Hello, and the first 3 weeks.

Four weeks ago one of my best friends from high school came to visit me in Tacoma, Wa.  We did what we always do.  The day he was flying back home he said, "let's go for a short hike."  We had less than 8 hours, so we did a quick google search and found Cougar Mountain in Bellevue and spent a few hours walking in the woods.

Exactly one week later, of one my best friends at work and I went on a day hike to Big Heart Lake.  I was gearing up for a 5 day 4 night backpacking trip that was to begin in a week, so I felt a big day would be good training.  It was somewhere on this 13.6 round trip hike that I first thought of trying to get out into the backcountry part of every weekend for a year.  I had been out last week, and although it was in Bellevue, we were hiking on trails in a wilderness area.  A week from this hike I would be beginning a backpacking trip in the Olympic National Forest, arriving at Deer Lake Sunday night.  My mind kept spinning on this idea of spending part of every weekend for a year hiking.

It's at this point those of you who don't know me need to know a little bit about myself.  I am a high school math teacher in Tacoma, Wa.  I moved here 5 years ago for my current job.  I have a tendency to make huge long term commitments, like this hiking one, and never follow through.  Mostly, it is for things I feel passionate about, but I always back off after a month or two.  As I was sharing my idea to do this hike, I could see a lot of my friends with that "oh, sure you will" look.  I am going to do this.  This is the biggest commitment of my life.  This commitment is going to either change me or show me how I have no integrity left. 

I will commit to being in the woods "hiking" part of every weekend for an entire year.  By hiking, I mean being in an area with trails and not sidewalks, an area with vegetation fighting for its life and not cared for by a gardner, an area where your survival is in your backpack and not your iPod, in other words, the backcountry.  I am going write blog post for each hike I will take for the next 49 weeks.  They will be fairly basic, but might develop more as I write more and if people read it at all.  I have a google map where I am adding all the locations with a photo of my trip when available.