I think that I'm going to do it...... I think I will (attempt) to thru-hike this year.
But I have a big problem. I'm terrified of the woods at night. I could hike all day. It is truly the most at peace I will ever be. But the thought of sleeping in the dark woods with bears, snakes, the blair witch, coyotes, the bloody goat ghost my best friend in 6th grade swore followed her all the way to Texas from her childhood home in the woods (in Virginia, nonetheless).
Not only that, but noises. I have slept with an air filter from the mid 90s since... the mid 90s. It filters nothing now, I haven't been able to replace a filter in it for over 10 years. But even at the chance of developing emphysema I turn it on every night. Just to muffle my neighbors lightly playing radiohead on repeat.
Maybe I'm not cut out for the trail. I can hike, but the thought of sleeping in a dark, wooded, civil war graveyard terrifies the **** out of me. If there's one thing that will get me off of the trail, it's nighttime.
I've slept overnight before, in the wooded pines of east Texas, with large groups of people, or boyfriends, usually drunk. And even then, there were times (most) when I prayed that if god just let me out of my tent without what was surely either the chupacabra or a monstrous inbred hillbilly with confederate lineage outside devouring me, I would go back to church.
I grew up in South Texas where the legends of La Llorona, the Blair Witch, and Bloody Mary became one, wood (well, brush) dwelling, child eating monster. I have what has been called 'an overactive imagination' When I was 7 I watched Idle Hands and woke up hallucinating a severed hand playing spider on my pillow.That is all to say, I know it is unlikely I will find anything that terrifying, but there is a very good chance I will create it, and run far from it. I've always hated that about myself, as I profess to love nature and to hate civilization...that is until it's time to go to bed.
My dad, in a last ditch effort to persuade me from hiking, has sent me Stephen King's Girl who Loved Tom Gordon.
To be honest, I am not brave. Fear will take me off the trail quicker than anything else, and I don't know how to fight it.
Is this normal? I assume not. But is there a shred of hope that I will make it? Is there anyway to acclimate myself?