While out hiking there is only one thing you have to do. Walk. Ok, so you set up camp, eat and use the privy, but your only goal for the day is to walk to your intended destination. It’s easy and your mind is in general ease. There isn’t a bunch of clutter in your brain, or maybe there is, but it isn’t pressing and can’t bother you too much.

And then somehow you come back into the real world and you are bombarded with so many options. You can do this or that or both and then throw in something else and it is easy to get overwhelmed. I don’t even have a job or a ‘life’ yet and I’m already overwhelmed by living ahead of myself. Somehow I’ve already put myself months from now, not even a week, and have saddled myself with bags too heavy to carry.

Yesterday we drove over 600 miles for a job interview. On the way down and on the way back I thought about our goals, mine and ours as couple, and realized that I really have to stop jumping into the future. Stop worrying about how I’m going to handle everything I want to do and get it all done. Because, it won’t all get done.

Some of my ideas of living in the now are going to be turning off the electronics. Yes, Chris is going to be thinking that I am not going to be able to do this, but I will. We already don’t watch much television and I prefer to watch movies while crocheting or working on photos, but in general we aren’t mindlessly watching it. The internet however has to be limited on the days and nights that I want to accomplish something. I know I’m not the only one out there who aimlessly surfs, looking at creative sites or reading Facebook updates. I’ve already started downscaling my blog reader. Gone are the blogs that have somehow become too commercial or too focused on an aspect of creativity that I’m not into anymore. Really, don’t need to read about a zillion giveaways; that’s one of the most disappointing aspects of a few very talented blogs.

I’m going to focus on finishing one or two projects before thinking further about other ideas. I can queue a bazillion projects on Ravelry but I know I will only make a few. I am going to develop my own style further in photography. Find that niche that I love and get really good at it. I am going to hone my pencil and pastel skills and ditch the other mediums unless I feel a play day coming on. And scrapbooking—I am thinking of selling or donating most of my stash! Hello easy photo books!

And so now I am thinking about “Now”. I can’t place myself in an imaginary place that doesn’t exist yet or a job that I don’t have. Why not take action and get focused on what I can do now? I went back to the four goals and putting them in now. Tomorrow and next year I will look back and wonder why I didn’t do anything.

Slightly related, instead of saying ‘oh next time’ I decided to jump in and buy some organic and cruelty free makeup. I already bought Alba and Avalon face lotion because I found it at Bed Bath and Beyond and with their coupons it made it a bit cheaper, but I wasn’t sure what kind of makeup to get. I did find Physicians Formula organic makeup and I think I am going to go with that for now. I was about to buy another brand but saw it was made in China and decided to pass on that. Time to be responsible and take action for what I actually believe in.

On the agenda in the next few days: work on the rest of the Trail Tales stories, get ready for camping over Labor Day and for our road trip and send out more resumes!

Here’s to NOW!

On Monday we went to the Dallas Arboretum with Chris’ dad. I had never been so it was a nice experience. After being so used to Fairchild Gardens in Miami, it’s hard to get used to non-tropical plants. There are some nice tropicals such as this Pride of Barbados, but a lot of them are temperates. They also have a great test garden where they do try some of those tropicals like mandavilla and tropical hibiscus.

It was blazing hot and though we didn’t walk fast or far, we were sticking to our clothes pretty quickly. It was 107* for a high here on Monday. Yesterday it was about 12* cooler and though that was in the 90′s it was amazingly cooler. Today I think it is even cooler than that, but I haven’t set foot outside yet! I’ve been working on photos, playing with Zoe and I even took a phone call for a potential job interview! *insert nerves here*

I’ve been trying to read several trail journals of folks that we met along the way that are still out hiking. Sometimes I get a bit sad not being out there so it is fun to see where everyone else is and remember all of the places we were. I am still working on the first Trail Tales story…yes, I am slow. It’s amazing how much attention a 2 year old needs!

I did find a few things that were interesting on some trail journals. One is from a hiker we knew, Tin Tin. His post is here about life not being a white blazed trail. Good stuff. Also, Li’l Buddha’s post about the odd lifestyle of thru-hikers. He started in Key West back in January and he is walking the Eastern Continental Trail, a mish-mash of trails that sorta connect to each other and he is now in Canada on the International Appalachian Trail. He was already booking miles by the time we started so we were quite behind him. Reading his entries on the IAT has been very interesting!

