It’s beginning to sink in amongst our friends that we really are about to disappear into the middle of nowhere for several months.  Their reactions are always interesting, but not very varied.  It’s either, “Wow, awesome, I would SO like to do that (hike the CDT)!” or  “No way would I ever do that”  or just “Why?”  They all say they will miss us.  And we will miss them, too.

But other than friends,  what do Fixit and I REALLY miss when we are on a thruhike?  Actually, not a whole lot.

We miss having convenient, easy-to-obtain WATER.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the PCT and CDT had a water faucet every few miles?  If you’ve done the PCT, you will remember the water faucet at Snow Canyon, after you just came down 5,000 waterless feet and countless miles of switchbacks in the heat.  Nice!   But that’s not how it is everywhere else.  Every night I spend time stretched out in my sleeping bag studying the “water situation” for the next day and making plans.  And then there is the fun of carrying heavy liters of water.  And the uneasiness of wondering, “Did the water I just drank have any creepy-crawlies in it?”  So one thing Fixit and I miss very much is water faucets, but we don’t miss them enough to make us give up thruhiking!

The other thing we miss is  TALKING about God with people.  There are few opportunities on the trail for going to church.  Bummer.  But we do have each other, and hey, we can talk to God Himself anytime, anyhow, anyway.

Maybe it’s way down on the scale of things I personally miss, but it is there– is my garden.  I pretty much grow all the veges and a lot of the fruit we eat, and I love flowers, too.  The wildflowers on the trail are wonderful and I enjoy them immensely, but I’m also a sucker for roses and garden flowers.  The first time we did the PCT in 2005, it had been a very wet winter, and the southern California wildflowers were amazing.  But when we finished up our first 100 miles and arrived in Warner Springs….there was a ROSE garden!!!  Poor Fixit had to wait patiently while I got my “rose fix”!

So that’s pretty much what we will miss–water faucets, God-talk and for me, gardens.  And our friends.