Leaving Home
By
Mary Lou Recor
Posted April 1st, 2003
Dreams are sometimes born in
the oddest places. Mine found
life in the parlors of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in West Chazy, New York in 1981. I was one of a handful of people, mostly family, who showed up to watch Sherry Christiansen’s slides from her Appalachian Trail through-hike. I didn’t own a pair of hiking boots or a backpack; I had never slept outdoors; I had never climbed anything steeper than the stairs to my bedroom. But her pictures of the “green tunnel” captivated me and I decided right there I would one day hike the Appalachian Trail’s 2,167 miles, from Georgia to Maine.
That fall, I bought my first pair of boots and climbed Ampersand Mountain in the Adirondacks. Two days later, when the pain in my calves and hamstrings subsided, I realized I was in love, an affair that has lasted more than 20 years. Almost every weekend, I am peak bagging or backpacking somewhere in the Northeast. Whatever other people do on weekends—buying groceries, scrubbing the bathroom, mowing the lawn, getting a tattoo—I do not do. So, last summer, when Chris Hanna asked if I wanted to hike the AT with him in 2003, I didn’t hesitate a minute. Yes, yes, yes. He didn’t need to sell me on the idea. I was ready.
Leaving home is not as simple as packing a bag, locking the door and calling a cab. I have a mortgage, a sofa and a job. The mortgage was easy. I straightened the magazines scattered around the living room, scoured the bathtub and called a realtor. She was confident she could furnish the perfect tenant to water my plants. Well, maybe not perfect, but good enough.
It’s harder to leave my furniture. Along with a few antiques and family heirlooms, I own this sofa that brings me no end of comfort. I don’t just sit on it, I sink into its softness and security. Unlike a cat or dog, I never have to feed it or walk it or let it out to do its business. Lest you scoff at my fondness for an inanimate object, imagine a stranger sleeping in your bed or driving your truck or paddling your kayak. But a couch is after all only a couch. Someday, after I die, my survivors will donate it to Goodwill and it will end up gracing someone’s front yard or on a Burlington street corner at the close of the spring semester.
The job was another story. It isn’t easy to leave after 21 years with the same organization; there’s the retirement, the security and, of course, HEALTH INSURANCE. Although I knew of no precedent for it, I requested a leave of absence. The answer: no. The reason: the agency couldn’t possibly function without me. I spent the next week concocting one ingenious plan after another. I could call in sick from the trail every day, find a psychiatrist to prescribe six months of R&R, screw up so badly they’d put me on administrative leave. Or I could quit.
As my indecision slid toward panic, I found out how many days I can function on only four hours of sleep per night before sinking into catatonia. The answer is number four, fondly remembered as the “President’s Weekend of the Living Dead.” By Tuesday morning, my stupor eased enough for me to make an appointment to go to Boston to plead my case. What did I have to lose? I drove four hours for a 20-minute meeting. “Let me think about it,” he said. For the next 10 days I felt like a defendant on trial for a murder I didn’t commit awaiting the jury’s verdict.
Then, there’s HEALTH INSURANCE. I have new sympathy for anyone who tries to buy an individual health insurance policy in Vermont. Like cable television, you have a choice of one provider and about five menu options. So much for market capitalism. For the amount of the monthly insurance premium, I could finance a Ford Expedition and pay for the gas. If I weren’t a proponent of national health care before, I am now.
And that’s just the big stuff. In addition, I had all these little details to take care of, like forwarding my mail, storing my car and canoe, buying and packaging rice and noodles for six months, scheduling mail drops along the trail, eating all the Ben & Jerry’s in my freezer, writing this essay, and convincing my family that sleeping on the ground and smelling like dirty socks is a good idea. Then too, there was that little matter of my leave request. Three weeks before I was to step aboard the Georgia-bound Amtrak, I received a hastily handwritten fax: my leave was approved. Hallelujah!
