As I reflect along this ride of post reckoning my mind has started highlighting old trail markers that were inserted in my life at appropriate times to keep me on a path that I hadn’t recognized I was even walking yet.

For any of you that pick these up (my blog entries) randomly, trail markers are my intuition nudges. Some nudge ever so slightly like a breeze while others push you up the mountain. Some hit you in the face like a low hanging branch.

My life is filled with them. Old trails I used to walk in the dark for miles at a time. I tripped over a lot of roots and rocks back then. Hit my head on some branches and slid down some deep embankments that would cause me to start all over again.

Sometimes when I felt lost I’d have to sit on a stump for a while to get my bearings.

Years at a time.

I’d reach the top or so I thought and look over the valley to see another peak on the horizon. A much taller one.

And the pack on my back. Man she was a heavy one. Filled with gear I thought I’d need to carry with me at all times.

Trauma

Anger

Bitterness

Past relationships

Grief

I walked with these items every where I went.

Life got a little easier once I changed my gear I carry to

Gratitude

Peace

Love

Balance

Reflection

They weigh nothing in fact they’re like solar energy for the sun to keep it motoring.

I’ve walked on some long treks. Always walking but not with my head down anymore. I scan the forests, read the stars. I keep the sun in front of me for direction.

West minded my friends.

Not in the literal sense although the west always calls.

All the times I got lost, when I would lose my trail markers there was always a dim light shining over the next mountain. The next sunrise. It always meant to me that I made it another day.

I had another chance.

I carry that light with me now. I no longer have to chase it or sigh when I see it’s still over the horizon.

I look back on that 50 plus year old trail and ask myself “how did you manage not to fall off the mountain?”

Every time I slipped something picked me back up.

Every time I got lost something lit a latern for me. Inside of me.

It wasn’t that simple though. Some trips I’d lay in the mud for a bit and wallow in my own pity. And then thunder would shake my bones and I’d jump up and start running back up the trail.

Sometimes I’d get cold. I’d shiver with eyes full of tears and then the sun would come through the clouds to warm me just when I was about to turn around and go home.

Trail markers

That damn keychain that found me in a parking lot in Cherrydale. “Get high on a Mountain”

I’m literally shaking my head with a big fat holy roller shit smirk. 32 years I’ve had that keychain. The more I carry it the more it has defined my journey.

It’s my talisman. Literally. Holy shit how I’ve always known this but for some reason it hit differently just now. I guess I needed to process it a little more. How do you not lose your damn keys after this long? I don’t think I’m capable of losing them anymore.

Coming across the book randomly “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer at a Barnes and Noble display.

Reading it and becoming obsessed with Chris McCandless’s freedom from structure and systems. The love for outdoors sparked like a cherry bomb when I read that book. I fantasized about tramping around the US. Exploring states I’d never seen, streams, rivers, monuments. And mountains

Before I read that book it took an act of god to get me to go hiking never mind camping. After I read it I started hanging out at Barnes and Noble, reading travel essays.

Financially it just wasn’t plausible I was waiting tables at Arizona steakhouse, making $50 on an average shift.

At the end of my shift I’d play those old poker machines in the mid 90s before the politicians with sticks in their asses pulled them out. I never put much money or thought into those machines. $5 max if I played at work. I put in $2 and won the machine jackpot. All 7s. Five of those bad boys won me $3192. I can still recall the amount. That’s about $7k now folks.

It took a total of about 6 rapid heartbeats for me to figure out what I would do with that little lotto win.

Bought all new camping gear. I had none, zero, zilch.

I opted to take a month of leave from work.

I had to. Absolutely HAD to

And I had an adventure of a lifetime.

It changed me. A had a taste of freedom that contained my soul. Returning back to my old life became a tether that stuck with me for years. Still does during some long weeks in the deli.

After that outdoors became a lifestyle for me. A part of my personality.

I had a pretty big hiccup with a few bad camping experiences (in my eyes). Our group got lost, ran out of water and the dynamics weren’t flexing correctly. It didn’t make me give up the outdoors for good but it put a big fat damper on my expectations of a good time so to speak.

All my trail markers were doing were teaching me about ebbs and flows. For each outstanding experience there may come a time for a not so good one. Hills go up and down.

I found my way again. It took ten years or so. The mountains were always calling. Running became an obsession for me in my early 30s. No provocation just like ol Forrest Gump I just started running. Hell we had the same haircut for a while. Don’t think that haircut was a part of it.

Running brought me back to the mountains.

When I opened Southern I began trail running at Paris Mountain. The busier Southern got the more miles I ran. My stress odometer matched my distances. Some days I’d run 15 miles around those trails and go back to work. Paris mountain became my temple. I’ve hiked, ran over a thousand miles up there.

I’ve been living on my own for 35 years. I’ve moved about 2 dozen times all over Greenville but for some reason I always end up no further than 4 miles away from that mountain.

More trail markers? Man I’ve come real close to fucking up my life in irreversible ways and there’s always been an a rock to deflect that asteroid from reaching dirt.

Random texts in places where texts shouldn’t land.

Potholes keeping me from hitting a truck head on.

Relationships that shit the bed just at the right time. Once I solved that riddle my old relationship trauma deflated like a balloon.

I had to go through my parent’s divorce to know and understand how to strengthen my marriage.

I had to lose my father early to know how to raise my child the right way. I treat my daughter the same exact way my father treated me. I only had 14 years. So I love her everyday like there’s no tomorrow.

My relationship with my stepfather was built after my father’s death. I knew I still needed a father figure to help guide me. He was the best man at my wedding after years of bickering.

I became closer to my mother from living out in rural Piedmont away from old friends and most of my siblings had moved away. That relationship built me. My mother read westerns. Louis L’amour, Larry McMurtry. I’d read them right after she finished. Those old Time Life books about westerns in their pleather binding? I read them over a hundred times.

Mom made me fall in love with the old West. The place that calls to me all the time to this day.

She let me spend my summers in an old camper we kept in the backyard. We had an 100 foot extension cord we’d plug into the side of the house for juice. I spent my summers in solitude in that camper, reading books, creating my own little fantasy world. My mom would unplug the cord to wake me up for breakfast.

There isn’t a night while I’m camping that I don’t think about it.

Echoes= more trail markers

My rise and fall in the restaurant business. Man the bitterness that came with it.

All it supposed to be for me was a lesson in humility and transition. It saved my family.

It saved my life.

It also put my ass in the back of my truck to watch hundreds of sunrises and sets on ridges of Linville. Slowly healing me.

Solitude. Solitude I didn’t know I needed.

Slowly finding my real soul.

I would’ve never stopped drinking if I still owned a bar.

That was a tough fucking lesson for me but when I saw the trail marker peace rang in my ears like a bell. Struggle is a trail marker. It builds up your stamina for those climbs. Man does it ever.

Sobriety is the Golden Gate of all bridges. The trail marker that’s lit them all up like a strand of lights.

String theory is a thing for me. It’s taken me years to align with this.

I’ve mentioned the IG stories that created Chadcuterie.

There’s hundreds of them.

The more trail markers I observe, I pass, my pack gets lighter as it fills up with life’s essentials.

You read that right. The more love I carry the lighter it gets.

“Loves the only thing that only that ever saved my life” 🎶

Literally all you need my friends.

That’s a free trail marker from me to you.

Life’s beautiful yall.