Quit your dream’n fool….

“7:00am.  Why am I awake?  I’m on vacation and should be sleeping in!”  But wait.  Realizing where I was at that very moment got my heart beating.  The excitement flowed through my veins and now I really couldn’t sleep.  “Let’s rock and roll!” I thought to myself.  But of course that’s how most of my vacations are.  If there is fun to be had, I’m ready to go no matter how early it is.
But this vacation was different.  There was some added excitement here.  Of course, you wouldn’t think sleeping on a rock in the middle of an island littered channel would be exciting.  But I’d been dreaming of that rock for 11 years.  And now the cold hardness of the rock wasn’t imaginary, I could feel it right below me.  Sad, I know. 

The North Channel isn’t a mystical place that has been hidden from civilization.  It’s not a long and hard journey to get there.  Heck, we all know Canadians will pretty much take us and our money any day of the week.  And to be honest, it wasn’t a big to do trip.  We didn’t cover any record breaking miles or battle some relentless seas of death.  What made it big for me was that I had dreamt of coming to this place for 11 years.  And I finally made it.

So my question is: Why do we make realizing dreams so difficult?

My first thought is that complacency is so much easier.  To make a dream real requires effort and sometimes that’s more than what we want to put in.  Maybe we perceive the goal and what we’ll get out of it as not worth the work required to make it happen?  That’s fair.  We can be really lazy sometimes…. and I like lazy.
Other thoughts come almost daily from customers in the store.  When talking about giving backpacking a try (mind you they bring up the fact that they’ve always thought about it) I hear all sorts of stuff.  “I’m too old for that”, “I have kids now”, “Oh, I’m not capable of doing that”, ”Are you crazy? There’s animals that will rip your flesh off and eat your eyeballs for breakfast”.  Maybe not the last one.  But as a “take the easy way” society we tend to doubt ourselves.

My friend (we’ll call him Windigo), is currently working on completing all the sections of the North Country Trail through Michigan north of Grand Rapids.  In fact he’s out right now hiking south from Paradise in the UP.  He’s waited and planned to do this part finishing with the Labor Day bridge walk so he can actually “hike” every part.  Now that’s a cool goal!  Windigo could be sitting home drinking a beer right now pipe dreaming with friends.  But he’s making it happen.  This goal has given him a healthy focus point in order to get something out of life.
Believe it or not, we weren’t put here on earth to work for “the man” until we are old and then waste away in a rocking chair.  We have got to have some fun along the way!

Maybe theres underlying reasonable reasons to put these dreams off.  Money, experience, I wet my pants everytime I think about it.  We could go on and on.  I wonder if I was meant to kayak the North Channel with my wife rather than with a bunch of friends as another “tick” in our list of “places I’ve been” when I was young.  I’ll never know.  But what I do know is that I wouldn’t trade that experience with my wife for anything.
This leads me to something that will really blow your mind.  Maybe the North Channel wasn’t the point.  Maybe, just maybe, it was simply the medium in which my wife and I could make a lasting memory and really could have kayaked anywhere.  Of course, would the memories not have been as great if it wasn’t such an important destination to me?  Once again, we’ll never know.

Ever hear the phrase “It’s about the journey, not the destination?”  I really believe this holds true in just about everything we do.  Think about your favorite trips.  Do you remember the one minute that you stood looking out over a particular vista?  Or the planning, mishaps, arguements, laughs and fun experiences that lead you to that vista?
Think about your goals or dreams.  What’s holding you back?  When you think about the destination and what you’ll get out of it, does it not seem worth the effort?  Now think about getting to that destination with friends or family and the experiences that could come from it.  Does it seem worth it now?

Another friend has always wanted to through hike the Appalachian Trail.  He recently asked “what am I waiting for”?  Now he is putting a plan together to see what it will take to make it happen.  This is how we should go about handling our dreams.  Can they all come true?  No.  But this is how you tell what to hold onto and work towards or what can be a pipe dream.  Life will get in the way.  No doubt about it.  Just make sure that you aren’t short changing yourself and taking the easy way out.

Thinking about all of my trips and experiences while writing this, I know I don’t regret any of them.  Well the alternative was work, so of course I don’t regret them.  Where I went or what I saw was cool, but what I remember the most is the fun I had with whoever I went with.  But even more important than that is how these trips have shaped me as a person.  Everything we do, we take something from it and that changes us just ever so slightly.  It makes up who we are.  In fact I realize that these “experiences” have made me realize that life is all about experiences.  Now that makes my mind melt…..

So.  Instead of sitting home (easy), watching TV (easy) and sipping on a Milwaulke’s Best (not so easy – have you ever really tasted one?) figure out where you are going to take the kids backpacking.  Think about something you’ve wanted to do and keep putting off.  And how to make it happen.  That’s your first step down the harder trail that has spooky looking trees and knarly rocks.  Don’t worry though, the planning, the packing, the anticipation, it will all be worth it and really make the trip “a trip”.

Oh, and Windigo.  By the end of the month he’ll be completing the last bit with a hike from Iron Mountain to Marquette in the UP.  The funny thing about dreams are how they change.  He’s already talking about the North Country Trail through Wisconsin.

So what are you dreaming of doing???

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~ by apexoutdoorgear on September 4, 2010.