Spring fever

Yes, this is a real disease, and yes, I have it. It's what happens the spring following a NOBO thru hike. I'm sitting here right now knowing that everyday hikers take off from Springer in hopes of making it all the way to Maine. It's painful. It's unrealistically painful. It's so painful that I can't stand it. It's so painful that I'm thinking of ways to hike on the AT down south this Spring: I need to hike.

I have not hiked since I finished last summer. It's been extremely painful.

You know the feeling I'm talking about. It's listening to your gut rumbling, urging you to hop on the next plane to Georgia and to leave all your worries behind simply to walk.

It's the feeling you get when your depressed, but it's not a bad depressed. It's the depression of knowing that this time last year you were laying on your sleeping pad in a shelter thinking about the journey ahead, still trying to adjust to this new found lifestyle.

It's the feeling that comes with knowing you'd rather be there and not here, knowing that instead of thinking about the homework you need to do this weekend you could be thinking about what you want for dinner.

Springer Fever has no known cure, except to hike as soon as humanly possible. It's gut wrenching beyond rational comprehension.

It's knowing there is a simple world out there, and for five months you immersed yourself in it. It's knowing that the trail does not care if your young or old, male or female, it will treat you all the same.

All I had to do was walk, I worried about nothing else. You know life is good when the toughest decision of the day is whether to eat oatmeal or a cereal bar for breakfast. You know your living a great life when you don't think about anything in the real world, that the trail is all your focused on.

All I had to do was walk.

Ga>ME 2008.