In all the confusion of growing up, we forgot about the oldest way of learning.

The gift of wisdom, health, endurance, authenticity, and a kind of eternity, that is hard to deny.

And how much better it is than pretending to live, let us start with the single most profound thing.

No one has ever left the Application Trail, even if that was possible no one would ever want to.

Once you walk the trail, you are from the trial.

If you are to part ways, so as long as you walk the trail with them, your children will still be able to find you.

They may go see you in their middle age, or once they reach the winter of their life.

You will be in the leaves, in the sound the wind makes, in the smoky mountains and the Shenandoah Valley.

Is you SoBo, or throughout all the way up Mount Katahdin, they will catch you there.

Because no one has ever left the trail, because this is who we are.

And the trails are our most ancient tradition, that was the school we forgot, that we could go back to.

Aside from the trail ensuring your permanent presence, the trail has many other kinds of magic.

It can serve as a beginning, to becoming what you imagine is watching over you.

You cross the tree trails, The Application Trail, The Pacific Crest Trail, & The Continental Divide - The Triple Crown.

But the AT alone, be it through-hiked, or courageously and wholeheartedly section-hiked.

Is a crucible, a place where you find a new beginning, should you ever run into an end.

Any trail - long enough - is a Holy Place, because that is what you become, when you give yourself time to grow.

First day of spring, is when the community comes together, but your first time, must come when it comes.

You do not set a date, you set off away from dates.

If you think you are too old, than that is proof enough that you are sill a child.

If you think you are too young, then you must make room for practice.

I suggest you use your youth, so become a survivalist, a specialist.

But the time you can hike ultralight, snow or rain, you’ll be the right age to drag your parents alsong.

Parents, the child will choose when they are ready, you do not trick, coerce, bait, or order someone on the trail.

The trail is a holy place, only those who are ready may enter.

The trail give you time to grow, it gives you time to listen to narrated books.

And as you walk in company of greatness, you cannot help but to inherit their culture.

The Quest, The Heroes Journey, is our oldest tradition.

Without which, we forget, that we are meant to grow all the way up and become great beings.

A way to tell that you need the trail, and need it now, is thinking to yourself that you just don’t have time for growing up.