Virginia Creeper Trail
Met another hiker heading south on the Creeper. He had hiked the year before, and was out for a repeat hike, but he was on the verge of crying. I asked if he was OK, he said yes. But he said, 'DNA, you can't hike it again like the first time. It's just different. It doesn't have the magic, it isn't the same.' He was going home.
I thought a lot about what he said -- just a few short sentences shared from a veteran to 'this year's class'. As with so much in life, the first time is indelible: you ride a bike, or lose a tooth, or hit a home run. Your first kiss, your first job or when you drive a car alone, or your first lover. First day at college, or propose, or birth, or your first funeral. All of those unique one-off events in life. This hike was a five month first off. I was the same person I had been April 4, but I was also very different. The trail wasn't what I expected or wanted, and it was only six weeks into the hike. Yet it was home and more palatable than the comforts of a friendly trail town only 16 hours ago and eight trail miles away. I have never married, but was I experiencing the end of the magical honeymoon, and the charm of the comfortable coexistance everyone fantasizes for in the 'other world'. In the 'real world' as one family member put it? What's the 'real world'? The one with the indoor plumbing and intolerance? Of penny loafers containing toes that could feel, ringing telephones, the evening news, where the Dow closed today?
Some of those things mattered to me, but only now in an abstract way. My reality did measure in meals, in miles. Mine was a reality retuned to sunrise, sunset and occasional moon. Farmers know this reality. Lab researchers, not so much. 8-5 wasn't my reality. I could dialate time, expand it by hiking faster than my usual 3 mph pace. I could feel the tension of making an artificial goal -- the PO that closes by 4:15. I could feel the lack of tension by stopping unexpectedly at a stream to soak my feet, turn a few pages of my book, or watch juncos flit and dart with each other while a white tail grazes on the other bank. Time is an artificial boundary of our own making, a master or a companion only of our choices. The giddy honeymoon fun adventure was being supplanted by the acceptance that this was my commitment to myself. THIS was my job; one I looked forward to eagerly now, knowing there would be more lost toe nails, more sweat, and the bugs of Virginia hadn't even begun to hatch.
It was time to cross this bridge, slip down the other side to the water's edge, break for lunch, and head up the hills where the white blazes led. I'd never get another chance to revel in the wonder of my 'first time' with this Trail.