Back in the summer of 2023, when I first began talking about my plans for a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, the people around me had many questions. “Where is it?” “How long is it going to take?” “You’re going by yourself?” “What are you going to eat?” “Are you sure about this?” and, of course, “Are you going to bring a gun?” But the most common question, by far, was simply “why?” I was 19 years old, shouldn’t I have been thinking about my future? Why would I want to spend 6 months in the woods, sleeping in a tent, eating nothing but gas station food, and smelling terrible all the time? Especially for something you couldn’t expect to put on a resume.
The AT is an intense undertaking for anyone, so while you’re in the planning stage, it’s natural for people to ask plenty of questions about your trip. But if you’re the type who thoroughly enjoys the outdoors and makes no secret about it, those questions probably come with much less skepticism. If you knew me then, you knew I was no such person. I was very much a ‘phone kid.’ I was raised on city water. I had never been on an overnight backpacking trip. My general wilderness knowledge was somewhere in the ‘sorely lacking’ tier. On top of all that, I didn’t exude confidence when speaking of my plans for the trail. The totality of everything I felt I needed to know and didn’t was overwhelming. The closer the departure day came, the more uneasy I felt. Sometimes, I would look at the backpack I’d bought, stuffed with all my other gear, and think, “Well, I’m in too deep now.”
So why, despite all my misgivings, did I still go? Why did I choose the AT? A lot of it had to do with those very doubts and fears I had. I wanted to try something different, something difficult. Like I’ve said, I wasn’t a nature guy. I wasn’t someone who cared to venture too far outside his comfort zone if he could help it. I chose the trail because I knew it wouldn’t come naturally, specifically to me. I knew that those feelings of doubt would have to be put aside. They didn’t matter.
Soon after I started, I found that the issues of food, water, hygiene, safety, bears, etc., and my worries about them weren’t proving to be my biggest obstacle. I had found the routines and processes that worked for me. Three weeks in, I had all the experience I needed. I knew what it felt like to hike in pain, through bad weather, on a bad night’s sleep. My new was the simple reality of ‘this is my life for the next five months.’ Most of the Appalachian Trail is pretty boring. That’s not just my opinion. Many northbound thru-hikers experience the feeling of ‘Virginia Blues,’ so named because the state of Virginia, with roughly 570 AT miles, tends to get monotonous pretty quickly. You feel as though you’re hiking through the same green tunnel and rolling hills every day for weeks on end. Stack on the cumulative effects of soreness, weather, and constant hunger, and that’s where some hit their limit.
That was what my hike was all about. Learning to overcome those circumstances and keep going, no matter what. I had a well-established habit of quitting something when it became difficult, and the trail became my way to push past that. To push past those moments when it seemed like the whole thing was a waste of time. While Mount Katahdin may have been the goal I was striving for, I learned in a very real way what the phrase ‘the journey is the destination’ meant. Those moments, huddled in a shelter with other hikers, cold and exhausted from a long day’s hike, wondering things like, "why do the people who designed this trail hate us so much," - LoL- make the destination worth it.
-Big Ramen
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