitty gritty parts of the  trail, but I miss some of it more than is probably reasonable.  Sometimes I hope it won’t always be this way, that I won’t ALWAYS think of it on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.  Mostly though I hope it will ALWAYS be this way.

In Monson, a hiker friend and I were talking after dinner one night.  I had met him in North Carolina and then run into him again near Mt. Washington… then saw him in Monson.  He told me that at Mt. Washington he thought I was a different person, so much happier and more at peace than in North Carolina.  That’s what I want… that’s who I want to be.

My life is a mess of contradictions.  Sometimes I think I am going crazy.

Yet the AT will always be a part of who I am.  I want to be peaceful.  I want to love life.  I want to embrace this time and the opportunities that are in front of me. 

I am blessed.