The beginning of it all

So, we've decided to hike the Te Araroa, a 3000km trail that stretches from Cape Reinga at the northern tip of New Zealand, to Bluff, at the southern tip.  How did we get here?  What made us decide to walk away from our lives and into the wilderness for six months?   Sleeping on the ground, getting eaten alive by bugs, carrying everything we need to survive on our backs, and going without showering for days at a time... we've done this for a couple of weeks at a time before, but five or six months?  What are we thinking?

I blame this specific idea on Mark, Liz's dad.  He got us a coffee table book on the Appalachian Trail for Christmas last year.  Looking through it was almost painful.  Seeing all the beautiful pictures, reading the descriptions of the trail... it brought back our time on the JMT and the Colorado Trail.  It made us stop and ask ourselves "why are we spending all of our time sitting behind a desk, when there are so many other amazing things to experience?"  And not in that idle, rhetorical, wistful way that people normally ask themselves questions like that, but in the way that happens when you reach a fork in your life, and you're faced with a decision that requires you to give up something no matter which direction you choose.

Fast forward five months to TA-day: after wistfully sighing through the Appalachian Trail book, we had discovered the TA while window shopping thru-hikes around the world.  From the minute we found out about the trail, we'd been debating whether or not we should really try to do it, and hadn't been able to come to an answer one way or another for months.  So we set a deadline.  A drop dead date.  We'd decide one way or another and stop hemming and hawing.

And when it came down to it, we could think of a million reasons to go - the adventure, the challenge, the life changing experience, the people we'd meet, the beautiful places we'd see - but couldn't think of one good reason not to.  We will miss our family and friends, we will miss the comforts of home, and it throws a wrinkle into our careers, but all of those things are temporary.  It's always easy to stick with what's comfortable, what you know.  But when we're 75, will we wish we had spent those 6 months working?  Probably not.

So we're going on the adventure of our lives!  Knowing us, there are countless spreadsheets and to-do lists between now and when we leave.  We'll have to rent out our condo, cancel everything we don't need while we're gone, get in shape, and tie off a thousand other loose ends.  But in a few months, at the end of October, we fly to Auckland whether we're ready or not!