Ethan's walk: Thoughts and sore feet after

Globe correspondent Ethan Gilsdorf walked from Massachusetts General Hospital to Lee, N.H., this week in memory of his mother and to raise money for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. This is his final blog entry on the trip.

Blog entry 7: the Day After

11pm, Somerville, Mass.

I began writing this in the bathtub.

I thought walking 95 miles in six days across Scotland was tough. I thought my week-long mountain biking trek in the French Pyrenees was the most physically demanding adventure I'd ever undertaken. I was wrong.

I have learned the human body --- or at least, Ethan's human body --- is not designed for this incessant, consecutive punishment. Three 25-mile days, without break, is too much. Especially when lugging my MacBook. The 4 p.m. Bailey's and coffee for the final stretch, the victory dinner with three glasses of wine, the next glass of wine, the Bailey's and hot chocolate, then the hot tub -- they all felt good at the time. But what I should have done was iced my feet
and elevated them. Oh well.

But I'm happy. And I'm thankful for the dozens and dozens of emails, phone calls and car honks along the way that kept me going. I did this alone, but with the help of many.

Why had I done it? Other than raising, to date, $3,370, for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, and raising awareness about deadly, life-altering brain aneurysms, what was the point of this solo journey from where it began for my mother (the Boston hospital where surgeons saved her life after her aneurysm ruptured) to where, 19 years later, where it all ended (her grave)?
But what had I accomplished?

One, I slowed my life down -- a life that had been on a tear lately. 2007 has been a rough year. My brain and heart have been moving fast. This walk brought me down to earth, to asphalt, to snowbank.

Two, the walk was something I could do alone. And be successful and be satisfied. Set a goal (in my case, an almost ridiculous goal) and actually reach it. I need more of these in my life.

Three. A friend wrote me and said, "I hope this is a chance for you to be in touch with your feelings (oops! that 'f' word!) about your mother." Yes, I thought about her, and I cried. I managed to conjure her, to speak to her, as I walked. I called her name to the trees. I wanted her to answer. I think she did.

In reply to my friend, I wrote back: "not sure what i've accomplished -- in touch with my feelings about my mom, and also the feelings in my feet!" Oh my feet. Four of my toes, bruised purple, feel incredibly tender. The bottoms of my feet have blisters. My calves and quads are tight as piano strings. I'm hobbling ... and will be hobbling for a few days, I predict, as I try to get my holiday shopping done. The irony is not lost on me. I'm a bit crippled, just like my mom was. Perhaps that was the unintentional lesson.
But would Mom have approved?

I do know this. For three days I carried a homemade amulet around my neck: two photos of her, back to back, one circa mid-1970s, the "old mom," pre-illness, the other, the "new mom," 1990s. Perhaps I helped join the two, or locate that complete Sara Gilsdorf again, or bring some part of what was lost in Boston in 1978 back home to Lee. I don't know. But I am hopeful I've
joined something, connected a distance, knitted with a million steps a departure point and a destination.

Thank you all for your support. I'll be writing a final story about my walk, which will appear in the
Jan. 13 Sunday Globe Travel pages. I hope you'll follow me there. Happy holidays, peace, and godspeed.

Ethan