Crazy Man With a Crazy Plan

Blumenort Manitoba, 02/19/2019

A few months ago I was feeling at wits end about my mental health. I was going crazy! Five long years of exhaustion, depression and anxiety had taken its toll. I was sick of it, tired of fighting, and saw no hope. In the midst of the fog of depression a thought crept in; "Why don't you hike the Appalachian Trail." Last spring I did a 160 mile hike in Daniel Boon country on the Sheltowee Trail in Kentucky. By the end of the hike my depression and exhaustion had lifted. My mind felt clearer and my heart felt a sense of optimism and a peace with God I had not experienced in years. It was a short lived reprieve, as I quickly slid back into my broken state after I arrived home. But maybe if I did a longer hike it would bring about more permanent change. I passed the idea by my wife Sharon, who to my surprise quickly agreed. My kids encouraged me and my doctor said it was a genius idea.

Actually my dream was much bigger. I plan to hike the three long distance trails running north and south in the USA over a 6 year span covering half the trail each year, known in hiker circles as the Triple Crown. It might be a crazy idea for a 56

year old man, out of shape and struggling to keep it together. But maybe a crazy idea is just what a crazy man needs! In the past few months I have been purchasing gear and gathering as much information on the trail as I can. My flight to Atlanta Georgia leaves tomorrow morning. I can't say I'm excited, probably more nervous than anything. But I believe it's the right thing to do.

"Life is good, and there's no reason to think it won't be— right up until the moment when everything explodes into a fireball of tiny, unrecognizable fragments, or it all goes skidding sideways, through the guardrail, over the embankment, and down the mountain."
-Michael J. Fox

"If you are operating by sight, you see the calamity and complexity all around you. Sight without vision is dangerous because it has no hope. Sight is the ability to see things as they are, and vision is the ability to see things as they could be. Life is so full of depressing things that you need to learn to live by vision and see with the eyes of Faith."
- Bishop Lalachan Abraham - Bihar India


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