The Decision

I (The Professor) am a 28-year-old glass artist and I am not a professor of anything. My buddy (Coach) is a 29-year-old Merchant Marine Sailor, he's a coach of life. After years of procrastination, we have decided to take 120 days out of the life that is expected of us and hike the Appalachian Trail before we turn 30. I have a loving, supportive wife and family, great things going for me in the art world, and a cat named Puke n' Rally. So why on earth would I take this "risk?" Because I think I have to. For the longest time I thought, "Well life is starting to take over, I'll just wait on this...maybe when I retire, or maybe sometime later." Life is always taking over, I feel as though I am finally taking over my life. There may not be a later. The cliche is that we are always learning from our parents. Sometimes I think that means we should do what our parents did not do; a lesson of missed opportunities. My father told me that he would much rather be lying on his death bed thinking about the mistakes he made because he tried things, not thinking about what could have happened because he did not try.

Coach and I have known each other for close to a decade. We met in college and became very close with a core group of dudes (whom may be mentioned later in this adventure)...and pledged that we would hike the Trail before we turned 30. Plans for this Spring did not go exactly as planned for myself, and with Coach home on a five-month leave from sea, the time is right, or at least as right as it ever will be.

Besides the normal pre-trail fears of most thru hikers (getting injured, not being in shape to hike 2,181 miles consecutively, the mental challenge of the task ahead), I think my biggest fear, and the biggest thing I want to prove to myself, is that I'm not running away from anything. Inevitably, I expect to gain many types of inspiration from this experience. So I decided to write a "thesis" of sorts, maybe artist statement is a better term, but regardless, I felt the need to work out some things in my head. I have decided to share these thoughts to give a sense of what some of my philosophy (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence; a theory or attitude held by a person that acts as a guiding principle for behavior) is for hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Jonathan Capps

Walking the AT: A Study of Art and Creation

Throughout my artistic experience, I have had every opportunity and inspiration for creating available to me at my fingertips. The Internet is a fantastic thing; it's like art porn with millions of images, exmaples, and influences to be had in the blink of an eye. I have access, for all intents and purposes, to limitless amounts of natural gas, propane, oxygen, and all of the modern machinery and materials needed to support a sculpture/glass artist. Sometimes I feel a little guilty, sometimes I feel like maybe I'm cheating a little. Have I done something truly mine in every sense of the word, without the influence of other artists and people, without tools? To question my intentions as a sculptor and to question the medium that I love most (glass), I want to create an environment that completely removes myself from all of this. I want to starve myself, not from the ideas and the philosophy behind my art and art itself, but from what I have always perceived as necessary to my creating. I want to fast mentally, physically and culturally, from my comfortable creative environment, and enter into a life of creativity and questioning stripped down to its most basic core. To create this environment for myself I have decided to hike the 2,181 miles along the Appalachian Trail, using only what is available to me in the wilderness and what I can carry on my back. Through this experience I will create (and question) art at the most basic of levels. Every day will be a study and a struggle to observe, create, and discover.

Side thought- Glass is a material that has been considered and kept sacred since some of the first known items created by the Phoenicians as far back as 700BC. Through the ages, it has been made for and used by kings, queens, and the social elite. Even today, the majority of glass sculpture caters towards upper and upper-middle class collectors. Glass is a material that is often treated like a reilgious icon, untouched and protected. As glass sculptors, we tend to "gift wrap" our creations with the utmost care. My experience on the Appalachian Trail will be the antonym of this idea of art. My creations and studies will not be sold, they will not be idolized, and they will not go untouched. Instead, they will be at the whim of the elements and their environment, and may be destroyed within mere minutes of their creation.

I'm sure this will evolve, as will I, as I walk.