Recently found myself reflecting upon my time on the Appalachian Trail. I spent hours looking through old photos and then stumbled upon some of our GoPro footage. Over the past couple of years I played around making a few adventure videos and realized I never made one of our time on the AT.
Remembering is an interesting thing. It can be double sided. A person can get caught living in the past. Makes me think of uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. Always thinking about when he could have made it big in his highschool football career.
On the flip side of the remembering coin. We can learn much from the past. History is full of valuable lessons. Such as the history of building walls.
I thought recently what did I learn from the AT? First, I learned endurance. If the AT taught me anything, it’s that I can endure anything. I personally believe when a person pushes their limits they will find that what they thought is their limit is not as far out of their reach as they may have thought. Second, I learned progress is made in small increments little by little. My wife made a comment to me recently about seeds. When you look at a seed you can’t see it growing. However, you made that timelapse of your seeds growing and over the course of a few weeks it’s amazing how much they grow. Often our personal growth is impersceptable when viewed on a daily scale but when you step back and look at how far you’ve come over a larger period of time you can observe your growth. Third, the AT taught me determination. As you can see in the video we pretty much walked and walked for about 2 months. There wasn’t alot of change in the routine. Yet every day I had renewed determination to make it to the next milestone. If we didn’t have determination we wouldn’t have made it as far as we did.
I am glad I have these memories to reflect upon and life lessons I can draw upon for the rest of my life. I hope you have enjoyed reading and seeing them. I will continue to try to update and post my thoughts and adventures more in 2019.
-Bigfoot