the bug

[ontheway]

i got it bad!!! im going to start my thru in feb. every min. im thinking about it. planing and buying. my fam. thanks im crazzy my girl said she would leave me my x said she would sue me!! but im STILL GOING i fell i need this...i have had a verry bad two years!! has any one done this that was looking to get more out of it than you got???? im hoping this will help me in the rest of my life...do i have high hopes or im i wright and this is going to be the turning point in my life??????

[scope]

You didn't fare very well on the English portion of the SAT, did you?

[Oklahoma]

Its hard to say how the trail will effect you personally. I always feel in the end you will be the same person you were before the hike. You will still have the same stresses in your life but dealing with those things will be made a little easier knowing you can always strap on a pack and kiss it all goodbye for a few months. As far as your family thinking your crazy my family did too but something weird started to happen as they tracked my progress, saw the pictures and heard the stories they began to understand and in the end really got into my hike, encoutaged me to keep going and in the end were even kind of proud of me. They probibly think you are crazy because they love you and are worried about you. Once they realize you are not Chris McCandless going Into the Wild i am sure they will be fine.

[sheepdog]

You didn't fare very well on the English portion of the SAT, did you?

might be a doctor



ya never know

[Appalachian Tater]

If you start your thru expecting nothing more than to be climbing up and down mountains all day while being dirty, tired, sore, eaten by bugs, cold, hot, wet, thirsty, and/or hungry all the time, you should be have a successful hike, thoroughly enjoying it well beyond your expectations.

[Blissful]

As long as families or other problems at home don't weigh you down and interfere with the hike. Personally I very much needed having support of family and friends on the homefront while I was hiking. It helped when the going got tough on the trail (which it will). I felt like it encouaged me all the way.

[Tinker]

You didn't fare very well on the English portion of the SAT, did you?

Hey, show some restraint. He's only got 5 posts. Wait until he feels welcome and comfortable before you tear his grammar apart!
Yeah, I know - I'm the worst grammar critic - but good grammar does not a good person make.

ontheway
I'll get back to you later on that grammar.............
Good luck on your thru dream.

[njordan2]

Ontheway,
It is everything you can imagine and more that you cannot imagine. It will change your life. Nobody knows how it will. Even when you are done, (whatever "done" will mean), you still will not know how it changed your life.

Some day, after you have left the trail and decompressed from your journey, you will touch limestone with lichen growing on it, or dirt, or smell something, or see a photo and you feel as associated feeling with your time on the trail. Then you will know a little bit about how it affected you.