It was just days from the end. I had walked over 2000 miles and I wasn’t sure about the whole thing ending. Back home would not be the same, I had the whole college-career-what are you going to do with your life thing to figure out, and out there it is simple. By simple I do not mean easy, in fact walking can be the hardest thing in the world. Sometimes you just want to stop and die and then wake up anywhere but where you are. You are lonely and unloved and scared. But the trail goes on twisting and winding through worlds that exist even when someone is not acknowledging their presence. A whole day unfolds out here and no one notices a whole day that has passed on to tomorrow. But the tragedy is we all missed today. It snuck by and we never opened our eyes to explore it to embrace it or to share it.
All of my days on the trail had been building to this climactic end where I would stand next to the northern terminus called Katadin and finally exhale and there would be some epic song playing in the background, people cheering and caring me on their shoulders, we would all be crying and I would have the biggest smile that any one person could muster etched into my face. But there was no one there. No music, in fact the only sounds I heard were hollow winds that echoed from just below the summit.
As Tucker (a dude I had been walking with for the past 1000) and I neared Katadin we had to come to terms with what this walk was going to be for us. I wasn’t sure I knew, and I wasn’t sure I would know when I stood on the last summit looking over a summer of 252 ups and downs. But maybe, just maybe I didn’t have to decide. Sure I would have to give the people who asked, “what was it like?” a brief shallow thirty second story that kept them interested till their eyes faded away, but maybe for me the trail could just keep going. I hung onto the sign and cried while Tucker caught my whimpering in photo form and then I just kept walking. Down the largest mountain in Maine into another valley that led to New Hampshire and then back to Michigan and beyond. I want to walk everyday, without the fear that people will deem me as odd for seeing these moments as journey as adventure as hope of something bigger and deeper than the mundane. Oddness and passion and pursue are the very blazes God invites us to venture into trusting that the trail will just… keep… going…
