The title of this work speaks to me: Only the Essential. You’ll see where they get the name if you watch it.
I see it also as you take with you only what’s essential. And, I think, you also find along the way only what’s essential.
We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
— Marcel Proust
The video is excellently done. At least I liked it. Colin’s commentary was pretty terrific.
I’ve watched a number of videos and read numerous accounts of long thru-hikes, the AT, PCT, and CDT. Each one ends the same. As the hiker nears the hike’s termination point, it’s exhilarating and unnerving: once it’s over, then what?
I tell Jodi quite often, I am anxious to get out there. I’m eager to be able to, in essence, leave myself behind and see what I discover. To fall more in love with nature and the grandeur and, simultaneously, the insignificance and significance of it all. To be remarkable and unremarkable at once.
I received a small taste of it being on the open ocean for 6 days. Wet and cold and teeth chattering with a smile the whole time. Hot and starving and exhausted and exhilarated. There were a couple of moments of sheer terror and others where I was just awestruck by the beauty.
It’s those stupid crazy juxtapositions that make experiences so incredible.
I have every intention of hiking all 7,918+ miles of the 3 long US trails. I’ll be smiling for at least 7,000 of them.
I anticipate mosquitos for the other 918+.
I really, really liked that video. I know you are so ready to do it!
Yeah, it was pretty good and I am aching to get out and hike. I hope, too, that I can somehow capture images, and maybe video, that will capture people’s imagination and spirit and cause them to see the world as a marvelously beautiful place. That sunset pic of the tent with the light from Colin simply inspires me. I can just imagine being there and experiencing it.