It’s been an exhausting and enjoyable time away from the trail. I’ve been in a taxi, a commuter rail train, the subway, a car, and a plane in the past 5 days. I’ve seen people I Iove and miss (though definitely not all of them, and I’m sorry for having to truncate that list pretty severely). I also had the wind knocked out of me repeatedly by the reality of everything that happened before I left for the trail. I couldn’t escape all the reminders of loss and change. Riding down Atlantic avenue past the storage building housing all of my possessions not in my backpack. Walking into the grocery store around the corner from my old apartment and seeing all the same people. Putting the keys into the door of my old building and hearing Elroy, a friend’s dog in the first floor apartment, bark his fool head off. Passing the mailboxes in the lobby and feeling my hands reach for the mail key that no longer lives on my key chain. I actually don’t even have a key chain; my former partner left keys for me to borrow. I stayed at my old apartment with her and all of our animals yesterday. I spent the afternoon going through my chores (spraying clothes with permethrin, changing out crusty ziplock bags, packing my constantly overfilled food bag) and periodically crying my face off. A couple of friends came over and got swept into the sad vortex. We also laughed and had good ice cream, but there was a heavy underpinning to our time together. It’s so hard to go away again yet I have no desire to quit even as I’m faced with starting on yet another soggy day. It will be a day or so before my next post so I can get farther up the trail before I start posting mileage/locations. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the break in loose chronological order: