Trail Dreams & Experiences

I continue to have dreams about the trail. They may occur now only a few times a week instead of every night. The main theme in recent months has been the quest or spiritual journey. In my dream, I return to the trail, but the quest or spiritual journey is over. I understand in my dream that there is no going back to the same trail. That journey is over and can never be re-captured or repeated.

This is not to say that I can never return to the trail. Its just that if I do, it will be a very different experience, and I will have to return for very different reasons.

I still puzzle over the trail experience. I met Thought Foot in Philadelphia at the end of January when I was there for work. He also seems to have the same questions as I. The trail is an intense experience. It changes your perspectives in ways that are not obvious or easy to understand.

While on the trail, Katahdin always remained unimaginably distant. I would sometimes look through the trail book at points near the end. None of us could imagine those distant locations. That, I suppose, was the quest. Never knowing if you would make it through the next day or what you would experience in the next moment. And that, in my dreams, is what I know can never be re-captured.


Something seemed to keep us going through the hundreds of miles of rain and ankle deep muck at the end when so many others dropped out after walking so far. I still don't understand why I kept going. None of those who finished the trail with me could explain their perseverance either. There were several times that I thought I really should leave the trail, but something kept me on the trail.


I think that I lost so much weight, pushed myself so hard for so many hundreds of miles, and was in constant pain of some kind for so many miles that I began to lose my joy in the final 150 miles of the trail. I really could not understand this change in attitude at the time. My pace also began to slow at this time even on the flat areas of the trail. However, the spiritual quest always remained, and kept me walking. This I did not understand then nor do I understand now.