So I’m on the train heading to Georgia and I’ve met another thru hiker his name is John Stewart. So John Stewart and Michael Kane are thru hiking tge AT this year let the press know 🙂
Michael Kane and John Stewart head for the AT
I’ve learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom – how great is that? ~ Soledad O’Brien
So tonight is my last night before the journey starts, I’m excited and nervous and running a million things through my head. Tomorrow morning I will board an Amtrak train for Atlanta with a brief hour and a half layover in Penn Station. Enough time for one last legitimate piece of pizza before I leave NY. About 19 hours later I’ll arrive in Atlanta at 8AM on a Sunday morning.
Because it’s stuck in my brain I’ll share the worm, On the Road Again
I will spend two days in Atlanta, to see one of my best friends, kick around Atlanta a bit and pamper myself for a couple of days in a really nice hotel. On Tuesday morning I’ll jump on MARTA to hook up with Survivor Dave and a couple of other thru-hikers to head to Amicalola Falls State Park. I’ll transition easy into the thru-hiker life on the AT, a night in the lodge, then a 5 mile hike the next day to the Hike Inn for a less posh evening. Then finally the next morning after a year of planning and scheming, of buying sooooo much gear and changing my mind so many times about what to bring, I’m off.
The front door at the Hike Inn
My plan is simple, 8-10 mile days and an arrival into Neels Gap on the third day. The first few days will really be a live fire check-out run, get things dialed in and start to adapt to trail life. I look forward to when get up, tear down, hike, set up and sleep becomes a routine. The beauty of all of that is nothing about it will be boring or routine. I look forward to warmer clear nights where I can take the rain fly off of the hammock and stare up at the stars until I fall asleep.
There will be so many milestones to look forward to, my first state border, then 13 more. I look forward to seeing my first bear, climbing Clingman’s Dome, then getting out of the Smokies, jumping off trail in NC and VA to visit friends, my first resupply run, my first hitchhiked ride, my first trail angel, my first successful yogi’ing and especially to my first new friend on the trail. There will be adversity of course, blisters, turned ankles or knees, sore feet, incredibly hard days, rain and I look forward to all of it. Truly, all of it is the experience because you never know how many of those 5,000,000 million steps to Katahdin you’ll get to take, but I’m hoping to take and relish every single step.
Lot’s of thank you’s to go out to folks, first to David Miller the writer of the AT Guide, AWOL is a great guy, super accessible and helpful, he was in fact my first pre-hike trail angel and I look forward to meeting him in person at Trail Days in Damascus. My friends and family who have been supportive even when they didn’t have an idea or understand why in the hell I’m doing this. To Scot Gauvin and the Potable Aqua ATCrew2015 and my fellow crew members, I look forward to seeing you all at some point on the trail, even if it’s a high five when you’re going SOBO. To Phoddo, a Twitter friend, it’s been great to have someone to stress with via Twitter. Finally, to the readers of the Ministry of Happiness, we talk a lot about living a happy life, so time to stop talking the talk and to fully start walking the walk and of course having many happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane
Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver. ~ Barbara De Angelis
So tonight I thought I would talk about Trail Angels. Now this is obviously a self-serving post for me and hopefully for my fellow hikers who are attempting a through hike this year. A Trail Angel is someone who through kindness comes to the aid of thru-hikers. This in its highest form could be allowing someone to stay in your home or helping an injured hiker get to a hospital or doctor. However most of the time Trail Angels are folks who seemingly appear out of nowhere to give you want you desire or need.
The person who stops to pick you up while hitchhiking into town on a rainy day, and really, picking up a hairy, smelly, soaking wet hiker on the side of the road absolutely qualifies someone as an angel. There are stories of folks who set up at access points on the trail and serve up hot dogs and cold drinks. I’ve heard told of 6 packs showing up in streams along the trail with a sign saying take one. There are lots of folks in trail towns who take people in or let them camp in their yard. Chance encounters with day hikers can turn into gifts of food, water or cooking fuel. Homemade cookies or brownies added to a drop box are always welcome, did you see that last phrase little sister!
If you are following a thru-hiker’s blog (really not just mine people) if you know they are going to be in a particular town or are picking up a drop box somewhere, you could send them a surprise. Or, if you really want to make sure they get one, message them and ask them if you can send a box somewhere to them. A couple of quick notes on being an effective trail angel:
1. Send edible goodies! But not things in cans or anything heavy to carry. If you do, it will be eaten immediately if possible, but likely will be put aside.
