And Unto Them A Blog Was Born

This is where I am right now. I made it.

This is my 40th year on Earth.  It's true. My birthday is not until December, but when I turned 39 three months ago I locked myself in a room, did some advanced math and algorithms, reproved the probability theory, and consulted a psychic hotline.  All of these cutting-edge techniques led me to believe that although my numbered age is 39, it is indeed my 40th year of living and breathing.  I guess it just means that I have 39 years under my belt.  Well done, Self (more so for the math, not the living and breathing....that part is actually pretty instinctual).
  As this milestone approached I kept thinking to myself that I don't feel 40.  What does that even mean?  I don't dread 40 or having a major milestone in my life or the fact that I don't have a husband and babies or any other kind of conventional life at this point.  We all have choices and make choices that lead us to exactly where we are today, wherever that is.  I happen to be living in a remote area of Alaska in a cabin by myself.  Would I change anything about my life? Absolutely not. OK, maybe I'd have a Cabin Boy to help with firewood chores, construction projects, heavy lifting, reaching things from the top shelf, and snow shoveling.  But I get by just fine and more importantly I'm really happy! I travel when I want, I work where I want with whatever bizarre schedule I find, and I have wonderful, genuine friends.  So rather than shudder at growing another year older, think about the things I haven't accomplished by this age, or start looking for crow's feet and gray hair I have decided to CELEBRATE!! I will revel and mock age rather than succumb to the notion that I "should" be doing something more grown up by this age, that I "should" be acting a certain way, that I "should" be dreading the aging process.  Aging, I fart in your general direction.  
  My idea of a celebration is to do something monumental.  Take a trip that I'll never forget.  Splurge on something.  Do something unusual.  As I began thinking about this a year or two ago I started to realize that this would merge perfectly with another dream of mine: to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail.  Having typically worked summer seasonal jobs in the Denali National Park area of Alaska, I always had about 8 months of unemployment every year, but they never coincided with the functional hiking months of the PCT which is April to late September/early October.  So I coveted the idea of a six month long, 2650-mile hike from Mexico to Canada and put it in the "Someday" category.  Until....
  About two years ago I decided to go to India and bend myself into pretzels at a yoga teacher training school.  This school was from late May until the end of June.  Which meant for the very first time in my adult life that I wasn't going to take a summer seasonal job (gasp!).  I went, had a lovely time, and assumed I'd get a job upon my return home.  And then I was offered an opportunity to go backpacking in the Brooks Range for 8 days.  Then friends from Austin were coming up for a band tour of the state and sure, I'd love to be your roadie.  Then it was already late summer and....well, I never did work that summer.  Under duress to work, I found my first ever year around job (gasp!).  Once I was working in the winter in Alaska I figured out that things could be different.  If I worked hard for a year, I could take a summer off!! That's when I decided that I would do exactly that: work for one whole year so that I could take this, my 40th year on Earth, off and make my dream of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail come true.
  Fast forward to tonight:  I'm sitting in my strategically cluttered cabin, listening to Tom Petty, and realizing that in about a month from now I'll be flying to California to stage for my hike.  I'm going to fly to Salinas where I was born and raised and where my parents still live in the house I was brought up in and do all the final packing for a 6-month journey on my feet.   I'll be putting packages together to mail to myself on the trail containing food and any sundries I think I'll need along the way.  I'll be hitting up REI for my last minute purchases.  Checking things off my list.  I'll be removing myself from my normal life (though few call it "normal"), all my friends, my home, my state, my routine, my comfort zone.  But much like traveling to India by myself, I'm going to just take it one step at a time.  I find that when I take myself out of my regular regimen, no matter how unusual it is in the bigger scope of society, that these are the times when I learn the most about myself.  I will not be traveling with anyone who has expectations of how I will act, react, or make decisions.  I find that when introducing myself to new people in totally new situations and tell them about who I am and what my life is like, things I believe in, and what I consider normal, the information I choose to reveal, how I portray myself, and the honest facts of my outside-the-box lifestyle provide me with new perspectives on myself......'n shit. (Had to take it down a notch.)
  So anyway, I'm starting this blog because....I know some of you will not believe it,...but not everybody I know is on Facebook [insert One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest screams, pulling of hair, weeping uncontrollably, and rocking back and forth here].  Once I start hiking you'll have to read about nature, how uncomfortably hot it is in the desert, how much my feet hurt, how much I love to eat, and whatever random thoughts and adventures happen to me along the trail.  Until then, I'll think of something.