2023 Foreword, Prologue, Whatever You Want to Call It.
As I write this, it is exactly 01:00 on Thursday, 23 February, 2023. I am four days from the start of my second through hike attempt of the Appalachian Trail. If you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing on this day, I would not have said "preparing for another through hike attempt. " I had a plan in 2022 regarding through hiking the Appalachian Trail. I was going to start on 1 March at Amicalola Falls, hike to Maine and finish in early August. I was then planning to come home and officially begin my retirement. I had, and still have, lots of projects to finish. That was my plan, hike for five months and then tinker with junk. There is an old Yiddish proverb that says, "We plan, God laughs". I started the 2022 through hike attempt on 1 March and that is all that went according to my plan. In actuality I hiked for a little over a month, came home for two weeks, went back to the trail for three days and came home for good on April 22 with an injury. I came ho...