It’s been three years.
I finished the Continental Divide Trail on November 8th, 2015. I walked a total of 2,830 miles from Canada to the Mexican border over four and a half months. Walking this third long trail changed everything about me.
Since that time I’ve returned to Seattle and worked as a labor and delivery nurse at Swedish Medical Center, First Hill campus. I always tease my coworkers that I can’t believe someone hired this sunburned dirtbag stumbling out of the desert onto the busiest labor unit in Seattle. It’s been, really, a wonderful couple of years, and I have found my heart center in helping women bring life into the world, supporting them through the night in what for most women is the most intense physical and spiritual thing they will do in their lives.
But it’s time, again, to go.
I have designed a series of 5 trips spanning, if I am lucky and my body has the strength, 10 months and 4,100 miles:
Camino de Santiago, the Pyrenees of Spain, 493 miles, June-July, with my dad
Great Divide Trail, Canada’s Rockies, 800 miles, July-September, with Crosby
Sierra High Route, California’s Sierra Nevadas, 200 miles, September, solo
Hayduke Trail, the Colorado Plateau of Utah/Arizona, 800 miles, October-November, with some new friends (and possibly a suprise old friend!)
Te Araroa Trail, both islands of New Zealand, 1800 miles (I REALLY need to learn kilometers on these trips), December-April, with Veggie and Karma
All of these trips are in stunningly beautiful places and are intriguing for different reasons. I plan to blog throughout to bring my friends and loved ones along on these journies. It is so hard, in the daily walk, to describe with any accuracy what is happening to your head and your heart incrementally–but the process is revolutionary. You blossom with love and you just stop caring about the things that don’t matter. Your fears subside. It doesn’t happen all at once. And when I write while hiking, what seems to come out is a basic description of the days. But for what it’s worth, please join me in this trip–into the world and into the heart.
pN and I leave for St Jean Pied de Port, the start of the Camino de Santiago, in 2 weeks. We will spend 6 weeks walking across the Spanish Pyrenees on an 1100 year old pilgrimage route which attracts hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. I’m so excited to introduce my dad to this thing that I love so much and spend more time together than we have since I left for college fifteen years ago. My dad is 65 years old and has not taken this much time off from his job as a pastor at a small church in Massachusetts since he took the job in 1983.
More to come.
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