ONCE UPON A TIME there was a Project Manager.  He was obliged to develop an annual Project Plan (scope, schedule, deliverables, budget, level of effort... The Works), which was always an irritation to him because he recognized it as an exercise in pure fiction.  There was no telling, 12 to 15 months in advance, what entirely unpredictable events would pop up and throw his carefully contrived plan into the trash.

And yet, he recognized the value of having a plan even if it ultimately never got realized.  The plan was the fallback: what would be done if nothing else happened to get in the way?

And so it will be with this trip, as I believe I've mentioned elsewhere.  Having just updated the projected itinerary page of the journal to reflect a change in plans (or more specifically, replacement of three weeks of detail with what amounts to a yellow sticky note that says "From , go more-or-less thataway until you get to , and let me know when you arrive") I feel something of a relief.

To be sure, there's already a ridiculously-too-detailed replacement "plan" waiting in the wings, to be inserted in the gap left by my abandonment of the original notion.  But that replacement has about a one percent chance of taking place as written, so it's not going to be made public.  Or at least not yet.

Instead, I'll echo Lincoln's sentiments on Sherman's march from Atlanta to Savannah, likening his progress to that of a mole: We know where he went in at, we can see some places he's been, and we know generally where he's going, but we don't know much about how he'll get there, what's happening along the way, or when he'll re-surface.

So it will be once I depart Gillette WY.  You'll hear from me from time to time, probably, but don't expect to know exactly where I'm headed on any given day unless I've been able to post about it the night before or morning of.

UPDATE 6/15/2022

The little parable above has been brought into stark reality by recent events.  "There was no telling, 12 to 15 months in advance, what entirely unpredictable events would pop up and throw his carefully contrived plan into the trash."  How could I have known back in February that Yellowstone National Park would be closed in June due to heavy flood damage?  How can I know, now, what conditions will be in five weeks' time when I'm in the area?  I can't, of course.

So now I'm faced with the need to consider possible alternatives, if it should turn out in five weeks' time that the original plan is a non-starter. 

My first knee-jerk reaction was to consider covering some part of the Lewis & Clark route, starting in Missoula MT, then bushwhacking south to rejoin my originally planned route later on.  The precise choice of when to make the leap back to Plan A would likely be made "in the field" rather than in advance.  The longer I follow L&C, the harder it will be to reunite with my plan anywhere west of Kansas City.

Or I could link up with the Northern Tier and essentially jettison my entire plan for east of Missoula.

Or, I could call it quits in Missoula, or Bozeman, take commercial transportation home, and spend the rest of the summer doing other things.

The point is, "The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley".  I still don't know what I don't know, and I don't (and won't) know what the situation will be five weeks from now, so I'm going to try not to stress overmuch about it right now.  Flexibility.  Adaptability.  Open-mindedness and recognition of opportunities, sometimes at the spur of the moment, will be key.

(An hour after I wrote this update the news media are reporting that the southern areas of the Park may reopen within the next day or two.  So, as so often happens in the swirl of reporting, situations evolve so quickly that planning cannot keep up.  The best thing to do will be to sit tight and wait for things to stabilize.)