Walking through the small towns in Wisconsin gave me insight into the hopes and dreams of middle-America, their successes and failures.  Small town Wisconsin is a near carbon copy of small town Michigan.  An older Main Street will have a bakery, a real estate company, a Marshall arts academy, a diner and at least one pizza joint.  A Dollar General will have sprung up by now, it might even be across the street from a shuttered up grocery store.  If the town is big enough, there will be a new side of town that’s filled with box stores and other big names.   

I saw these small towns and thought about all the people, their hopes and their dreams.  Is their best life one that struggles to get by or are they living in the larger than life houses on the edge of town?  Do they know their hopes and dreams are carbon copies of so many others?  We are all the same, and yet, so very different.

What were the people thinking as they drove by the road walking hiker on their weekday morning commutes to work?  Some would smile and wave while others would gawk so heavily at us that the vehicle would begin to swerve in our direction.  Some people were probably envious while others might have assumed we were milking COVID unemployment and are a burden to society. 

I do care what people think. I try not to let it stop me from doing what I want to do, but that is not always as easy as it sounds.  Traveling the world on foot with only a backpack to rely on exposes you to every kind of person in the world.  Ignoring what people are thinking about you and your journey would be like never using sunscreen or bug spray; you’re ok until you’re not.

Yesterday was my first day back to work after the 2 month IAT hike.  It was a good day and I am grateful to have such an amazing team to come back to.  Walking away from a job I’ve held for almost 10 years feels like it should have been difficult, but it wasn’t.  I am a manager of what I’d call a team of friends and I did not worry for their well-being at all.  Am I cold hearted or did I know they don’t need me to succeed?  I have come to accept that I have never been a pivotal cog in any work machine; whether you work for a large organization, like I do, or a smaller one, the world will keep spinning with or without you.  

I wish we had more time to chat with Chicka & Sunsets when they met us on the trail that day.  Leaving work for 2 months is one thing, leaving the corporate world forever like they did is quite a different thing.  Chicka & Sunset’s lives have some stories that I want to hear.  If I ever do get the chance to hike the AT and they are still running a hostel in Franklin, I’ll be dropping in to say hello.

My work life and my hiker life could not be more different, Cubicle IT Manager vs Outdoors Adventurer.  Strands of commonality do intertwine underneath it all.  Whether at work or on the trail, I’ve always been able to grit my teeth and push through the tough times without much complaining.  I have never been the smartest person in the room nor the expert of anything.  I am just a person with enough mental toughness to try extremely hard however arduous the situation.  Good grades and high praises at work had me believing myself to be something I never was for a long time.  The reality of my situation is that I am just a normal person of average intelligence with a lot of grit.

Coming to terms with life after a thru-hike is a rocky path. I wanted to change out there, but did I? Emotional change is so much more subtle than the beard that grew longer on my face day after day. I kept the beard because it told a story to everyone who passed me on the road or saw me in town, it legitimized my efforts without spoken word. More than that though, the beard helped me visualize the change I felt growing on the inside.

It didn’t take more than 3 or 4 days after completing the hike before the beard began bothering my face. My trail self was disappearing, my body rejecting a beard that no longer had a place in this world. Shaving the beard was no more difficult than taking my shoes off before getting into bed at night.