Unreality Check

One of the things that surprised me in October 2002 when I finished hiking the Appalachian Trail was talk of war with Iraq. When I started walking in April of that year, the US was fighting in Afghanistan in what seemed like a logical response to al-Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. I had reservations about that war but I certainly saw the connection to the previous year’s attacks. Prior to beginning my hike, I was pretty focused on my preparations. If Iraq was a matter of particular concern to the US, I was not aware of it.

Once I was on the trail, I was in a different world. Current events and world affairs did not enter into that world to any great degree. I was far more concerned with more immediate matters: weather, trail conditions, finding decent campsites each day and supplies in towns along the way. Not surprisingly, I did not pay much attention to much beyond the trail. Besides, all of my previous hiking experience was that nothing much would change when I came off the trail after a week or even a month-long. Everything would be pretty much the same.

Occasionally, I encountered some reminder of “the other world”, the world of non-hikers. One of my fellow hikers was an Army Ranger first sergeant, due to retire in July 2002, wondering if he would be stop-lossed because of his experience (he wasn’t). Another reminder came on September 12 when I stopped in a Rangely, Maine grocery store (the only one, actually) and saw a newspaper photograph of the previous day’s one year 9-11 anniversary. But for the most part current events beyond the trail were hardly evident. When I thought about war at all, the thoughts were about my own experiences thirty years before.

When I finished hiking and began my return to the southwest from Maine, I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. It took about five weeks to make the trip, stopping to visit family and friends along the way, so I was still somewhat disconnected from events but Iraq was clearly a big issue. Talk of Iraq, a sometime American ally whose tyrannical but secular regime seemed dangerous to its own people, as central to American security seemed wildly out of place to someone like me who had not followed the discussion all year. Congress was being asked to authorize war against Iraq? Clearly something was missing. When the authorization came to a vote in late October, I was amazed that it passed so overwhelmingly and with so much Democratic support. It just didn’t make sense to someone like me who had, in effect, dropped out of the sky into BushCheney’s America. (It probably made little sense to any intelligent person who followed events but at least that person would be aware of the discussion.)

Nor did the run-up to war in the following months make much sense to me. Events in Iraq and the reports of inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction suggested that Iraq was far less dangerous than the specter conjured by BushCheney. By this time, though, I was sufficiently aware of events to know that, for what little sense they made, America was going to war in Iraq. I knew also from history and experience that it would be a disaster.

Even though my long hike left me bewildered about going to war in Iraq, it did prepare me for that war. As I wrote in previously, I came to terms with my experience in Vietnam. That resolution put me in a position to deal with a present that, in many ways, required that I fully understand the lessons of the past.

Funny how that works.