Paddy Dillon (new website here)in his book points out there are 19 of them and a useful map shows me where they are.
Further inside they are described, each having its own character and purpose.
What he fails to mention is the sense of time passing and marginal panic this all induces in me.
Here is a classic case of wants as opposed to needs.
I want to walk the National Trails and to not be able to makes me unhappy. However in no way do I need to and understanding this releases me from the burden and allows me to be happy with what I can attain.
Lets stick with “wants” for now, coz pain ridden angst is so much more intellectual than an imbecilic grin of contentment.
If I walked one a year (fat chance) my potential active years will have passed me by and I will have been long reduced to the vicarious enjoyment of such trails via whatever comes after blogging and podcasting.
Right now, vicarious pleasure is fine because I can get up and actively participate if the mood takes me (or at least the pretence is everything that anchors me to the daily grind would just fall away) but the clock is ticking, and it’s probably only my diminishing hearing which stops me from hearing it.
Put bluntly, if I don’t buck my ideas up, death or incapacity will mean some (or all) of the National Trails will remain theoretical to me.
Does it matter?
Yes it matters, sometimes I can kid myself it matters less than other times, but deep down its “unfinished business” and the realisation its going to remain so is unsatisfactory in the extreme.
I am not sure what to do about this, and that is the problem right there.
To do one thing means to not do something else, it’s a priority thing. But even if I devoted all the “time off” I might have left in my active years to hiking” these trails there still might not be enough time left.
I’d like to think I had made an active choice of not hiking some/all of the National Trails before the choice was thrust upon me.
That is probably all I am saying, in a world of near infinite choices, it would be nice to make the right ones.
Fat chance.
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