If you have to ask the question, you wouldn't understand the answer.
My second trail journal entry sums it up:
Why? Why walk 2000+ miles in the rain, wind, snow, heat, humidity, bugs, over huge mountains, spending six months eschewing personal hygiene, comfort, and the real world?
Well, like somebody once said, "Because it's there!". Actually, the reasons are much more complicated than that. When I was a young lad in Boy Scouts, I did some hiking, but never really liked it. I was the fat kid, and any fat kid will tell you, walking sucks. Oh, I loved camping, canoeing, swimming, building fires, sleeping in tents, all that cool stuff, but hiking seemed pointless to me. And it was hard. Why walk five or ten or even more miles when you didn't have to? So yeah, the Hiking and Backpacking merit badges? Forget it--never earned 'em. Guess that's why I was never an Eagle Scout.
But that fat kid went off to college, on the Tommy Boy plan, and eventually started working behind a desk. Fast forward twenty years later, and I weighed over 500 lbs, had to buy my clothes from the loan sharks of the textile world, the Big & Tall, and couldn't really do much of anything as far as physical activities were concerned. After the brokerage jobs dried up in the first recession of the past decade, I spent another five-plus years sitting on my ass at a poker table in Las Vegas, either dealing it or playing it. While it was an enjoyable lifestyle, it wasn't healthy at at all.
When the second recession hit, and the money in Vegas started to dry up, I decided to head back to Tennessee and be near my family. I hadn't had a holiday or weekend off in over five years, and was missing the comedy that comes from being around my large and goofy family, most of whom were located in and around Nashville.
I wasn't home two weeks when my world, as I knew it, came crashing down around me.
I suddenly had no strength. I couldn't breath. After two days it got so bad that my sister and brother-in-law rushed me to Williamson Medical Center in Franklin. The folks in the ER thought I was having a heart attack, and went to work on me. When it became obvious that it wasn't a heart attack, they spent they day doing a battery of tests on me. I thought it was pneumonia at first, but then a cat-scan came back and I got the bad news--it was much worse, and they couldn't help me there. I was immediately evacuated to Vanderbilt Medical Center, and the prognosis was not good.
I had a huge 'saddle' embolism. A blood clot, the size of a fist, went through my heart and lodged in the aorta, right at the junction where it splits off and goes to each of my lungs. I had a huge blockage, and the doctors and nurses said it was a miracle that I'd made it that far--most people just immediately drop dead.
The only option was an extremely high-risk surgery, which I was told was highly unlikely that I'd survive. And it had to be done NOW. The doctor even told me to call my family in to say goodbye.
It was an awkward thing, lying there in the Intensive Care Unit,with a team of a dozen nurses and specialists working on me at 3:00 in the morning, prepping me for surgery, with my family gathered around me to say a final goodbye. As bad as I felt physically, a profound despair settled over me as I thought how unfair it was that after all the effort I'd made to get back home after so many years away, I only got to spend a week with everyone.
Dying sucks. Especially when you know it's happening within the next hour or so and all you can do is think about it.
All I remember was being so cold in the operating room, staring at the bright lights on the ceiling and thinking, 'Well, this is where they bring people to die. I guess it's my turn'.
They had me count backward from a hundred, and I think I got to 97.
The surgery lasted almost three-and-a-half hours, and by some miracle, I woke up about four hours after they sewed me back up. I was a wreck. I had more tubes and bags attached to me than you could possibly imagine, the worst being the breathing tube that they had to leave in for a couple more hours. It was the most painful and humbling thing one could endure, and luckily the staff at Vanderbilt was top notch--it was impossible to rest, and although I was miserable, at least I was alive.
The next day, I got out of bed and stood up. Two days later, I walked thirty feet. Eight days later, I walked out of the ICU, still an invalid, but a one-in-a-million survivor, which everyone wanted to remind me of. I was on about a dozen prescriptions and completely restricted, and I had to come back twice a week for the foreseeable future. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't carry anything, I couldn't drive, I couldn't shave, and I could barely eat.
But I could walk.
That was my only task each day, besides taking medicine and sleeping--I had to get up and walk. I started by going to the end of the driveway, and then made it around the back yard. After a week, I could make it around the cul-de-sac, and after a month, I could walk almost a quarter of a mile.
For the next few months, my life was an endless parade of doctor and hospital visits, needles and drugs, specialists and more tests. The only thing that gave me an escape was getting outside and walking for a few minutes before the overwhelming fatigue would set in and I'd collapse in bed, unable to move for hours at a time.