Chris bought a lens mount for the reverse macro stuff I do so I will be able to do it a lot better. Right now I am just holding the lens to the camera and it can be very difficult. I have to hold my breath half the time in order to keep it in focus. I could use a tripod but I’m too lazy. I plan on taking a lot of these types of photos on our camping trip.

Happy Wednesday!

Today is list day.

5 Things I Love

5 Annoyances

5 Things I’m Looking Forward To

And just because I miss the beach. A little photo from Sarasota in 2008.

So, it’s been two days since we went up Katahdin and ended the hike. Yesterday felt pretty ok, like a zero day, just relaxing in town. Today, well, it was back to the real world in a way. We’re still on a vacation of sorts, but we went into the biggest town we’d been in since our short trip back to DFW in May and it was a bit overwhelming. So much stuff….everywhere! Our goal of the morning was to hit up a Goodwill after going to Best Buy to get a new GPS since we think ours was stolen from my mom’s luggage in the airport.

Goodwill was nice and we scored lots of clothes for a cheap price. In Millinocket we hit up a small thrift shop that had much more women’s clothes and I was able to get myself clothed like a normal person, but Chris only bought a shirt. Apparently mens jeans are hard to find. We ended up in a few different thrift stores throughout the day and it left me with the desire to attempt to try to buy from thrift stores in the future. Being on the trail you are constantly wearing the same outfits and being thrifty with everything you use. Not only is buying from a thrift store more environmentally friendly, it’s easy on the wallet too. Being jobless and all.

Eventually we made it to Bar Harbor to walk around. At first we thought the downtown area was pretty small, a typical tourist town, but we walked up a few blocks and discovered it was much larger than we first thought and I couldn’t believe how many shops there were. We didn’t cover everything, or even half of it, but it was overwhelming to see so much “Stuff”. There were some great shops with art, a nice whale museum and some nicer tourist places, but it also had the same old junk you find at any tourist town.

We went to Acadia National Park for sunset, driving to the top of Cadillac Mountain. We made out Katahdin in the far off distance. Not sure what we are up to tomorrow. We may head back into the mountains; there are 17 people supposedly summiting tomorrow including several people we know. I’d like to try to intercept them in Millinocket if possible to see them one last time. I think we’ve got a whale/puffin tour on the agenda for Sunday! WOO!

As for the four goals thing, I read on a few blogs (talk about being overwhelmed….I’ll be deleting a lot of blogs I read on my Reader….too many and so much to compare my tiny little blog to) about four end of the year goals. Since I just finished one gigantic goal I am going to leave out the obvious goal of finding a job and focus on some smaller goals.

I hope I can manage that.

As we wind down our first week here in Texas, time is inching closer to when we leave for Georgia for the Trail. We’ve tentatively set the date for starting for the weekend of the 13th of March. With all of the snow that has fallen this month and in January, it appears the trail conditions are fairly bad, especially in the higher elevations of North Carolina and up the trail.

We experienced the blow-downs here and there are a lot of them on the AT in GA and NC right now, though local trail associations are clearing them out as they can.

I think we’ve convinced my uncle and my dad to drive us out there to start. We’ll be paying for gas, of course, but it seemed to be the most feasible way to do things. We’d originally thought to fly out and then find a ride from the Atlanta airport to Amicalola Falls State Park, but the ease of being driven to the approach trail at the park sounds much better.

I also like the idea of having my dad out there to see us off. He can take photos and assure my mom we’re going to be alright.

After doing some hiking around here the past few days I already know that the hike up the approach trail is going to kick our butts. We are going to be craving some straight sections and downhills after awhile, but eventually our quads, calves and shins will get used to the abuse and carry us through.

So far we’ve either had people think we’re insane or they’ve been a bit jealous that we’re going. Sometimes I think we’re insane, but mostly I’m looking forward to being out in the woods. After downgrading everything we have in our life I’m finding some of the consumerism around here overwhelming. And I want to go in every store and buy something. HA! It’s a strange combination, feeling like there is just too much ‘stuff’ but then also craving to buy something. I could have bought out REI, or at least the womens clothing section. I think most of it is a novelty of seeing all of these places I haven’t seen in so long as Florida doesn’t have the urban sprawl that Texas has. Don’t get me wrong, Florida has sprawl, but it also has a limited amount of space to build. There is just store after store here and oh, Mexican food on every corner.

