Why

I was lost in an old car assembly plant that was the new home of young artists with skinny jeans. The hallways were long and there were many studio spaces decked out with everything from illustrations of vampires to clothes sewn together with trash picked out of dumpsters. Interesting stuff, but none of it was of the stock created by the particular skinny artist I was searching out. We weren't actually 'going steady' yet so I was a bit nervous to impose upon his art domain, but I was also excited. After wandering around looking for his studio without much success, I finally heard lilting banjo music emitting from a distant studio space; a dead give away. I followed the old time music and discovered a small square covered in birds, trees, boxes, books, paintbrushes, a dodo bird head sculpture, a crocodile and a Mike. Yup, this was exactly what I expected - the natural world reconstructed in an old car assembly plant. Before interrupting Mike who was busy hunched over a goauche piece, scratching his head with one hand and pulling up his tight (art-guy) pants up with the other I noticed a large poster hung up directly in front of his drawing desk. The poster was of 'The Great Eastern Trail' that stretched from Springer Mt., GA to Mt. Katahdin, ME, or vice versa whichever way you want to look at it. "Howdy", I said, startling Mike out of his meticulous drawing of a king salmon. "Hey!" Mike said, eyes lighting up, smile stretching from Georgia to Maine - mine might have been farther, maybe to Labrador. "I'm going to hike that trail someday," I said, matter of factly. "Oh man, me too." Mike said with excitement, I've already hiked parts of it, but doing the whole thing would be incredible." "We should do it someday," I said, "Together." "That would be awesome," Mike said.

That was more than two years ago. I had never stated out loud my desire to hike the AT and actually suprised myself by saying it and knowing that I meant it. It's hard for me to express the reasons for wanting to hike the trail, I always feel that when people ask "why?" I choose an answer that the person asking would most understand and I usually end up with faces showing confusion, concern, or a conspirational wink. I could start broad and spiritual and say I'm looking for an inner quiet, the stillness within that many great cultures believe is the piece of you that continues through the ages while your different bodies give way to their cycles of life. The Buddah teaches that his great mistake was believing that this quest for inner light (some say this is God which exists in all of us) was only possible as a "quest", a journey all over the world, when he could have found it within himself anywhere, even in an office cubicle. Ok, I get it, however, he only realized this AFTER he had embarked upon his own great journey, I think my own revelation has to come during or after a similar quest of my own. I know that beyond a one hour yoga class, the natural world is the only place where my mind will be able to connect with my soul and my body. I cannot see any other way I can find any twinkling of sprituality without using my body, whether it be moving through yoga poses or up and down mountains.

Then, there is the question of things dissapearing. Bobwhite quail, Elms, Oaks, Ash, Chestnuts, Wolves, species of frog and toad, even the very tops of mountains are being blasted into oblivion by mountain top removal mining. Whether these irreplaceable wonders are being collected by the gods to re-model their back yards or whether they will be forever gone is a hard guess. Either way, I'd like to see them and say I've seen them - I want to really SEE WHAT I SEE. After the emerald ash borer has mashed its ugly head into the living flesh of the last Ash tree, people will say, "You've seen one, a live Ash, not in an arboretum?" And I will solemly nod my head yes, like I do when I say I saw the resting place of Bernini in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. After all, the great buttresses and columns of ancient churches were meant to emulate the magestic trees in the old growth forests of our ancestors. I do not want to live my life knowing I only experienced the seasons through window panes or short walks to the mailbox. As Thoreau said, "Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." Grow with Spring, up through the Appalachian ridgeline, through Georgia and into NC/Tennessee, sweat with Summer through Virginia and Pennsylvania and if I'm lucky, I'll change my colors with Fall up through the northlands. Re-connect. I don't have a house, a mortgage, a baby (excepting a small cat that my sister and husband are (better be) snuggling with right now). I want to spend four months out of my life simply existing and being amazed at the fact I exist and that my body works like it does and that nature works the way it does and that they are the same. I know it's not all going to be idealistic with gorgeous weather and birds alighting on my spork when I eat oatmeal in the morning. I'm in it for the downpours, the mud, the mosquitos, the lightning, the creepy dudes, the shelter-mice and the LOVE.

Of course there are MANY more reasons than that, but it will take me too long to type them...