Trail names, Smokies & Love…

It’s official! Beautiful man & I now have our very own ‘trail names’!! Truth be told we avoided getting them for as long as humanly possible, but it’s inevitable. Something eventually sticks & all you can do is hope it’s not based on how bad your ‘pits & bits’ smell or your innate trail-crop-dusting capabilities… Hey, it happens!! I am ‘Samajawea’ based on my fab pace-making talents : ) & Corbob will forever be known as ‘Bodhi-Sax’- don’t ask. UPDATE: Corey’s sister, Traci (Pinky), met us in Franklin, NC & hiked the following week w/ us. The first day was a total monsoon down pour- because why wouldn’t the first day back on the trail after washing & drying everything in our pack be wet?!? Nevertheless, it felt nice to break up the monotony of our single file hikes by having fresh conversations w/ our AT newbie! I realized 2 things: 1) Beautiful man & his sister are basically the same human being & 2) I miss my sisters. After a few more days on the trail, we met the rest of the Breitmeyer clan (well, sort of) at a cabin in the Smokies. A few more things I learned: 1) Mama Breitmeyer is the best! Home cooked meals & words of kindness were exactly what we needed!! 2) Tuesday night Nintendo 64 tourneys will be reinstated as soon as we come home & 3) I miss my family. I miss being a floor, block, or even a 30 minute drive away (even though that’s still debatable Britni!) from them. I miss them for the moments I’ll be absent for. I miss the sassy exchanges, the daily updates on nothingness, impromptu dinner dates & family dinners where Ma will continue to cook for an army & we’ll always eat like we haven’t seen food in weeks. Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad right about now :). There are so many more facets & elements to happiness than I had ever imagined. In yoga we teach that it’s not just about perfecting the posture. In fact, the posture is almost always an afterthought when you take breath, concentration, dristi, & mental awareness into consideration. The posture no longer seems to matter much anymore. Finding happiness in my life post-trail & even during the trail may take just as much balance. So here’s to taking a leap of faith & finding balance in the most unlikely (& likely) of places. I’ll be honest, this week was tough. I’m finding that I’m never actually feeling 1 emotion while out on the trail. It’s almost always an accumulation of anything & everything I’ve ever felt, rolled into one confusing thought. After getting dropped off back on the trail, Corbob & I decided to end our trip after we finish the Smokies & spent the remainder of the week dreaming about the things we’d do once we arrived back in MI. The home we’d buy & fix up to make perfectly ours, the all-inclusive trip we’d take (because we certainly deserve to be pampered), being there for phew 2’s birth, squeezing ell-bear & ATB, beginning the search for jobs that we could happily transform into careers.. We’d convinced ourselves that trail life wasn’t for us & that what we wanted most was each other- which is actually partially true. I do want beautiful man forever, and maybe trail life isn’t for us.. But maybe it’s worth pushing forward & figuring out a few things about ourselves that we wouldn’t know otherwise. It took a few days & yet another emotional breakdown on my end (go figure!) to realize that we’re not quite ready to hang up our hiking boots. The Smokey Mountain National Park has certainly been physically challenging, but it’s beauty is incredible & the challenge is empowering. Maybe the trail isn’t what we expected & maybe we won’t ever get the opportunity to do the things we love most while trekking through.. But maybe once we accept that & realize that we have our entire lives to do the things we love, spend time w/ the people we love most, our trip will form into something much more beautiful then either one of us would have ever imagined. Unexpected, but beautiful. Maybe, instead of adapting the mountains to reflect what we want them to mean for us, WE need to adapt so that we can receive what it is the AT has to give. Maybe, just maybe, the mountains are bigger than us. PEACE&love