Donna's Surprising Takeaway from a 2,200-Mile Trek

      Donna Nedde trekked five million steps and 2,200 miles and came away with a message that surprised me.     
     She and her husband Tom Kinsella took five months conquering the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a journey through fourteen states. This is like scaling Mt. Everest sixteen times.
     Donna, whom I met at the rec center, burned through three pairs of hiking boots and lost fifteen pounds, typical for hikers who consume five thousand calories daily just to maintain their weight on this expedition. When they arrived in a town every week or so, “I could personally eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia,” Donna says.     
     And what is her amazing take away?     
     “How little we need to live.”     
     They carried backpacks, a tent, stove, freeze-dried food, breakfast bars, granola, a water purifier, shorts and a shirt, long pants, phones they rarely turned on, a camera, a shovel and toilet paper, Tom’s Native American flute, “and my Kindle for reading at night,” Donna says.   
     That’s it.     
     What a contrast from what I observe around me - houses built smaller while storage lockers spring up. Catherine Alles from the Foundation for Economic Education reports that the average American home has 300,000 items. One out of four houses with two-car garages can’t fit a car in them because of all the stuff, she says.     
     So Donna’s surprising message is not how to survive, but how to truly live: simply.     
     Maybe that’s what we need to survive, too.     
     And maybe it’s time to clean out my closets.