2. Unless you’ve communicated with someone, don’t send gear. So many well-meaning people have offered me gear for my hike. As kind as the offers are, they often really miss the point of what we are doing and the gear is usually far too heavy or ill-suited for our purposes. Most of us have pretty extensively worked on our set ups and have what we need.
3. If you encounter a thru-hiker, kind words, a snack, an offer for a ride are great ways to instantly become a trail angel. It doesn’t have to be something big, a small bag of Doritos could make a hikers whole day, some of that bottled water you are carrying that is really heavy, pour a little in our bottles and let us carry it for you.
4. If you are planning on going to the trail to give away some food or cold drinks, shoot out a message on Twitter with the hashtag #AT2015 with some details, that way hikers in the area can pace themselves out to take advantage of your kindness.
Hopefully you get the idea, you could even plan to meet someone at a point on the trail and bring a little something, but as the other person thru-hiking with her, could you bring a little extra, we all sure would appreciate it.
Here are some pieces about trail angels and the trail magic they provide, who knows they might give you some ideas, enjoy, and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
The Guardian Angel of Appalachia
Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. ~ Norman MacEwan
Well my friends, I’m getting ready to set off on the Appalachian Trail and so I won’t be posting nearly as often. Don’t worry, I haven’t forsaken you, I’ve scheduled some posts out each week until August 1st so you’ll have something to read. Also, I’ll be posting hopefully at least once a week via my phone from the Appalachian Trail.
I wanted to take this time tonight to say thank you to all of you have followed this blog via Twitter, Facebook and especially those of you who are direct subscribers. I get a lot out of writing this blog, I hope you get something out of reading it.
We continue to increase our reach and readership, 2014 nearly doubled 2013 in the number of views. This year has started off with a bang, February is the third straight month that has set the bar as the month with the most views. By comparison, by the end of February we’ll have as many views in the first two months of this year as we had in all of 2012, pretty good. We’ve recently hit some milestones, 1600 Twitter followers (@ministryofhappy) and 2500 Facebook followers on the Ministry of Happiness Facebook Page. Finally this week we will post our 750th post, seems like yesterday I was wondering if I’d ever make 100 posts.
So thank you, thank you my friends, this endeavor doesn’t mean much without you, your feedback and input. So drop a note to say hi before I hit the trail and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B.
It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. ~ Cheryl Strayed
As I’ve mentioned previously I have undertaken planning to do a thru-hike next year on the Appalachian Trail (AT). My hope is that I will walk all 2,200 miles of the AT from Springer Mountain, GA to Mt. Katahdin, Maine starting in late February or early March, 2015. This is my trail journal where I hope to take you from my decision to do this, through my preparation and then notes from the trail and hopefully all the way to Maine. All of this in my journey and process to live happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane
So as I’m getting ready to set out on my Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hike, I thought I needed some rules for the road to guide me on my way. The single overriding rule of course is to hike your own hike. What this means is that everyone is different and everyone has to do this journey their own way. Some people will be purists and hike every step of the trail, some folks will “blue blaze” taking some of the side trails that skirt some of the nastier parts of the trail. Some folks will have dedicated schedules and need to be very frugal, others, well not so much. So what these rules are for me are some guidelines to help me determine what hike your own hike means for me.
Be happy and thankful for every step on the trail
First off this is a journey, there is a goal for me, Mt. Katahdin by my 51st birthday August 26, 2015. Hell, even better if I can summit on my birthday! But being too focused on the goal is to overlook two hugely important facts. First, only about 30% of the people who attempt this journey make it all the way through. Some quit due to things they control, many for things they can’t control. A stray step, a virus, the wrong mosquito, there are many things that keep even strong well-prepared hikers from finishing.
The second is the fact that the whole journey is estimated to be 5,000,000 steps. If you’re too focused on the five millionth step, you’ve missed out on all the joyful and amazing things going on for the previous 4,999,999 steps. So no matter how many steps I take from 1 to 5,000,000 I want to try and be mindful and enjoy every step.
Be friendly
I’m not always the most social animal but I really want to be more friendly than normal while on the trail for a number of reasons. First, I really want to connect with my fellow thru-hikers who in my estimation are on average a really wonderful group of humans. Second, you never know when someone out there is having a really tough day and good use a smile, a good word, a helping hand or a spare snickers bar.
