Okay, so this is my second website creation today. If you got here from www.littlebitnosy.com, you know that this site is a spin-off of the other. While still here at home, I am working out the quirks for being able to post blogs on trail.

What does that mean, exactly?

I dunno.

Here’s what I envision a typical day on the trail will be like: We’ll wake up, go potty, get water boiling for coffee, put on our hiking clothes, cram our sleep system and other things into backpacks, take down the tent and cram it into a backpack, get food for the day out of bear canisters, hoist on backpacks (after going to the privy again), and head on down the trail. Hike for a while, take a few breaks, filter water, eat lunch, hike some more, filter more water, hike to wherever we decide to pitch our tent for the night, and greet whomever might be already at the shelter/tent site. Set up our tent, set out the sleep system, make supper, talk with people, catch up on blogging, go to sleep.

9PM, otherwise known as “Hiker Midnight”, will be our usual bedtime. In the early weeks of our hike, we might just go to bed as soon as the sun sets. What else are you going to do in the woods?

I am hoping to be able to keep up a couple of blogs. This one here will be all about our trek. The other one, Little Bit Nosy, will be about the people I meet along the way.

Way back in 2012, I read the book Becoming Odyssa by Jennifer Pharr Davis. I came across this book because I read a post by another phenomenal female athlete, Meredith Terranova, where she highly recommended reading it. I think I knew about the Appalachian Trail before I read Becoming Odyssa, but, regardless, it sounded like a challenge I wanted to give myself.

In those days, we were mostly retired and I was homeschooling my 10 year-old daughter. It seemed like a terrific way to experience life, taking our daughter out in the woods for half a year, and decided that in spring 2013, the AT would be our classroom. Long story short, it was not so awesome. We exited the trail on Mother’s Day after a series of not-so-fun days. I naively thought that we could easily step back on trail in another year or so…

Life has a way of happening when you’re making other plans—I think that’s a saying you can hang your hat on!

Ten years later, our daughter is in college; we’ve moved a handful of times; almost got divorced; and I had cancer.

Cancer is a full-stop that makes your take a good hard look at life, or at least it did for me. I am two years past my last chemo, and will be two years past my last radiation treatment soon. I am healthy, whatever that means.

Getting ready to set life aside to hike for 6 or 7 months has not gone too terribly smoothly, but all that has given us practice in rolling with the punches, practice for our mental flexibility, and helped us look forward to the “down time” that walking through the woods will be. Life will be pretty simple: wake up, eat, poop, hike, filter water, hike, eat, hike, pitch a tent, sleep, and repeat.

We are not selling everything. We have house sitters coming to stay, to take care of our “stuff”, our house, our pets. We’ll still have the mundane tasks of making sure bills get paid (thank goodness for online billing), keeping our checking account updated and credit cards paid, etc. Day to day, decisions should be pretty basic, such as, will I wear the long-sleeve shirt or the tee shirt? Will I wear a rain jacket today?

As we continue getting our house ready to be turned over to house sitters, all decisions about what to do next have to meet a basic criteria: how will this help us be able to leave for 6 or 7 months? What do we need to do to be able to go hike?

Every day on the trail, and especially when I am having one of those days that truly suck, I will ask myself, “What do I need to do in order to get up and hike tomorrow?”

I might need a snack right now. I might need a nap. I might need to stop and have a break with shoes off. I might need a shuttle to town for a hotel.

One day at a time. This hike is a big dream for me. I can’t wait to wake up and be living it. For real!