[pct-l] Wife Buy-In and Contracting Biz Prep For Thru Hike

[Timothy Nye]

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 5, 2012, at 12:47 PM, Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Jesse wrote:
>> 
> My long-winded-point IS, I did a "Google" search re: wife permission PCT,
> etc since there is some resistance and mostly incredulity from the spouse.
> (Not much in the way of search results came up) I announced the date to her
> last week, and while watching the Nat Geo PCT doc (little lame, I know) I
> told her only 300 hundred or so people tried it in a year. She asked "How
> many people are in the US?" and I responded, "I don't know, around 300
> million maybe." She said I should easily be able to figure out my odds for
> going by using the two figures...
>> 
> 
> This is a tough one.  Every person has to find their own guiding light here,
> so I won't presume to tell you what to do.  I'll just tell my own story and
> maybe you'll find it useful, or maybe not.
> 
> I first got bitten by the long-distance hiking bug about 12 years ago.  At
> the time I was right in the middle of starting a family.  Dumb timing - I
> started having kids a few years *before* I figured out I wanted to thru-hike
> the PCT.  However, there was never any doubt in my mind about which passion
> of mine was the more important.  As much as I love the PCT, my young family
> is far more important than any hiking adventure could ever be.  Speaking
> strictly for myself here, there's no way I could ever justify missing ~5
> months of my kid's lives for what is, in the end, a very selfish luxury.
> There's no way I could justify leaving my wife to parent them alone while I
> ran off to chase a dream.  I chose to marry my wife and to have children and
> I proudly stand by that choice.
> 
> For a little while I was despondent, thinking that meant I needed to totally
> give up this dream of mine for all time.  However, I realized two things.
> One, the PCT is not an all-or-nothing deal.  Section hiking is a perfectly
> viable way of participating in the trail community and feeding my soul while
> still giving my family the attention it deserves.  I've been doing annual
> section hikes for 11 years now.  I started by doing ~100 miles in 5-day
> trips close to home in Washington so there wasn't much travel time on either
> end.  As I've gotten more experienced and my kids have gotten older (so I
> feel I can be gone a little longer) I've bumped it up to ~150 miles in 7
> days with more travel time on either end (so I'm gone a total of 9 or 10
> days at a time).  This summer I past my personal halfway point so I've hiked
> more than half of the entire trail.  I also do a fair bit of trail
> maintenance and stay involved in the PCT community in other ways as well.
> No, I'm not a thru-hiker (yet), but I think I've extracted as much long-term
> enjoyment out of the PCT as anyone.
> 
> My second realization is that there are two major demographic groups of
> people on the PCT.  The first is the group of young unattached people who
> are thru-hiking before they settle down and get an typical "adult" life (or
> maybe in an effort to avoid that life).  The second major population is the
> group of folks in their 50's and 60's who have already delivered on their
> responsibilities and are now becoming free again.  There are people of all
> ages out there, of course, but I was struck by the number of "older" folks
> who thru-hike.  I realized it's not a now-or-never deal for me; I can raise
> my family and complete that responsibility, then go thru-hike afterwards.  I
> fully intend to do a complete one-season thru-hike someday after my kids are
> all out of the house.  My youngest is going to be 10 next month and I'm
> counting down the years, believe me.  :-)
> 
> So this is the compromise my wife and I have come to.  I promised not to go
> wandering off and abandon my responsibilities while my family needs me, and
> in return she lets me do a section hike every year and tolerates my general
> obsession with the PCT.  She also understands that I *will* do a thru-hike
> someday when my family responsibilities are reduced.  Five months of
> separation will still be tough for both of us but we have a long time to get
> used to the idea.  In the end I'll get the hike the PCT twice, once as a
> section hiker and once as a thru-hiker, which affords me two very different
> experiences of the trail.  How cool is that?  When I think of it that way I
> consider myself actually pretty lucky.  A lot of folks get a wild hair, go
> off and thru-hike the PCT in one blaze of glory, and never really return to
> long-distance hiking again.  Because my life situation has constrained my
> choices I've been forced to turn my interest into a life-long passion for
> the trail and for that I am very thankful.
> 
> Eric
> 
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