#109 Chestnut Knob Shelter to Laurel Creek - Day 48: ATMM 569.8 – ATMM 584.9

There is so much healing power in nature. Simply being in it can mend a broken spirit......

We have been hiking for a week. Other than a few moments here and there, my mind still hasn’t completely settled into the hike.

In 2012 my wife and I bought a house. A few months later we went to Florida for a week’s vacation. Between the two events I ramped up my business’s advertising to boost income to ease her financial concerns. I worked long hours for forty days straight to keep up with my workload.

For the first few days of that Florida I could not settle down because I was so accustomed to operating at a thousand miles an hour. It wasn’t until we spent a few hours at the Flora-Bama Roadhouse, which sits on the Florida/Alabama state line, where you can drink in Florida and walk across the building to pee in Alabama, where we hung out on the beach behind it, that I was finally able to relax my mind and just let anxiety go.

I can’t get in tune with the trail. I can’t settle down long enough find what it is I’m supposed to learn on this hike. I need to let everything go. I need a Flora-Bama moment on the trail.