O.J. and A.T. Those two pairs of initials don’t go together naturally.

But I’m hearing that as O.J. — the man who has dedicated his life to finding the “real killer” of his wife — rambles on about his future plans, one aspiration he has mentioned is a hike of the A.T. He reasons that even though it would really be hard, he feels he can do anything.

When you consider what he’s gotten by with in the past, it’s hard to disagree with his rationale. He has managed to literally get by with murder it seems. But I wonder if he can adhere to all the rules of parole while spending each night in a different wilderness setting. As I muse about this, I wonder if he could avoid a cold beer in a trail town which would violate his “no alcohol consumption” requirement. If he got in a heated argument around the campfire, could he resist brandishing a knife and jumping his ideological opponent? Would his parole officer be willing to have “on-trail” sessions?

For all these reasons, I doubt we’ll ever see a triumphant O.J. atop Katahdin. The A.T. can handle just about anything — including O.J. — but I doubt it will happen anyway.

In chapter 12 of THRU: An Appalachian Trail Love Story, one of my characters muses about a magazine ad he had seen. In the ad, a man is driving a luxury car and musing about all the items on his life’s bucket list. One of the items he is thinking about is owning the car he’s driving, and there is an X Mark next to it. Among unchecked items is “I will hike the Appalachian Trail.”

I don’t care for bucket lists. They can cause obsessive behavior that can dominate a person’s thoughts for years. I prefer to take on adventure as it comes. That’s just me. I really have to chuckle at a guy like O.J. adding the A.T. to his bucket list. I wonder how long he would last out there. Maybe, like so many other unlikely seeming characters O.J. would shock the world by exercising discipline and daily focus to the extent that he could complete a thru-hike. I doubt he will, and I hope he doesn’t even show up. The media circus would be way too odd.