We had our wedding! John and I returned home from the trail on October 7th and had about 2.5 weeks to wrap up wedding plans. The day was chilly but warm by our Minnesota standards. Autumn managed to hang on for one grand finale weekend. Our guests came from near and far. We said our vows, exchanged rings, and then enjoyed the (seemingly way too short) night. It was a very special weekend, and we are still feeling grateful and loved by being in the presence of so many people. And yeah, it isn’t lost on me that I bought an expensive dress and wore it for a single day after wearing the same sweat-soaked clothes for five months straight.

We honeymooned. Yeah, I know – wasn’t the trail enough? Nope. This time, we went to the High Desert near Durango, CO, with views of three mountain ranges, and stayed in a massive house that not only had running water and electricity but also had . . . heated bathroom floors and a teacup bathtub and a steam shower. Yup, we lived it up. But please know that we haven’t forgotten what it feels like to wake up in a 29 square foot tent and hobble a quarter mile in the dark, in the cold, to the privy where you will sit among the spiders and dead flies and try to not shine your light down the privy hole. Yeah, those experiences are experiences of a lifetime.

Besides maximum relaxation at the house in Dolores, Colorado, we spent time outside at Pagosa Springs, Arches National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, and Canyons of the Ancients. I’m definitely getting why the CDT would be a great trail to do.

The most common question we get is: “what is it like to come back to our “normal” lives?” And my answer is that in some ways, it’s great. I like having running water and modern plumbing. I like having a door, floor, ceiling, and windows. I like being at home in our bed. I like eating fresh foods instead of tuna fish in a tortilla. I’m enjoying solving problems that aren’t just related to how far I have to walk that day (John and I estimate that hiking logistics took up about 50% of air time); the variety of my work mind landscape is enjoyable. My body is loving the respite from being on my feet all day, and I love the plethora of options (maybe I’ll run, maybe I’ll swim, maybe I’ll do Pilates or yoga – and for the first month, I’ll definitely just stay right here on the couch. Yeah, no need to move. At all.)

And then there’s the flip side of being home. The simplicity of our lives on the trail was a gift. Friends, we were bored sometimes on the trail, and that was a gift. The amount of waste in our consumer-driven economy really gets me down, I thought as I recently wheeled our quite large recycling and trash containers out and remembered the small ziplock bag that used to hold all of our trash. If my body had a gauge for the amount of natural sunlight I get in the course of my life, it’d show a steep decline since our return and steep incline in the amount of blue light from our computers. I spend the bulk of my time on Zoom calls or looking into this black hole that is my Apple-stamped portal to the interwebs. I realized that I have almost as much equipment for sitting at my workstation as I had to go hike and live outside for five months. John is commuting between St. Paul and Houston every week. In short, our lives at home are more complicated. Small talk on the trail was about the quality of the next water source, and so much else seemed to fall out of our lives. Coming back from the trail is about realizing the trade-offs we make and wondering which of those we are conscientiously making as opposed to silently acquiescing to because “that’s life.”

I came across a quote after the trail: “Expectations are the blueprint for disappointment.” On the trail, this meant that if I could detect an expectation, I might be aware that disappointment was possible. These expectations were often riddled with a hope — a hope closely intertwined with escaping my discomfort. Once we realized on the trail that our very discomfort was allowing us to do this beautiful thing, it became less about finishing and more about being: being outside, in the woods, with each other, and being so free because we’d chosen to have all of our possessions on our backs and go by foot for a long stretch across America.

It’s November. In Minnesota. Winter is long, and it’s cold. The days are short. And yet, this is where we are, and where we mostly choose to be. This is home, for now.