Wake up and Walk

Simple as that.  I suppose there is more to it but when you break it down to its simplest form, hiking the full length of any trail is a matter of eating and walking.  Ensuring your basic human needs like warmth, shelter, and nutrition are an obvious requirement, as is the need to enjoy what it is you are doing.  

I didn't choose to hike this trail to suffer for the sake of suffering.  I did it for the fun that comes along with the adventure, among many other things.  The night before I departed on this thru hike I submitted a couple columns for publications out west.  In one of them I wrote about this hike and that if the end result is anywhere near what I hope I will have finished the entire thing in three weeks, and that I'll be better because of it.  

Better because my body will be finely tuned, better because my awareness will be keen, and better because of what I will have seen and done.  But above all of that, I will be better because I will have realized a dream.  A personal one that I have had since college.  We are all better when we are brave enough to dream for ourselves, and even more so when we make it happen.  

Well friends, I just finished walking over 250 miles along the entire Minnesota shore of Lake Superior.  It has been a dream and goal of mine for some years, and along with other goals I had for this past summer, I finally decided to make it happen.  I may be sucking financial fumes and my trip back west hinges on the sale of my kayak.  I may be paying back debts well into this coming winter and the number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my future may be sickening, but I can assure you one thing-these sacrifices were well worth the success I have just realized.

Now that I think more about it, it may have just been a matter of waking up and putting one foot in front of the other, and yet it was so much more.