Put One Foot In Front of the Other

…..and soon you’ll be walking cross the floor, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.

John wasn’t much of a book reader. He never understood how I could finish several books a month.

But certain topics , usually marine related, grabbed his interest and led him to read about them. He devoured Philbrick’s book about whaling on Nantucket and Linda Greenlaw’s Maine lobstering books.

But once bitten by the hiking bug, he read “A Walk in the Woods” and began forming a dream of walking the Appalachian Trail. He and our daughter Meg were planning some practice overnight hikes for the summer of 2015.

But the universe had other plans which did not include any more hiking for John. In July 2015 the beast of GBM came like a thief in the night and stole his dreams, his health, his future, and his life.

We buried John on Columbus Day 2015. A week later I took a very long walk from our home in Scituate, through the harbor area where John’s mail route had been, and up a hill to his grave.

I was hoping to clear my head, just enough to try and make some sense of what the hell happened in 3 months.

The only message I got that day was I need to keep going. Put one foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

So I did. Walking through the gorgeous fall foliage, the scent of dying leaves, the descent of a New England winter, the changing of seasons, life and death played out in nature got me through those first dark months.

In April 2016 I found myself on the Appalachian Trail, joining a group doing 5 parts of it in 5 different states over a week. Carrying John’s Red Sox cap in my pack, every step was for him. He would walk the Appalachian Trail posthumously.

Eight years later now in 2023 my head is no clearer. It’s even more muddled. A thousand million questions and no satisfying answers run through it daily.

So I’m going to take a long walk and try to figure it out . No, let me restate that. I’m going to take a long walk and see what happens.

To be continued.