One Year

I think I made a mistake a couple of days ago: I checked out Touching the Void from the library. It's a book about the first two guys to climb an incredible route on Siula Grande in the Andes. The author ends up breaking his leg, falling in a crevasse, and crawling something like 10 miles back to base camp hours before his partner (who had thought he was dead) was about to leave to head back to England. Great book.

Hours after finishing it, though, I went into work to try to get some hours and I find Conquering the Impossible in my mailbox. This book is about a guy who attempts to circumnavigate the Artic Circle via sailboat and skis. I'm only 70 pages into it, but it's great so far. As part of his training he tried to be the second person to make a solo trip to the North Pole, without any Arctic experience. Crazy guy.

These 2 books got me thinking about adventure and endurance. In thinking about the next year I still don't know what I want to do. The one thing I know is that I'm already tired of simply having a job and filling idle time between shifts. I'm done with that.

I was listening to the radio yesterday while driving to a local fire department to inquire about jobs. The DJ had asked the question "if you had a year to do whatever you wanted, what would you do." I realized that I have a year to do whatever I want, but I couldn't narrow things down to one activity. I know what I want to do on the long-term (physician, adventure, etc.). I got to thinking about the short-term, though -- thinking about impossible mountains and incredible expeditions. If I dream as big as possible where will I end up?

Two things come to mind. If I go off to medical school in the fall of 2010 I will lose all hope in doing 2 activities that I've always wanted to do: wildlands firefighting and the Appalachian Trail. Both take up months of time, which I may never have again to the extent that I have now. Both are pretty long shots at the moment, but they are at least worth looking into.

I think my next big adventure will be a little AT test run: the Michigan Shore-to-Shore trail. It runs from Empire on Lake Michigan to Oscoda on Lake Huron: 220 miles. It'll be a good little test for the 2200 mile AT.