Starting my morning with extra strong coffee w sweetened condensed milk, steel cut oats with brown sugar, walnuts, & ground flaxseed, and what will surely become my new best friend… The A.T. Guide.

Sometimes I consider just selling everything I own before I hit the AT and, then when when done, moving to someplace like Tuba City or Needles Outpost or or maybe getting a job in any of the National Parks … or as a ridge runner.

Then I reconnect with some of the wonderful people here in Rochester who I so dearly care for, both family and friends. There are so many reasons to love this city but mostly, it’s the connections with some of the most best people ever.

I hope to wander the world and have adventure upon adventure but this place and the people here will always have my heart.
♥

A lot of friends have expressed interest in following a blog of my 6 month Appalachian Trail adventure and I’m really grateful for this!

As I work on putting it together, what kinds of information or features will you want to see in the blog?

I’m already thinking of:
1. text … a semi-regular written account of some aspect of my trail life/thoughts.
2. photos of vistas, other hikers, myself, trail food, and … ??
3. videos! I’ve already promised granddaughter Ev that I will shoot video of critters and plants. Are there videos you’d want to see?
4. link to my Amazon wish list! LOL
5. a link to an interactive map of the AT

What kinds of photos will you want to see? Pics of blisters, ticks, privvies, mud? LOL

All womyn who come through the gate at Michigan Womyn’s Music Fest are greeted with “welcome home” even if it’s their first time there.

Tattoo by Colleen Kaster at Doc Yager‘s in Rochester, NY.

… thinking about my upcoming 6 month AT hike and trying to identify and face some odd underlying fear I can sense. Really that’s the only way to deal with fears, right?
And suddenly it hit me where this fear is coming from.

I dearly love my kids, grandchildren, and my friends here. And you see, when I was a child, my family moved a lot. In fact by the time I graduated high school, I had moved 18 times and each time I left behind my friends… and had to find new ones.

But that was then; I was a child and had no control over any part of my life. Now I’m an adult and able to maintain contact with people while I’m gone. They won’t forget me while I’m gone. They won’t stop loving me while I’m gone.

Wow! Serious wow.
♥

… I will strap on a 28 lb pack and walk miles in the woods, but won’t walk 1/2 mile down the street and back to the store for milk?

… that my 6 month commitment to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail is going to be longer than an embarrassingly large number of my “relationships”.
WHOAH!

😦