Be open to detours
THIS is an adventure, so for god’s sake take the right kind of chances. I’ve already done this in one sense, a new friend on Twitter (Phoddo) mentioned meeting up at Trail Days in Damascus, VA in May. My initial answer was I’ll pass, not into crowds or doing the typical hiker festival thing. Then I remembered why I’m doing this, adventure, fun, stretch yourself, so I’ll be in Damascus for Trail Days. Although the hike itself will be amazing, I’ve heard so many great stories from previous hikers about side trips and misadventures they ended up in by just being open to stepping off the trail, that I have to be open to that sort of thing.
Try new things
Along the lines of the last rule, I need to be open to trying new things and getting out of my comfort zone. I don’t know what they will be yet, but I have to be ready. Of course June 21st is Hike Naked Day!
Meditate every day
Something I go through phases with in my life, I’m hoping to get into a regular meditation routine on the trail. It will help my mental health on the trail and given that this endeavor is easily as much a mental as a physical challenge it should pay a lot of dividends.
Write every day and answer the three questions.
This is already a solid routine for me and one that I really want to continue on the trail. Hell I bought a $15 space pen to make sure I could write under any condition! I’m hoping to put a book together around this adventure and I want to make sure I don’t miss a thing when I do. I also have three questions I’ll be writing on every day. What was the most beautiful thing I saw today? What did I learn today? What made me happy today?
So there are other rules that I’m sure will develop as I walk, but this is a good starting point. As always happy to have you suggest some for me in the comments as well. Hopefully the rules will serve me well and help me have happy trail days my friends ~ Rev Kane
Appalachian Trail (AT) Happiness: Three Important Questions
Appalachian Trail (AT) Happiness: Beginnings
You need special shoes for hiking — and a bit of a special soul as well. ~ Terri Guillemets
I’ve been asked a lot why I would want to undertake a 2200 mile walk, spending 6 months living in the forest. People have a tendency to focus on their fears, animals, loneliness, getting lost or on the physical aspect of the task. Surely all of these items merit thought and consideration but they are details, challenges along the way, they are not the main thing. Mallory got it pretty right, at least for me in his famous answer about why climb Everest. He’s famous for saying because it’s there, but this is the whole answer and although not as quotable makes a bit more sense.
People ask me, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is of no use. ‘There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron… If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for. ~ George Mallory
The answer that I have settled on in addressing this question is that doing an Appalachian Trail thru-hike is an adventure, adventure is transformational and I want to live a transformational life. Sounds good but what the hell does it mean? To me it means this, the times in life when we change are the times when we stretch ourselves and push beyond our self-imposed boundaries to find something bigger and better in ourselves. I know what I’m talking about, this is not my first rodeo I have done this before.
My last great adventure was trekking in the Himalayan Mountains. Our goal was base camp on Mt. Everest, we were diverted by a freak snow storm, but we spent 14 days over 14,000 feet, I personally got above 17,000 and several members of the group did an 18,000 foot pass. Prior to that, I’d never been over 12,000 feet, had never done a multi-day trek and sure as hell never had to dodge Yaks on a trail. The trip changed me in several significant ways, I came back much calmer and less reactive. I was certainly more confident, and even far more hungry than I had been before for more travel and yes, more adventure. I wrote about this trek in a series of posts on the blog under My Himalayan Travelogue.
The Appalachian Trail thru-hike is a huge undertaking, even compared to the Himalayan Trek I did. We’re talking 6 months of living out of a pack, walking over 2000 miles. This means dialing in every aspect of how I will be living. I’m 14 days from leaving and I don’t feel prepared even though I’ve done an immense amount of research, a lot of training and have talked with a lot of veterans. I know some of what will happen will be a total crap shoot, I’m sure I’ve made some big mistakes and will have to make changes on the fly. This is all part of how adventure stretches you. The other thing that has occurred with the preparation for this hike, including quitting my job, selling my house, moving across the US, having most of my plans utterly blown up, is that some of the transformation has already occurred.
I have already become calmer than I’ve been in years, I’m certainly less reactive. Now don’t get me wrong I’m far from the Buddha or some Zen Master level of calm, but I’m on my way. The closer the date gets the more and more I’m thankful for every shower, every hot meal, for little things like ice, I really like ice in my drink. I’m thankful for clean tap water that I don’t have to drip several drops into and wait 20 minutes to drink. It’s really nice to be warm at night in bed, a lot of simple things we all take for granted are already becoming precious to me and increasing my level of gratitude. As I’ve written about here before, expressing gratitude makes us happier. And although there have a been a series of speed bumps, as I wrote about in the post This was NOT the Plan, I’m still a pretty happy guy right now.
