A Dream Come True

In one of my earliest memories I'm about 3 yeas old and my family and I are on a camping trip with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins. My cousin Nate who's the same age as I decided to go exploring on our own and anytime you got us together we knew how to make it an adventure. Who knows how long we were missing but at some point we could hear our folks yelling for us and we knew we were in trouble so instead of letting everyone know are whereabouts we hid and tried to sneak back to camp, boy were we lucky it was my uncle and not our grandfather that found us, that's where it started.
I also remember my grandparents house on the hill Where I would stare out their windows out into the valley and the hills and mountains that surrounded us and be in awe and also to wonder what's on that hill and what's on the other side of that mountain. On this day when my grandfather asked me " What do you see out their [as he usually would] instead of saying "I dunno" or " ah nuthin" [as I usually would], I explained what I had been looking at about the hills and the mountains. He then told me what was on the hill and he got out a map and he showed me what was over that mountain, for a kid like me this meant a lot.
By the time I reached my teens I wanted to see those hills for myself so along with two buddies [Adam and Gabe] and of course my cousin Nate, the 4 of us filled a couple backpacks with food and some water and had my dad drive us to the edge of town near some ranch land to drop us off. As he drove away we waived not knowing where we're going yet not a care in the world, we just walked and walked with no general course of travel but it didn't matter. After hiking through farmland and woods over streams and a hill or two we stopped at a ridge with an amazing view overlooking the the valley and beyond. To this day it still gets me how 4 boys who at that time only really cared about girls and sports could enjoy just being there at that time.
Then when studying a map for a backpacking trip with my cousin I noticed a trail that kept going and going and in this case [my map was of Oregon] it went all the way from where I lived in southern Oregon to the Columbia river all along the cascades. I need to know more and in doing so I learned that not only did it cover my home state it ran from the California/Mexico border all the way to Canada at that I would say "one day I'll hike that".
And now I've just turned 28 and am at a point in my life where I'm ready to complete the goals and challenges that I had set for myself years ago but would never let go of. And with my goal of furthering my education being set for this fall I've decided that there is the perfect window of opportunity for the pacific crest trail. A dream come true