Aaron Unscripted A blog about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings…

Home Sweet Home? Bitter-Sweet

I decided to take a flight home, on the 6th.

I was finished taking my week long prescription on the 3rd. I was feeling much better then what I had been, but I still wasn't nearly 100%, or to a percent I could manage through. I was hopeful that over the 4th of July holiday I would recover enough to get started again. My appetite was steadily increasing, and most evenings I was very hopeful that I would be ready to take off. Every morning however, it was like taking a few steps back.

I began to realise my expenses where getting insurmountable, and I was utterly board holding up in my room for the majority of the day. This was not a fun way to blow through my savings. I also began to realise that I couldn't predict when I was going to be feeling good enough to start backpacking again. I began thinking of other things I could be doing, and the euphoria and thoughts of backpacking where beginning to fade.

So, I booked a flight home.

I'm pretty lost as to what I should do next. I have lots of ideas, but nothing is standing out. My first priority is to get better.

Catching Up, Plans to Hike the CDT

If you can remember back, way back to Jan & Feb 08, you might remember that I mentioned an interest in backpacking, thru-hiking in particular, of either the PCT or the CDT.  I can tell you now that I am committed to backpacking the CDT.  Many of my family and friends have already been let in on my commitment.  However, I find that the details, reasoning, and planning of my epic adventure go unasked, or unremembered from conversation to conversation.

I am going to tell this story from present to past, as the evolution of my backpacking dream is still coming to a realization, and past thoughts and ideas have been melded and/or forgotten and lost, as the current dream has taken shape.

The Immediate Future

I have transportation tickets to my start location, the Canadian border of Glacier National Park, Montana.  On Saturday the 13th of June, via Amtrak, I will be taking a bus from the Eugene, Oregon train station to Portland OR. where I will be getting aboard an overnight train to East Glacier, MT. In East Glacier I will apply and receive backpacking permits for the national park. My route, and itinerary will be dependent on campground availability, weather, and snow fall. That Monday the 15th of June, if all goes well, I hope to be taking a shuttle bus to Waterton Park, CAN, and beginning my great Continental Divide Trail adventure, headed south bound toward my final destination on the US-Mexico border of New Mexico.

Getting Here

I'm not sure where to start. It has been a long process from the fabrication of a dream to the constant reimagining as I discover and gather new ideas and pieces of information.  I can tell you that my curiosity was struck when meeting a Pacific Crest Trail backpacker on the PCT when I was backpacking as a Boy Scout.  Again, my curiosity was hit when I read "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, a story about the authors (mis)adventures on the Appilation Trail (AT).  These are just a couple of the early seeds that I can remember. Seeds specific to thru-hiking, I can surely go back to the planting of my love for the outdoors, adventure, exploration, and discovery, but those are seemingly more common.  Since the seeds of thru-hiking were planted, I always considered backpacking some great distance over a long period of time a worthwhile endeavor or goal to put on anyone's "life-list" of things to do before they die. I consider the concept a valid "trip of a lifetime". I say this because there are other individuals in this world that consider this idea nuts!

Fast forward to my time spent in Iraq. It is often a mental exercise in keeping sane in such an environment, that you ponder the future and create elaborate dreams of things you want to do with your life, and convince yourself that they are surely obtainable and very necessary to your existence. The alternative is an exercise in futility, questioning and reasoning with the environment you're currently in, an endeavor that leaves one depressed. It was in this environment that my mind wandered, and I started looking into doing a thru-hike. At the time I had only heard of the AT and PCT. Soon after lurking on various forums and e-subscriptions I learned of another trail, the third of what completes what is known as the triple crown. It's legend was that it was the longest, toughest, remotest, and few people had completed it. It isn't even completed yet!  Sitting in Iraq, you might understand how the dream would gravitate to such extravagance, or perhaps a look into my character would reveal the necessity to do the biggest, baddest, most challenging and difficult adventure possible. 

In this information age, all the details I needed for my trip have been at my fingertips. A quick e-mail here, and someone sent me the entire map set I would need. Another e-mail and pay-pal order later I would have a couple planning and town guides.  Put together with a few bookmarked websites I have an arsenal to plan and prepare my adventure.

The Future

My goal is to use this blog as a sort of journal. I have a feeling that I might fall through on keeping up with the details, but I hope to at least keep people lightly informed to my where-abouts, my progress, and my morale.

When I return, I hope to put together a more complete journal, filled with photos and videos.  I'm carrying an HD camera to capture the trip. The problem is that the content is so memory/computer intensive, I doubt I will be able to edit or upload any of it on my trip.

Wish me luck, and Happy Trails to All!