So the transformations have already started, now all I have to do is walk the 2200 miles and see what else happens. A lot of steps, 5 million they estimate, and a lot of happy days to come my friends ~ Rev Kane
“The long distance hiker, a breed set apart,
From the likes of the usual pack.
He’ll shoulder his gear, be hittin’ the trail;
Long gone, long ‘fore he’ll be back.” ~ M J Eberhart
If you’ve been following along you know my Appalachian Trail (AT) prep has not gone as expected. The good news, if you haven’t been following along, I’m in a bit of a lazy mood tonight and I’ll be providing links to my recent posts below. My mom, who has been ill, is doing much better, she’s home and getting stronger every day.
Of course a combination of her illness, god awful amounts of snow, some brutal cold and now my second cold in 5 weeks has beat the hell out of my preparation physically, mentally, emotionally and even equipment wise. I thought I would be well ahead, seriously prepared and in great shape, well that hasn’t happened. Somehow I doubt I’m unique in this aspect. However, I do believe I finally have all of my gear, my travel reservations are in place, hell I even registered my thru-hike with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
There are a couple of things though that I’m woefully behind on, I have yet to set up and dial in my winter set up with my hammock. Hell, what could go wrong, just a little hypothermia and death I’m resolved to get to that in the next couple of days, also I have yet to take a single step with my full, trail ready pack set up. This one will also hopefully be resolved in the next week, but with even more snow coming and my start date a little over three weeks away, it will be 45 days without going uphill with weight on my back. The first few days on the AT might be hell, but I’m trying to keep a positive attitude.
Just preparing for this adventure has brought on some changes in me that I hope to document in a post in the next day or so. But for tonight, below are the AT pieces I’ve posted up to this point, give a read, drop a comment and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~ John Muir
So initially I was an Appalachian Trail Dreamer
The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends. ~ Tom Brown, Jr.
Rockin the Fudge-a-licious hat
Then I was an Appalachian Trail planner
No Pain, No Rain, No Maine ~ Unknown
Next I was an Appalachian Thru-hiker in training
Beware the “Words of Wisdom” from others. ~ SassyWindsor
Now, I’m so much closer
My train ticket to Atlanta has been bought
My ride with Survivor Dave is scheduled
All of my rooms are reserved. I’m fully easing into the transition, I like transitions and like to savor them slowly. So, two nights in a really nice hotel in Atlanta to pamper myself, the next night in the lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park, if I can ever get them on the phone, the next night at the Hike Inn and then onto the trail and the start of the long walk.
The front door at the Hike Inn
It is sooooo real now, which brings with it complete excitement and more freak outs!
So on March 5th I become an Appalachian Trail Thru-hiker in progress.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step ~ Lao Tzu
Somewhere up the trail an actual thru-hiker and then if all goes to plan, it sometimes does, I’ll be a successful thru-hiker by September 1st. Wish me luck and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. –Sir Edmund Hillary
And so it begins, Appalachian Trail or bust!
Web Resources for AT and other hikers
So recently I was asked by a new site, The Lightest Backpacker to write a piece for their blog. I opted to write a bit about my shock at how light gear has gotten over the years as I realized while preparing for my upcoming Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hike. Take a look at their site and give it a read, the piece is called, Teaching an old dog new tricks. Enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. ~ Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist
So it had to happen right? Sooner or later the immensity of the task, the massive list of details, the kernels of self-doubt all had to align into a freakout. Today was that day, I’m just under 30 days til my start date on the AT. While reviewing my gear today it hit me I had somehow completely and totally overlooked buying a new winter bag for my first month in the mountains. A 32 degree bag, I was going to go into the mountains, in February, in a hammock, with a 32 degree bag! Apparently I was angling to be the new poster child for hypothermia awareness.
So today, Sunday, I’ll be posting this later in the week, I went on a mad buying spree, last-minute items, burning up some REI gift cards, flooding Amazon with orders. Freaking out about my start date, how my mom’s illness might screw everything up, my decreasing fitness while staying with family, figuring out which train to take, where to stay in Atlanta while visiting my friend, how I’ll get to Springer from Atlanta, aaaaaaahhhhhhh! It’s enough to give you angina.
But here at the end of the day everything is calm, my sister made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, my favorite. I’m breathing, it will work out, it will all happen, just need to keep my eyes on the two drops of oil on the spoon.
I’m sure all of you thru-hikers, or about to be thru-hikers know or are about to know this moment. It’s ok, let it wash over you and then let it pass. We’re on our way friends, see you on the trail where we will be having many happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 