Backpackin'

So after being beaten up a bit by the South Carolina legislature Gov. Mark Sanford disappeared onto the Appalachian Trail for some hiking.

Such luxury! To just decide "That's it! I've had enough!" and step onto the trail, just go, right now.

If only...

We got back out to the Green Swamp West Tract and I got my fantasy; it rained.

So what.

I'm glad just to get out. But backpacking in Florida is not the paradise for me that backpacking in the mountains is. I seem drawn to the eastern, temperate zone forests, and always have been. I grew up on flat and sandy Long Island in New York State, flat and sandy just like Florida. Each has the kind of heat where you can smell the hot air coming off of pine needles. But even as a kid, I was drawn to mountains and cool, deep green. I managed to go to college in such an area, and felt so at home there I returned after graduate school, and I am often sorry I ever left.

No matter how many times I get out, and no matter for how long, each time I go out again it is like something brand new and exciting.

When she was 16, Mudpie was an exchange student in Chile, where she lived with a Chilean family for a year. For over 3 decades she has been a member of what she calls "my Chilean family" and she calls its members such things as "my sister" and "my mother." In the meantime, she has become an expert in Spanish and teaches it privately.

About three years ago we suddenly got back into camping - me returning to backpacking, Mudpie graduating from car camping. Two years ago we did a week on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, fell in love, determined to thru-hike it one day and section hike it each year during my two-week vacation. We did two-weeks last October. We planned our next AT section this September. I day dream about it every day.

Mother and father in Chile are getting very old. Mudpie despaired of seeing them again. A trip to Chile now - too expensive for us, too time consuming, impossible.

Then, a chance conversation leads to a new Spanish student for Mudpie. The new client asked for immersion education in Spanish, 20 hours a week for three months this summer capped off by three weeks at an immersion school in - of course - Chile, with the client footing the bill for Mudpie and I, and there's a school in the family's town.

In September. Using my vacation. Meaning no AT trip, not this year.

A choice?

I wonder if I can interest the client in a little backpacking in Chile.