I posted my first trail package this morning. Using the “hold for pickup” service, you can post a package to a U.S. post office which will keep it for you until you get there. In this way, you can stage boxes of consumables to be picked up during your hike. It’s a bit of a balancing act. You have to allow for variations in your hiking schedule, delivery time, and even the hours the post office is open. You don’t want to show up at 10 am to a post office that doesn’t open until noon. Arriving late could mean that you have to spend the night close by and essentially waste a day hanging around when you should be moving.

Mama Bear will post the next three boxes when the dates get a little closer. She will add tortillas just before mailing – they are a great luxury on the trail. Knowing that she is back home, holding down the “fort” and thinking of me is a great comfort, a connection to the real world. I can imagine getting the boxes she sends, perhaps with a little note in them. My father taught me the greatest thing you can give to another person is to wait for them. My boxes will be waiting for me somewhere up ahead. Mama Bear will waiting for my return somewhere behind.

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz is often misquoted as saying, “No operational plan extends with high certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy force.” In fact, it was not von Clausewitz, but rather Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke who said that, even though it’s a fair restatement of the battle philosophy of von Clausewitz. What does this have to do with hiking?

I have a plan. The plan is to cover 271.4 miles in 29 days. But my return flight home actually leaves 33 days after I step off in Harpers Ferry, WV. Experience has taught me to plan for the unexpected. Delays, setbacks, distractions, coincidences, and opportunities will change the plan, almost certainly from the start. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got back a week later than planned, or didn’t finish at all. In any case, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not completely in control of this hike. The trail will teach me what I need to know, one way or the other.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Dealing with the unknown, i.e., being comfortable in an uncertain situation, is a trait known as “tolerance of ambiguity.” Project managers are good at assessing ambiguity, usually phrased as complexity and uncertainty. In fact, any project manager worth her salt knows that the first step to controlling uncertainty is to acknowledge it. Then a “band” of uncertainty is applied, usually with statistical tools. By defining the boundaries, PMs can gain some level of comfort.

It turns out that TOA is a key characteristic of many leaders. It is negatively correlated with neuroticism and positively correlated with openness to new ideas. As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve coached many managers to examine their level of comfort with ambiguity. When they reply that uncertainly makes them anxious (not usually in those words), I point out that ambiguity will exist regardless of their feelings. But if they want to feel better, be prepared.

As I finalize the items that I’m taking, as always, I’ve packed too much. I’ll pack my gear several times before Friday and begin to cut items that would be nice to have but I really don’t need. Once on the trail, as I make that first ascent, I’ll vow to cut another group of items that I really don’t need. After about a week, my body will have adjusted to the “net” weight of hiking – the balancing point when the weight of my wants are in equilibrium with my needs.

Isn’t life like that? Aren’t we always engaging in a balancing act – time, money, relationships, attention, work, love? The trail teaches us to be honest with what we really need to take along the way. Our bodies don’t want us to carry anything extra as we ascend that slope. In reality, our bodies need little on the trail other than warmth, water, and a little food (much less than we think we need). I find that as I get older, my list of things I “need” grows shorter. Practically, that means that much in my life is a luxury. Or perhaps I’ve just learned to view it as such.

What else to I need to cut? What else looks like a need, but is in reality a want?

As the time draws near for me to step-off, the reality of being gone for a month is beginning to sink in. Routine things like paying bills, adding chlorine to the septic tanks, bathing the dog, and checking the mail have to be addressed. Of course it helps to have a family that will take care of things while I’m gone. The minutiae of daily life reminds me of the story of Martha and Mary in the New Testament. You see, I’m more prone to be a Martha, distracted by the preparations of the day with my head turned down to the things of the world, rather than looking up to God, to the one thing that really matters. This is why I’m looking so much forward to this trip. I will have an extended period of time, really the longest in my life, to step out of the details of the world and concentrate on my mental, physical, and spiritual health without the worry of the day-to-day.

It also makes me consider time. The last 30 years of work haven’t seemed that long. I’ve gotten married, raised five kids, earned two advanced degrees, and held leadership positions with half a dozen organizations. I’ve accomplished everything I set out to do professionally . Yet, I don’t feel that old. For the first time since graduating from college, I won’t have a full-time “nine to five” job. My situation has changed. I’ll have more time to do other things. But my mind always seems to turn back to the trail.

When you’re out there, your mind, body, and soul reset. I always notice it after about a week when I start to get emotional. I’ve described it to my wife as “my heart learning to beat again.” Little things and memories feel much deeper. I think about people I love and those I’ve lost. I sense the world around me differently – the smell of the earth after a sudden shower, the warmth of a sunbeam on my arm stabbing through the dense canopy. It feels like my spirit is a bottle being uncorked.

Don’t get me wrong – hiking is hard. Hiking is “deprivation,” which is why new hikers almost always have one of two reactions to long-distance backpacking. Some “embrace the suck” and get what it’s all about. They’ll be back. Others, when you ask them about their experience reply, “It’s not what I expected.” Well, what did you expect? Here’s hiking in a nutshell: you wake up, walk, eat, walk some more, eat, sleep, wake up and walk some more – simplicity itself. But when you return to the real world, you see things differently, and long to get back to it.

Fifty days from now, I will be retired and on a plane heading to Washington, DC to start a month-long trek on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve been hiking the AT for about 15 years now and covered a respectable portion of it. But I’ve never been gone for a month, and never by myself. The question is, “why would a 57 year-old fat guy want to sign up for that kind of deprivation? I’ve been asking myself that same question since I decided to go. While the real reasons are still a bit murky, there are three explanations which I think cover most of the “why.”

The first reason is physical. My current job does not afford me much exercise during the week. I sit (or stand) at my desk most of the day. While working from home has helped a lot by allowing me to move about a little – doing a load of laundry, feeding the chickens, checking the mail, I still struggle to exercise. I usually walk 2.25 miles each morning with the dogs “guarding” me the whole way. This helps but it’s not enough.

Diet is an area I’ve struggled with for years. While I can attribute some of it to the Staton genes, most of it is a lack of discipline, I’m afraid. I learned long ago that the only way to lose weight is to execute a combination of exercise and diet and make it a matter of habit. I can do the first, but have trouble with the second. This hike is going to be physically challenging for me, and I don’t know if I can make it. But if I do, I know that I will be thinner, fitter, and feel better about myself. I’m hoping that this will start me off on the right foot as I enter retirement.

The second reason is emotional. Most folks wouldn’t suspect it of me, but I’m greatly affected by news, politics, conflicts, wars, the economy, basically what’s going on around me. Right now the world is crazy, and I’m letting it get to me. I know from previous long-hike experiences that unplugging from society for an extended time has tremendous positive effects on your mental and emotional state. You see the world with different eyes after being on the trail for a few weeks. I need to unplug and reset my brain. This will allow me to properly prioritize the things that really matter to me – my wife and family, my professional goals, my eccentric hobbies.

The third and perhaps most important reason is spiritual. I’m studying to be a Deacon in the Catholic Church. Right now, I’m called an “Inquirer” which means I’m a nobody. The Inquirer phase lasts 18 months and is designed to examine you in every aspect of your life to see if you can potentially be a Deacon. It’s also a time to discern if God is calling. I think he is, but I’m not sure. So this hike will give me ample opportunity to talk to God and figure out if he really wants me to be a Deacon.

When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he famously replied, “Because it’s there.” I think that’s the short answer to my question. It focuses attention on the external object such as the mountain or the trail. But I’ll bet that Mallory did it for personal reasons as well.