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

[David Thibault]

Simlair story to Eric's.

I got the thru hike bug years before my first thru hike.  At the time my
youngest was 11.  My wife and I discussed it over and made the decision for
me to do the hike in 7 years - after my Daughter graduated High School.
Figuring that by that time she would be basically leaving home for collage
anyway.  It took me a bit to except this delay but life continued on and
the time passed too quickly as it was.

I actually picked a date 7 years ahead of when I went.  This date I had on
a countdown timer on my computer which would give me the exact time down to
the minute until I would be at the trailhead.  Seven years later I headed
out to Springer Mountain and was scheduled to start on that exact date that
I had picked 7 years earlier.   As luck would have it my flight into
Atlanta was canceled and I arrived a day later than planned.  Interestingly
when I went to hike the PCT a few years later I arranged to start on a
particular date and when I got to San Diego my ride asked if I could start
a day later.  I just smiled at the good luck.  My trail name: Day-Late.
I'm planning to do a thru hike again this coming year.

My wife really didn't sign up for the fact that I would become addicted to
thru hiking - so this is taking some time and adjustment on her part.
Unfortunately this is not an activity we could share for two reasons, one
is physical/medical, but the more important one is you have to really want
to do this and she just doesn't/wouldn't have the desire to.  So dragging
her along would not work for either of us.

No real answers here but if you have to wait, realize that the trail will
still be there for you when you can make it work.
Note to readers: Are you supporting the PCTA so that it will be there in
the future?  If not consider becoming a PCTA member.

Best of luck
Day-Late (AT '07, PCT '09)








> 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
>
>