"You can't walk there from here."
I have always been one who loves to be challenged. If you really want me to do something, tell me it can't be done. As a youth in my early teens, I would often walk, skateboard or bike distances that might be considered ridiculous. Often, if I needed directions, I would simply ask someone out watering their lawn if I could reach a certain point by continuing down a specific road.
"It's too far." they would frequently say, advising me to figure out how to take a bus, or get a ride from my parents. Nonetheless, I cannot remember a time that I did not make it there, though there were many instances, where I would have to call my mother to pick me up, fifteen miles away, because there was no reasonable way to walk back quickly enough to avoid getting grounded.
The obstacles could be distance, requiring days or weeks where it could be done in a few hours with a car. Sometimes, roads or highways were impassable on foot, uncrossable for miles or simply non-existent. So many people simply said "that can't be done." rather than finding a way to do it, be it out of convenience or complacency.
Over the years, the walks got longer. Hitchiking through the deep south, section hiking a cross country bus route the length of South Korea, endurance racing through the Mojave, road marches though New York mountains, Louisianan swamps and every imaginable climate in between. I was trained to carry a heavy pack, I figured out how to get by with a satchel ...
but what I really learned was:
You CAN get there from here.
Sometimes you will have to be clever.
Sometimes you will have to be tenacious.
Sometimes you will have to be quiet.
and sometimes, you just need to be unwilling to take no for an answer.
Guerrilla Camping is an attempt to collect all I have gained in my wanderings, and in my conversations with other wanderers to encourage everyone with the courage to wander as well.
