Fifth Post

I'm leaving for a little while. My time has come. It's been an adventure, but there's more to come. A winding trail beckons all my attention, and my heart is yearning for a charge; a mission. I've been mostly happy, tears have their place; but now comes the time when I truly seek God's face. No phone to distract me, no Facebook, just nature. A bear to remind me of my wild Creator. Let's ride.

Anyways, I didn't intend to write that. But when I said there's more to come, and it rhymed with... my time has come. DANG IT! I didn't even notice that! I just thought, "hey cool, that rhymed as I read it in my head..."

Whatever, I took five minutes to write it, so it's staying.

We're leaving tomorrow morning at 7:00. Waking up at 5:30 to actually be awake when we drive and check over last minute things -- make sure we have all our food, clothes, and compasses. We also have knives. I'm actually taking my khukri knife that I got in Nepal, simply because I have never had any use for it, and now I want to kill a bear with it. It may not be extremely practical, but I feel really cool with it. It's about a foot long with the curved blade, and it has a cool black leather sheath that looks like it's handmade, because it was. I wear it on my belt -- on my left side, because I'm right handed. Sometimes when no one is watching, I'll take it out of its sheath real quick and hold it up above my head and then slash the air with it a couple times. I really want it to hit something though, because I'm never satisfied using more strength to stop the down stroke than to start it. Also, we each have a one gallon Ziploc bag full of trail mix. I love trail mix. We mixed tropical and indulgent. Tropical has lots of fruit in it, like apricots and papaya and pineapple. And indulgent has chocolate in it -- dark chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and surprisingly, I'm most excited about the peanut butter chips. I don't know why, but I want those peanut butter chips. I've been exercising great self control in not eating that trail mix. I took one small handful a few days ago, but that's it. We also have 30 Snicker's bars each. I can't wait for the Snicker's. We get to eat two a day; one in the morning, one in the afternoon for two weeks. For some reason I don't think I'll get sick of Snicker's, but we'll see. For dinner's we spent a lot of time dehydrating vegetables and beef. We have individual bagged meals that we have to soak for ten minutes, bring to a boil, and then let sit for another 10 minutes. We tested one out the other night. It had brown rice, mixed veggies, and beef, and it turned out perfect. I'm sure we'll take pictures of all our food while we're eating it. We're those kind of guys.
Enough about food and knives. We'll be on the Ozarks Highlands Trail, starting at Lake Fort Smith, Arkansas and ending at the Fairview trail head, one hundred and twenty five miles away, still in Arkansas. Matt and I know that it will be hard. We have probably overestimated our capabilities, and we'll probably whine and complain a lot about how sore our shoulders are. Our feet will never get sore though, we both have wool socks and lower end hiking boots. But we're prepared to be pathetically unprepared. Mentally, at least. It's a test of our abilities. A battle of wits, nature being our worthy opponent. Who will win?
Honestly, I think we will. We'll make it out alive. We will smell horrible, be exhausted, and probably curse the trail behind us, but accomplishment will cover all of these. It's a mini life until death, really. Though we labor and toil through life, come the end of it, our accomplishment will be immensely rewarding. I look forward to a taste of that -- I believe it will strengthen my resolve to finish. This life holds much more unfinished business.

So, if you think of us, pray for us. I'm not taking these two weeks for granted. They are an amazing opportunity for me to give my undivided attention to God and His voice, and I expect Him to speak to me clearly. I want to come out on the other side stronger in my faith, more confident in the goodness and mercy of Christ, and meekly nearer to His heart.

Expect an awesome post when I get back two weeks from now. Hopefully I'll have many stories of what happened in the physical, as well as what happened spiritually and emotionally. My friend and assistant manager, Christian, thinks that Matt and I could write a small book after these two weeks. Depending on what goes on, we may just do that.
Well, I'm off to eat and then sleep. Stay happy, read Matthew 29 if it exists, and thank God that pooping is enjoyable. Isn't it though? Don't lie, everyone likes it.