A Milestone
SUPERIOR, AZ, SOBO on the Arizona Trail, mile 499, October 27, 2022.
When I started hiking this trail more than a month ago I thought my days would look like this: hike from about 7 in the morning to 2 or 3 in the afternoon, think about my life and the state of world, maybe listen to a book I had downloaded on my phone, take a nap in the warm afternoon sun, do some writing, either on my phone or in the itty bitty journal I brought with me, post here on my blog, maybe walk a little more if I felt like it, set up camp, sleep, wake, start all over again.
Yeah, well. That was a cute fantasy.
The thing about a trek like this, is that you want and need to log miles. That’s the daily goal. Take care of yourself and log the miles. This isn’t a camping trip. It’s not really a backpacking trip in the way I’ve done backpacking trips before either. Before this trip, the longest day I had hiked on a trail with a full pack was 19 miles when my daughter and I circled around the Three Sisters loop in Oregon back in 2019. That day wasn’t supposed to be that long, either. We wandered off the trail for three miles before we figured it out, then backtracked and added six to what was supposed to be our 13-mile final day ending at our car. But that was just one day. On a long thru hike, it’s 19 or 25 or even 30, day after day after day. It’s a different kind of planning, mindset, stress on the body and mind.
I realized early on that blogging on my phone was not going to be easy. I couldn’t quite make the little app work with the photos for some reason. And when I did post, it was because I was in a place with cell service and able to text my daughter and have her do it for me from her laptop. Often, there were other things to do. Not as much downtime as my fantasy thought.
This particular milestone day I made it to the 500-mile mark where my father’s memorial plaque is located along the trail at the Picketpost Mountain Trailhead in Superior, AZ. The plaque stands as part of a circle of large boulders representing the “friendship circle” my dad facilitated before he took a group out on a day hike. This place represents home to me; it represents community, and it represents a legacy.
I started hiking the Arizona Trail on the evening of September 15. That was 37 days, a couple of blisters and about 20 pounds ago. Ten of those pounds are gone from my body, the other 10 I released from pack after a week on the trail.
Now, only 300 miles more to go to the border.