Lost Theologian

"Maybe we should just wait here."  My dad and I had just finished our small weekend hike of twenty-something miles on the Appalachian trail between West Virginia and Maryland. What we had expected to be a two day trip through about 26 miles or mountain ridge hiking ended up being a one say trip with some time to spare. So we stayed at our destination to take a break, then later doubled back some 5 miles to find a nice place to set up camp before it got dark, only to return to our destination in the morning. We stood around for some time weighing out the pros and cons of waiting. We had arranged for one of the locals nicknamed "Strings" to take us back to Harper's Ferry for a small fee. But we were way ahead of schedule, and Strings wasn't answering his phone this morning. To be honest, I was against the idea of waiting around and hoping Strings would pick up the phone, but I suppose my Dad has a lot more confidence in people named "Strings". ...

I've been hooked on this idea for some time now. My folks and friends all say I'm going to wind up dead. When I share it with people they look at me like I'm crazy. And frankly, maybe they're all right, but I don't think I am going to let that stop me this time. What I've been dreaming about doing for the last year or so is to pack my bag, hit the road, and hitchhike out of the southwest suburbs of Chicago and make my way over to Oregon. I'm pretty set on doing this. I spent the last Summer working hard, earning money and buying up some gear that I'll likely need along the way, and probably in May of 2014 I'll make my way over to the on-ramp of some highway and stick out this thumb of mine and wait. It really doesn't matter if I make it to Oregon or not. I love Oregon, in fact I'm infatuated with the idea of having West Coast beaches and  mountains in the same place. I'm in love with the Painted Hills, I want to see Crater Lake,...

It's been a long two months of almost zero contact with the outside world, but I'm finally back and ready to begin writing about my experience over the next several blog posts. As for right now, I'm going to focus in on what a solid chunk of my previous blog posts have been centered around, the backpacking trip I had gone on, and all that had transpired over those three days. Perhaps now is the time for me to reiterate that I had never done something like this before. I haven't even gone camping in a tent over night, prior to this experience. Surprisingly, despite the paradigm shift of going from  an upper middle class citizen of suburbia to becoming a tent dweller in the wilderness who made the world his bathroom, I feel as though I made the adjustment fairly well. I don't think there was a single moment where I even did so much as to think "I wish I had my laptop right now" or "I really could use my phone right now" (with the exception of k...