Six Months

Six months to go. Six months to train my replacements at work. Six months to plan and prepare for my epic hike from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. Six months get in shape and train my body to walk eight to ten hours per day everyday (except zeros).

Six months to enjoy daily hot showers, six months of being a coach potato watching re-runs of Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch. Six months of sleeping in my warm comfy bed next to my wife. Six months of family and friends, visiting and being visited, dinners and wine. Six months of eating out at places where they prepare food for you. Six months of being clean and comfortable. Six months of challenging work in front of a computer; i.e. Scrum meetings, SQL server queries, reports, Node.js, HTML, callbacks and closures. Six months of safe predictable (inside) weather.

Six months till I lay it all down and venture into the wild with only the things that I can carry on my back. Laying down everything that I value in life to pursue something wild, intangible, untameable. To live life as it comes, weather, hardship, desolate places, loneliness, dirt, dust, bugs, rodents, snakes, bears, mountain lions, thunderstorms, wind, freezing rain, snow, impassable torrents, and physical demands of daily walking from morning to night.

Six months of getting up at four-thirty am to walk the same route through town with a pack on my back with twenty-eight pounds of birdshot in it. Six more months of being stopped by the local police. Apparently I look similar to a homeless person to them. Six more months and I will be homeless, with a tent made of chiffon-like cuben fiber, light and wispy, a thin layer to (hopefully) keep the rain off me as I sleep wherever my feet take me that day.

Why? To discover more about God by living closer to the things that he has made, to learn more about myself without the distractions of our twenty-first century life. To think, to feel, to be... without some pressing engagement or responsibility. I've lived the responsible life, My wife and I have successfully raised five children to adult-hood. Now they are all out living their dreams. I've got grand-kids. I want to share myself with them. One way to do that is to put my thoughts, opinions, and feelings down in words. That's the primary purpose of this blog. Perhaps someday Owen, Vivian, Nagisa, Charlise, Emery, Auren, or even another one that has not yet been born will find this and learn a little bit of what their grand-dad was like in 2016.

Why else? Why, to help my friend Shelly and Steve, Shelly's living life with ALS and Steve is her compatriot, husband and primary care giver. ALS is that dred disease that took Lou Gehrig's life. I want to help them by raising to people awareness the challenges that they face and the opportunities that we have as a society to vanquish this disease like we have so many others. I hope that my trip will perhaps inspire people to become part of the answer that Shelly needs and donate to her cause.

It all begins in six months.