Eventually, I was able to walk a mile without supervision and without stopping. I hadn't done that in YEARS. (It's tough to motor around when you weigh 500+ lbs). As a gift to myself, I bought the '60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Nashville' book, and decided that I'd work my way through them.
A real breakthrough came a few months later, once I was able to drive again, I slipped away and walked the 1-mile Old Mill Loop at Henry Horton State Park. It took me almost an hour, but I did it.
That's when I knew I'd be ok.
About the same time my brother, decided that he wanted to get into backpacking. So he started buying up gear and planning hikes. There was no way I could do that, but at least we had something in common to talk about. I was all-in on hiking--I was basically disabled and not working, and so it was all I could really afford to do, and he was all-in on backpacking.
Eventually, I'd healed well enough that I got clearance from my doctor to go back to work. As much as I hate the job I got, I'm thankful for it because it was well-paying enough, but it had excellent health insurance. And while I was losing a little bit of weight with my regular walks and a commitment to getting healthy, I was still morbidly obese, and backpacking was not in the cards for me, intrigued as I was about my brother's new hobby.
One day, while at another one of my endless doctor's appointments, I picked up a card for the medical weight-loss clinic. One thing led to another, and about a year later, I had gastric sleeve surgery, and thanks to my awesome health insurance at my not-so-awesome job, my total out-of-pocket cost was right around a thousand bucks.
It's the best thing I've ever done. A year has passed, and I'm healthier than I've ever been. I no longer have to shop at the Big & Tall, and walking five miles is a piece of cake.
During that process, I decided that having gone through what I did, and survived, I should make a commitment to do something amazing and ridiculous, and that's where the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail came from.
Anyhow, I'm still a long ways from being healthy enough to really do this--I've still got some weight to lose, but the difference is amazing. I have so much energy now, and I love stepping on the scales now. My old leather 64-inch belt goes around me one-and-a-half times now, and I'm amazed at the changes, as are those who see me every day.
Two years ago, I would've been the absolute LAST person you'd ever see attempting a thru-hike of the AT. A dude fatter than Santa Claus huffing and puffing his way though the woods? No way. I would've died of a heart attack somewhere on Sassafras Mountain, not even twenty miles up the trail.
But life has given me a second chance, and I'm going to make the most of it.
That's why I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Double Wide is now BLUEBERRY
Northbound (2nd Attempt) March 2017
This is a page from the book "Beyond The Wall" by Edward Abbey,
But why, the questioner insists, why do people like to pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why this surly hatred of progress and development, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements?
Very well, a fair question, but it has been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt in detail with the question.
There are many answers, all good, each sufficient.
Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom-commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the origin of things, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the present-all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead and degrading question as "Why wilderness?"
To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway:
because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.
Edward Abbey
"The wind that blows, is all that anybody knows"
Thoreau
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WOW! JUST WOW!Originally Posted by Double Wide
As someone who has suffered back injuries and temporary paralysis wondering if they would walk again, I can sympathize, though my health conditions were not as life threatening as yours.
Good fortune on your second chance and hike(s).
DWB(Blueberry), BEST story I've heard all say! LIFE is GOOD!
Abbey said something similar in Desert Solitaire.
DW, what an inspiring story!
DW/Blueberry,
I agree, thanks for sharing, and best wishes for your hike!
The road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.
Richard Ewell, CSA General
Double Wide, you're gonna need a new trail name!
Ahhhh, just looked at your profile. I like Blueberry much better!
Last edited by Traffic Jam; 12-15-2013 at 17:17.
I agree with that one. That's why I like the idea of section hiking vs. thru-hiking. I'm sure thru-hiking is its own beast, but it seems like with all the preparation some people do, they might miss some stuff. Its all pounding out miles and getting to the next town to make the mail drop, and then there's the "deadline" to hit katahdin before closing for the winter. Of course, section hiking can get that way, I'm sure… "I have to make x miles a day or I can't get back to work on time". So I guess there's deadline everywhere. I need to take a few hikes alone, every one of mine involving a group, until my last trip, has involved some sort of "gotta get to" thing, where there just wasn't a whole lot of time to stop and look around.
Please don't read my blog at theosus1.Wordpress.com
"I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Thank God for Search and Rescue" - Robert Frost (first edit).
Personal growth. The only true battles we fight are on the inside.
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