Plant the seed.

I told my kids I wasn’t coming back next year. I told them last week after state tests, and I made my decision really then, as the words were coming out, to tell them about my thru-hiking plans as well.

A week before I had wondered aloud to Ryan whether to mention the AT. “They’ll think I’m nuts – they already do – but this, is crazy.”

And Ryan had replied, “Plant the seed, Lily.”

So his words Plant the seed were going through my head at school a week later, and I did. And of course, my kids thought I was crazy. I showed them a map of the AT and some pictures of me hiking in the Whites. I described to them how I’d carry everything in my pack and how I’d resupply in town. I admitted it was twenty-one hundred miles and it would take me five to six months, and who knows if I’ll actually make it.

“Let me get this straight, Ms. Chang: You’re going to hike all the way from Maine to Georgia. WHY???” Noone could fathom why I’d do this.

“Are you going to shower?”

I shrugged. “That’s what streams are for.”

“Eww, Ms. Chang!”

“What?”

And someone else adds, “You’ll definitely have hairy armpits.” (She already knew I didn’t shave my legs, amazing thought.)

“No she’s going to come back with a beard!” Which got peels of laughter from everyone, including myself.

“Are your guy friends going with you?”

“Yeah, mister yellow truck!”

“No….”

“What? You’re going alone?”

“I’m planning it alone….”

“Why you be hiking?”

And interspersed among all these comments were emphatic “I would not be hiking, nuh-uh.”

Conversations with my students tended to concentrate on the lack of showering and how much walking this involves. Conversations with fellow teachers, on the other hand, concentrated on safety issues. I frequently got, “How does your mother feel about all this?”

How does she feel? At first, I don’t think she thought I was serious. Then she tried to convince me out of it. Now, I think she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m going. “What can I do?” she asked me last weekend over the phone. What a wonderful mother. I give Mommy a lot of credit because I would NOT want to be my own mother, that’s for sure. Apparently she told the aunties and uncles.

“What did they say, Mommy?”

“Lily is special.”

Plant the seed. I’m reminded of Shoeless Joe, although nothing so beautifully haunting: If you build it, he will come. Plant the seed.