Project Eveningland

7/11/2023 Tuesday

There’s no clear pathway to Maine. Vermont is under a state of emergency and they’re having terrible flooding there—VT is already notorious for muddy tread. Many creeks and rivers will be impassable and require lengthy reroutes by road. I desire a straightforward, classic, enjoyable journey.

I’d be willing to wait around to finish, but the waters and mud and damage aren’t going to recede that fast. My time is running out. Also, I’ve had enough ignominy and “failure” in my thru-hiking life. I’d prefer not to finish this wonderful journey with a stunted, muddy sufferfest that is unlikely to get me to Katahdin in any case.

It’s 2023 folks. It’s not 1755. That means two things. First, our climate is less stable. Wildfires, extreme rain events (I was standing near the epicenter of a 1000 year storm!), global pandemics, extreme heat, and other kinds of awful strangeness now seem downright regular. Uncertainty has always been a part of thru hiking, but it’s getting worse. Conditions before the flooding had already been unusual and terrible for weeks.

Second, we who are lucky enough to have jobs with living wages are not dependent on long distance foot travel to get around. (Indeed that’s one way we got ourselves into this mess!) That means the trail is an utterly social construction. It can be whatever we, or even individuals, say it is. There are simply no stakes beyond bragging rights.

We don’t want “successful” or “complete” thru-hiking to become the domain of only those who pick a lucky year.

I wanted the story of my hike to be simple. I didn’t want to have to add disclaimers and context and explanation. That’s a minor thing but it is annoying not to be able to say, honestly, “I thru-hiked the AT in 2023.” The best I can do now is, “I hiked 2,186 miles on the AT between 2021-2023.”

That’s pretty good, but we can do better, right now. Back in March my birthday wish was to be a thru hiker. Well, damnit, I’m gonna be. I’ve already hiked the northern 300 miles of the Colorado Trail twice (in 2020 and 2022). I’ll just get on a plane or two and flip west to the Colorado Trail. I’ll pick up where I left off and hike the last 185 miles to Durango. It won’t be a calendar year thru-hike, but I couldn’t care less about that.

Call the whole approach cloud blazing, a 21st century technique for thru-hiking. When events beyond your control make completing your hike as planned impossible, get your ass on a plane, train, or automobile and finish on some other trail. Make your own meaning, in other words. That’s what you get to do when you abandon an every-white-blaze-in-this-order-in-this-manner purism. You get to adjust!

And if, goddess forbid, we have more wildfires down south in CO, then I will flip to another trail. And then another and another and another until I’m dead or bored.

I’m still looking for a name for my trail combo. Ideally it would be named for a famous and admirable person who lived in GA, NY, and then settled in Durango or in some other way contributed to southern CO history. And they can’t be horrible.

If that’s too hard, maybe we can call it the Peach to Peach Trail, on account of going from GA to CO? Please weigh in as you see fit.

I’ve gotta leave for the airport in 30 minutes. I’ll fly to Columbus tonight and Denver on Friday, whereupon Benny and Zoey will pick me up at the airport. Then I’ll hit the Colorado Trail next week. If anyone in CO feels like going on a long ass drive on 7/20 or thereabouts, get at me. In lieu of gas, grass, or ass, I’ll let you drive my Prius and save your car the miles.

I’m going to blog the rest of the journey! I forgot to mention that. You’re going to get a very unusual reading experience if you stick around. I’ll describe Colorado trail conditions, language practices, cultures, weather, flora, fauna, and in all likelihood wildfire. My book just changed too!