As for seeing Mexican on every corner, it is kinda nice to see things written in Spanish, too. I had gotten used to seeing Pollo Tropical restaurants and then billboards written in Spanish and Spanish on just about everything in Miami, but Spanish is finally becoming more prevalent in North Texas, too. I kinda miss the cultural diversity. It is much more separate here, particular parts of town and not everyone mixed into one big lump of a county.

I was on Whiteblaze.net earlier and found a cool site called Trail Phone where people call in and give trail reports. It is really awesome! I don’t know if we’ll use it or not, but I like the idea of calling in and giving a minute report on what’s going on.

I guess I’m about done with my rambling for today. We’re spending all day tomorrow doing our mail drop planning since we’ll have some quiet time. We may end up buying food for the drops as well if we have the time. It’s supposed to snow or ice on Tuesday or Wednesday and we’d planned to go to East Texas to visit my friend Michelle so hopefully we don’t get snowed out.

Where is the 70*?

Alright, I’m finally getting around to the couple of questions that were asked a few posts ago. I know the videos probably cover a lot of the answers, but I will take a few minutes to answer the questions now that we are semi-settled in again.

Chris Hind asked: I’d like to know what backpacks and tents you guys will be using.

We are using Osprey Atmos 65 packs. Mine is the small version, Chris is using a large. I got my backpack from my dad who got it off of Steep and Cheap and it wasn’t what he was thinking it would be so he gave it to me. Chris ended up liking it and bought the same one in large.

Our tens is a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL 2, a two person tent. It sets up super quick, probably 5 minutes or less and we’ve set it up in the rain before as well. It is a snug fit, but we bought it because we wanted two access points and room to store both of our packs under the tent at night. Don’t worry, the food and smellables will be going in a bear bag up in a tree.

Patrice asked: How many food drops are you planning?

When you blog from the trail, how do you plan to do it? Blackberry/IPhone? Or just relying on town computers?

Food drops…we haven’t gotten that far yet. We’re planning on working that out this weekend. We will probably do what the average person starting out does…more than they need. We got a lot of Christmas money that went towards buying dehydrated food so now we need to use it all. We will definitely be buying food in towns as well.

For photos we are using a Pentax Optio W80, which is waterproof. We’ve used it underwater in Florida several times and it works great. Of course we’d love to take our dSLRs but I don’t think those are trail safe, not to mention they are heavy! We’ll probably GPS some locations for future excursions and head back to take photos. I know there will be cool lady slipper orchids along the way. The camera also does video so we will be doing some clips here as well. As for batteries with the camera, we’re going to charge them all up at the beginning and leave the charger at home and as we go through batteries send them home to be charged and put in mail drops up the trail.

Blogging…we’re going strictly with computers in libraries, hostels, hotels etc. We wanted to reduce our bills and we don’t even own a Blackberry or iphone so we’ll stick with an old-fashioned cell phone that calls people. We are taking a journal and pen and I will try to write a lot at night or mornings and I think I will probably translate out some of those into blog posts when I get into towns. I could easily do several posts and schedule them on WordPress here.

So, are there any more questions? Come on, I know there are! Ask away!

We’re over in Dallas for a few days hanging out with Chris’ family. We did two small hikes the other day, one at Lake Grapevine which ended when we found a creek crossing that was swollen with water from the recent snows, and then another hike at the Ft. Worth Nature Center yesterday. A lot of trees have been broken from the snow and were blocking our path access on the trail. We met up with a guy on the trail who was a nature photographer and he gave us some tips on where to go take photos of birds around the Ft. Worth area. His website here.

More adventure talk later.

We finally made it to DFW today around 5pm. The perfect time for traffic. We had smooth sailing the entire trip until we hit Dallas rush hour and then a few key places near my parents house in Tarrant county.

I have to be honest, it was hard to leave Florida. When we passed Pensacola and into Alabama I felt very sad. Through Alabama and Mississippi, where we stayed last night, I felt lost. It subsided a little once we entered the western part of Louisiana and then, finally, east Texas. But, it feels weird being back home.

It’s home, but not home. A limbo state. And there is snow on the ground and it’s cold. In Ft. Lauderdale it will probably be 70 or so. Bummer.

The cats survived the car ride and we ended up not letting them out until we got to the hotel and then to my parents house. The hotel was ok for them but the house here is not good for them. My parents have two Boston terriers that just want to play and chase and the cats are not into that. I think they will come around with the other cats, but they are scared of the dogs. Which is a little odd because they lived with a big pit bull for a year and a half, but Baloo didn’t chase them.

Hopefully in a few days they will calm down and be normal again and the dogs will get some discipline and learn not to mess with the cats.

