miles

critique let out from a craig buck class and we all had a bad taste in our mouths. i went… or no i had to … fuck, i have no idea what i did. but i didnt follow emory to molina’s to console the freshly jenni-dumped dayton. i may just have been avoiding him, i cant remember.

i do remember emory later that night half drunk and with a strange tone on his voice, talking about the appalachian trail. as an out, from a dive bombing airplane emory coaxed the pilot back to level flight with the idea of thru hiking the A.T. it worked. at that point in his life there were only a few things dayton would talk at length about: boy scout camping and women, or rather, woman. or really just a woman. one woman. that was all. thank god for camping and emory’s quit drunk wit, or they may have been there for several more pitchers as the plane spiraled out of control in into tears.

“we just had to talk about something else or tears and vomit would have been all over molina’s. so i guess we’re hiking the appalachian trail.”

i couldnt figure out the look he gave me and just figured it was that he had assumed i was hiking with them. he was right. and it was on. from that moment we both knew we were going to hike the trail as soon as we graduated. it would be an easy incline for dayton to climb out of depression on and help him stay focused through may and graduation. ultimately it would provide us all with some stalling time before real life. emory and i knew we would be on the trail in a little over a year from that night. we also knew dayton could not be counted on to make it to the trail in the first place, much less with gear that we didnt pay for.

for the next eight months we would cleverly snare people into asking,

“what are you going to do after school?”

well darling, let me tell yah, we would say and boast for a good ten minutes or so about the three of us friends heading up to Maine for a bit of a walk. we would brush it off nonchalantly as if this was our type of thing and we were prepared for every curve ball mother earth had for us. after all there was two boy scouts, two wilderness first responders and three serious crazies.

twelve days before i graduated college i randomly spammed this message to everyone in my contact list.

im warming up the rusty and hardly used mass email skills. ive added basically everyone in my contact list to this group. if you hate nature, or me, or both and have no desire to hear of emory, brad, boo, and my progress through the appalachian trail just reply and tell me to piss off. so the current status of our trip is this: im still in commerce. infact im being paid by the wonderful state of texas to write you all (ya’ll for you real texans) this. we leave the wonderful homestead which has been shelter, a close friend, and home for three years in 11 days. boo is in good shape. emory is actually a yeti so he should be fine. brad is the most convicted, inspired and sometimes just plain stubborn person i have ever met so he’ll be good. the doctor said if i keep drinking ensure that i should be over my rickets in a few months so im pretty confident in my ability to hike as well.  for those of you that were added to this list with out consent and are not sure what the hell im talking about but are interested to see where this whole seemingly eminent disaster is heading allow me to fill you in.  i graduate in ten days. so in 11 days wheels will begin rolling that will eventually get me, my roommate, my dog(actually has less hair than my roommate), and a friend that few of you know to maine.  from maine were going to essentially walk back home. 2200 miles. four and a half months 2 million plus extremely weighted foot steps, seven summits, the windiest place on earth, and one section of over a hundred miles of wilderness. its gonna be a cake walk. were so confident we didnt even plan for it. does anyone know how to use a compass? any ideas where we could buy maps for something like this? what about shoes? any color suggestions? and for those of you that feel like you dont belong in a group with these other yayhoos… well too bad. they probably feel the same. most of you will get a more personal email atleast once, more if you write me back, more still if you mail me things on the trail (or less whatever pleases you enough to send me things) speaking of sending things.  in the next few days (i promise) ill send out a list of the post offices that will hold packages for through hikers.  we wont have any idea when we’ll be where until a few weeks into the trail. ill also send everyone updates on our e.t.a’s to certain P.O.s. anybody haveany idea what the weather is like up there?   for now, good bye. for later, hello.
moving
jordan

where the hell is maine anyway?

my mother and father were both caught completely off guard.