The Seductions of Home

My father told me, "Do not be seduced by the comforts of home!" last week when I ventured back into the world for a sniff. 

Seduced, yes--and did I succumb? 

This concept of "the real world." Why do we, as hikers, refer to life off-trail as "the real world?" Hiking the Appalachian Trail is no more or less real than anything else in life--I am not taking a break out here, nor am I returning to something when I reach Katahdin--I am in the midst of a continuous flow, and the trick is to surrender to it. 

I can no longer claim to carry 40 pounds on my back. Some may consider my preoccupation with weight an unhealthy obsession. And yet, when your whole world is on your back and in your eyes, when there is nothing else to be preoccupied with, why not consider weight heaily? Yes--I ditched my sleeping bag. Yes, I cut tags out of shirts. Yes, I walk around camp barefoot. Yes, I am sometimes cold, suddenly clueless about how to properly wash my clothing, and reckoning with a perpetually dirty crust on the bottoms of my feet. And do I regret the lack of these comforts? I honestly do sometimes. But the ease with which I am now gliding generally outweighs any moments of shivering, confusion, or hoof-skin picking.

Last week I saw few people. I vacillated between lonesomeness and elation--wildly. Too wildly (but who's to judge?). I felt whipped around in an ocean of (I can't say emotion). Blah blah blah, the trail provides, but it does. No two ways about it. It just does. 

And attending a Memorial Day celebration yesterday, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with grief concerning humanity's preoccupation with war, and afterwards in the car, criss-crossing through America's homogeneity of fast-food chains and strip malls, which I generally so thoughtlessly support (thoughtless due to once-conscious ignore-ance), just about (no, actually) broke down in helpless remorse, guilt, shame, for we as people, who cannot just be kind to each other...

Am I just running away from it all in the woods? What am I currently contributing?

I've stopped checking my bank statement, because it is more laborious to worry about money than spend it. I have boiled my life down to searching for the simplest ways to go about anything. Am I becoming lazy or just efficient? Clear-headed or foolhardy?

Either way, the addition of a small guitar quite nicely compliments my pre-existing harmonica & hackysack conditions, and the smell of this river sure beats the smell of my armpits, and life rolls on as I continue to walk north in style, with or without (or within!) purpose, and striving to act never around but always through love. 

--Boot