Tomorrow we have to take care of chores: insurance, phone, a trip to REI and some plants we brought with us that have to go into my brother’s greenhouse.

Did I forget to mention that it is cold? I don’t have much winter clothes.

I have gotten to see Zoe, but she doesn’t like me too much. She doesn’t remember me and all she wants is Mimi, my mom. It’s Mimi, Mimi, Mimi all around here. With a smidge of Paw Paw. (Or Pa Pa?) Oh, boy, what a handful she is! Tomorrow we’ll get to see Ashleigh.

More tomorrow. I need to take some photos. Chris saw some roadrunners today. I missed them.

This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields.

I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost for a century when another population was found elsewhere in the Strand. Chris and a group went down to this population about three years ago and let me tell you—it is in the boonies. The tram we took used to be clear-ish apparently, but not this time around. We waded through ferns up to our shoulders and ducked under, over and around Brazilian pepper bushes. Two + miles of that. And the water was still fairly high out there for this time of year, not to mention cold!

These are the little plants. They grow on floating logs in the water or in cypress knees in some areas.

This is my favorite shot. I used the reverse lens technique on my 18-55mm lens.

The flowers are very tiny; the whole plant is not but a few inches tall. They are very non-descript if you walked by them in their non-blooming state.

We didn’t see any animals other than a cottonmouth that swam in this area that Chris is at in the photo. It came out of nowhere, but I heard it splash and saw it go over the log and off into the woods. Very creepy! Oh, and a smaller cottonmouth, very tiny baby that wasn’t going to move because it was too cold. But other than that, only bear scat and nothing else!

Brazilian pepper is one of the worst plants in the world. Ok, in Florida. I’m sure in Brazil it is lauded as beautiful and awesome. But, not here. However, I was eyeing a seed pod on a strap leaf fern and thought that it looked pretty cool.

And so I thought this might be the only nice way I would enjoy a Brazilian pepper.

When we left we caught Mike Owen and Karen Relish and a few other Fakahatchee explorers in the park office. It was good to chat with them since it would be the last time to see them in awhile. There was another person there who took a group photo of us but I don’t remember his name, but I do know his friend read my blog at one point. If you are reading this—send me an email! I’d love to have a copy of that photo!

So, goodbye Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I’ll miss you…but not your mosquitoes.

It was bittersweet taking our last ghost orchid trip to Little Slough. When Chris found our slough in 2007 (you’ll have to scroll down to May because I didn’t link titles back then) we’d been searching for ghost orchids for several years. We’d tromped all around Fakahatchee Strand looking for various plants and just exploring, not really knowing any different orchids.

When we found this orchid, Campylocentrum pachyrrhizum after a geocaching camping event, we were super excited because we thought it was a ghost orchid. Only, it wasn’t. Close—but no cigar. Sadly, this orchid isn’t even there anymore, it was taken by someone right off the tree. Bummer.

We looked for years and then we ended up knowing someone who’d been to a place and he tried to give us a description of where it was and finally Chris went out there in late April 2007 to try to find it. I stayed home because I had a cold, but when he called me to say he’d found what he thought was several hundred ghost orchid, I was excited! Later, when we got the coordinates from our friend for the original area, we discovered that we’d found a completely new and undiscovered batch of ghost orchids.

We spent that summer documenting the orchids and ended up counting 607 individuals. More or less. Now, probably less, as several have died. We would be tying ribbon on the trees and we’d see, one, two, three–no, wait, seven or eight on a tree. It was insane. That was a pretty awesome and interesting summer.

The next summer we spent several nights out video taping to see if we could get the pollinator of the ghost orchid on video. We ended up being successful. It was pretty insane sitting in the dark with the bugs and having a huge moth buzz your ear. And then we got it on tape—even more awesome!

So, on our trip out last Sunday we were a bit worried for our babies. The freezes we had a few weeks ago were severe enough to knock back mangroves down in the Naples area. It was really bad in the central part of the state. Luckily, they survived for the most part.

Two old spikes from last year.

I will miss visiting them.

A new spike is already forming on this ghost—to the left.

This is one that is on the way out.

We’ve entrusted the slough to our friends Kathy and Randy and a very small handful of others who know the location.

Goodbye Little Slough! We’ll be coming to visit in a few years.

Mostly because I’m obsessed with this song at the moment. M. Ward—To Go Home. Realized I loved it via my friend Sara and her wonderful playlist on her blog.