Appalachian Trail

On Friday I’m leaving New Hampshire for a few months to embark on a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

I know I’m in the right crowd when almost no one, when they heard this news, asked me why. Most everyone already understood.

But some people will not get this at first. This is an expedition that few people attempt, and only a small percentage of those few complete. That, to me, is part of the appeal: At the end, I will have proven myself a rare individual, one in a million who can see an extremely difficult task to completion. Even so, I have nothing to prove to anyone else; I am who and what I am. (Today, anyway.) It is to myself that I must prove something.

I have wanted to do this for many years, and in fact I would have done it in 2007 had not the Ron Paul campaign intervened. So instead I moved to New Hampshire and did what I could to advance the cause of freedom here and to contribute to the campaign. Now that the campaign has moved on from here, it is time for me to do what I must.

Yet I feel compelled to answer the unasked question: Why?

Take a look around you. Take a long hard honest look at yourself. Most people can hardly be said to be living life. They spend their days at a job they hate and their nights parked on their couches in front of the idiot box watching exciting fictional people lead exciting fictional lives. Their own lives contain no excitement, no adventure, no fulfillment. It’s only by living vicariously through the people inside the television — most of whose stories aren’t even real — that most people manage to get through a week without realizing the pointlessness of their lives and killing themselves.

Most people, by this measure, barely exist, and do not live their lives to the fullest. And while they could lead full lives, they choose not to, not merely because they are afraid to do so, but even if they wanted to, they don’t even know how to begin. This is the sad state of the world today. People are addicted to TV not because the medium is inherently addictive, but because they have never learned how to live.

So it is that, when the word got out about my upcoming high adventure, that I expected to be asked why. Yet most did not ask and did not need to ask. I have found, among this crowd of freedom lovers, people who already live life to the fullest and understand instinctively the need to accomplish something great.

But one person asked why. Some of you reading this may also ask why. Here is your answer:

Most people live empty, pointless lives of, as Pink Floyd put it, quiet desperation. The television, showing its fake stories of fake people, gives them something to live for. Most people will accomplish nothing noteworthy with their lives. I refuse. I have spent my time in quiet desperation and I refuse it. I will have no more. I will accomplish something with my short life.

To be fair to myself, I have done much so far. I have started a web site to expose the reality of the system under which we all suffer. I have moved myself to New Hampshire to fight for our freedom. I have helped to bring people together and to unite them despite their differences. Yet this is not enough, for I have done none of this for myself.

I have spent much time alive, but for too little of it can I say I truly lived life to its fullest. I have hurt people and I have been hurt. I have put my all into my work and burned myself out. I have shown so many people their own paths to happiness, and have not found my own path. And never have I been truly at peace with myself. This expedition, this thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, I do for myself. I expect that the person who returns will not be the person who leaves.

Why? Because I must. I have nothing to prove to anyone — except myself. I must know myself, accept who I am, and change what I can. I must do what most could not even dream of doing themselves. Most importantly, I must be a better person than I am today. I do not expect you to understand how walking up and down 2,100 miles of mountains for six months will do this. I only invite you to observe the result.

Along the way, roughly every week or so, I will post journals, photos and possibly video, at this site, to keep all of you up to date on my progress. Stay tuned. My next posting will be sometime this weekend from somewhere in Georgia.