Dropping Everything to Hike the Appalachian Trail: The Sequel

It is easier, for the most part, the second time around to tell people that I am going to live in the woods for six months. Now that I\’ve made this announcement once before, and broken through the psychological and social barriers to entry, it seems people tend to believe my conviction a little more. It has been a bit trickier in a couple ways, though.

For example, I did not have a career the last time I decided I was going to hike, or a relationship, I didn\’t even have a place to live, either. That can tend to complicate things, necessitating a quick reevaluation of priorities, and rearranging of life.

The OG Attempt

At first, the Appalachian Trail was only something I knew about vaguely, from catching the last couple minutes of a National Geographic documentary about it when I was a senior in high school, around 2010.

My boyfriend at the time told me that his mom would love to do that one day, but she couldn\’t because she would have to leave her job for six months to hike, and it was impossible. Maybe when she was retired. Therefore, my first introduction to the AT was to believe thru hiking the trail to be something that people long for but do not generally get to try. Life comes first.

Then a few years later, one of my best friends, Justin (or Pigpen), decided to hike the trail in 2014. I remember him showing me some of his gear while I was unemployed and homeless staying in a motel.

I was at rock bottom, about to move back in with my parents after soon to be two times dropping out of college and with a string of failed jobs that I just couldn\’t seem to hold down. Chasing the dreams that other people had for me, instead of my own desires, had simply caused my life to stop working.

When Justin told me about his hike, I was astonished. I didn\’t know young people could just go and hike the trail. It seemed like such an amazing thing at the time, as if life isn\’t working, so here\’s another option! It was a lifeline when I was drowning, and I gladly took hold. I had no established life to lose or drop by that point, so I ran with it.

What followed was a crazy few years of adventure, that did indeed see me attempting to thru hike. I ended spent about five months on the Appalachian Trail, and I hiked almost all of Virginia, Vermont, and New Hampshire, as well as several places in between.

Up and Down the Mountains of Life

Of course, it doesn\’t take five months to actually hike 1,000 miles. It is typically a journey of around five to six months to hike the entire 2,200 miles. I was a slow hiker at times, and I wasn\’t always on the trail.

There were a lot of side trips and excursions. A lot of yellow and pink blazing, as I got sucked into the party bubble and into a very sudden, intense relationship with a hiker I met in southern Virginia.

I am not proud of how quickly corrupted my hike became, nor the fact that I did not even have enough resources to be out on the trail. It does actually cost money, and I had none. Don\’t be that person, trust me, it isn\’t worth it.

Still, I have said since then that my thru hike attempt was the best decision I ever made. I am not the same person I was before I hiked 1,000 miles of the AT. I came back, I got my shit together (eventually), and now I have watched as I have begun to repeat the same mistakes of my past.

I rebuilt my life, but eventually I sank back into the same bad patterns of living life for everyone else other than myself. I created a life that was considered highly successful, but that I became essentially unhappy with.

As time has gone on, things in my life have begun to feel less stable. In my experience, when I am in circumstances I don\’t really want to be in, I start unconsciously tearing things down around me.

The last several months, I have been aware of this happening more and more. This time, though, instead of hitting rock bottom, I became wise to the slide of rocks beneath my feet.

I felt the familiarity of where things were heading, and decided to take a leap of faith instead of being pushed. I decided to go where I always knew I would end up again. Back to my home, back to the trail.

How to Leave It All Behind

So, how did I handle the job, the boyfriend, the apartment? In large part contributing to this decision, my job had been getting progressively worse for me over the course of the past several months.

By taking proactive action, I was able to leave gracefully, with no one really that surprised. I was invited to come back several times after my hike, and I do have a couple other job offers as well, so that provides a nice feeling of security.

Handling my rent was shockingly easy as well. Another one of my best friends, Malia, is going to sublet my apartment while I am gone. She just so happens to be looking to move, and I just so happen to prefer to be able to save the money I would spend on rent while I am not living there for six months.

The timing could not be better, and in fact was one of the things that convinced me I should follow this dream again. The trail is already providing, even before I am on it.

As for the relationships in my life, well, there has been some restructuring there as well. It is always nerve-racking telling people I am going to do something outside of the norm, although as I mentioned, it certainly is easier in some ways this time.

At least when it comes to the people who were around the first time I decided to hike, that is. Some conversations are more challenging than others. It is difficult, but I am the only one who knows, deep down, what is best for me and what will help me heal in the ways I need.

Although it sucks majorly to hurt people I love, there\’s a reason we are all told to put our oxygen masks on first. We cannot be good to others without first being good to ourselves.

The Method Behind the Madness

I wish I could say there were no casualties leading up to this decision, but of course there always are. Well-adjusted people, who are happy with their lives and every decision they have ever made (in my own personal and limited experience), don\’t typically decide to drop everything and attempt to go hike the entire Appalachian Trail just because they like camping.

Typically, the trail draws the people to it who most need the healing effects of a pilgrimage that involves walking thousands of miles carrying only the essentials of what they require to survive on their back the entire way.

Thru hiking is more a mental game than a physical one, though the physical side of it is certainly not easy either. However, hiking every day for most of the daylight hours results in a lot of time alone with one\’s thoughts.

A lot of processing feelings and emotions, reliving memories, understanding oneself in vastly different ways than can be accomplished in \”normal\” day-to-day life. It is a life changing undertaking, and I need it bad enough to drop everything and go.

Although my trail name is Amelia Airheart, I don\’t take this journey into the unknown lightly. I have been a long ass section hiker, I have been a trail angel, but I have not yet achieved what it means to be a successful thru hiker. Seven years after my first attempt, I am on a mission of redemption.

This time I am wiser, I am more capable, and I can take care of myself. I am prepared, and I know what it means and what it costs to attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail. I know what traps to avoid, and I know something else.

Thru hiking the Appalachian Trail is real life. People have said to me recently that it is not, but I would argue it is more real than many things. It strips life down to the bare essentials, the basic necessities.

Food, water, shelter, companionship, and nature. Everything our ancestors needed to survive as nomadic hunter-gatherers for nearly two million years. It is in our DNA and ancestral history as humans to travel on foot, collecting what we need to survive.

Thru hiking removes the distractions of society, the constant striving for success, the capitalistic greed that puts profit before people, every time. Living to work, instead of working to live. That is what I\’m leaving behind, that is what I am dropping for a simpler way of life.

There is common saying on the Appalachian Trail: the AT ruined my life. It ruins those things for us, because we learn and experience that there is so much more to life than work, buy, consume, die.

That is why I am going back, because to do anything else, for me, would be insane.