This is the bridge over the River Thames at Marlow. We drove down to Liz's family yesterday avoiding the worst of the seasonal traffic. And I'm thinking about 2008."If you want to give God a laugh, tell him your plans". It's a line from a Mike Scott song and a rather popular way to start a Blog entry. It's a useful reminder of the fragility of dreams. So while we are making plans for 2008, I feel uncomfortable writing about them, as in doing so I might scupper them.
The end of 2007 feels, to me, very like the end of 2001. Back then, Liz and I had decided to walk away from our jobs and just keep on walking, 2658 miles from Mexico to Canada. For five months in 2002 we crossed deserts and mountain ranges as we followed the Pacific Crest Trail through the wild lands of the USA.
I started blogging. On a PocketMail device I kept a daily journal, updated several times a day, and then e-mailed it from regular pay-phones to Glen Van Peski who uploaded it to a website. The whole journal, corrected for typos but still with an immediacy of adventure, remains online.
We're not planning to hike another trail. But 2008 might hold adventure and change of a similar order of magnitude. Of course, in daring to write this, I can almost hear God chuckling.