Well, one week from today, I’m be on the trail, living free, enjoying the outdoors, and starting to think about when I can get off again. All of my gear purchases are done, initial foodstuffs are acquired, pack has been packed, and repacked, and re-repacked. Plans for meetings along the trail with significant others have been proposed, shot down, altered and proposed again, and provisionally accepted.
I’ve packed the same small bar of soap three times now, taking it back out, because of weight, and then putting it back in after reconsideration of my hygienic ablutions. Although scraping dirt from the skin with a knife or a piece of flint was considered the height of personal grooming back in the day, it is apparently not as popular today.
I’ve gotten advice on how to handle dangerous situations with animal predators (shoot them), reptilian predators (shoot them), and human predators (shoot them, reload, and shoot them some more). All of which I ignored because guns are heavy, I don’t have any, and statistically I have a better chance of getting a date with Christina Hendricks, then I do of encountering any type of predator, that wants to do me harm, while on the trail.
I’ve taste tested every kind of processed food suitable for rehydration, that can be found in a grocery store, and concluded that 75% of my nutritional needs will probably be met with Snickers bars. I made up a first aid kit with provisions for every emergency it’s possible to conceive, found out it was going to weigh twelve pounds, and cut it down to the real essentials, Imodium and Benadryl.
So, at this point everything is packed, stuffed, loaded, cinched down, tied down, bagged, tagged, and ready to go. And so am I!
