Allen Gap 1904.6 (0 miles, 1904.6 total miles)
Iroh and I had decided the day before more or less to take a zero to get chores done, prepare for the Smokies, and let Quasar rest. We got up around 8AM, and I’d slept very deeply and comfortably in the hostel bed.
I’d realized lately that I’d been missing the creature comforts of home. Warm beds, indoor toilets, sinks, and most of all, electricity. It was easy with all the hostels and trail angels around to spend more and more time indoors, and I felt myself being drawn to that experience.
My biggest struggles currently were the shortness of the days and a sense of fatigue I was beginning to develop. Sunrise was now 7:54AM, and sunset 6:35PM, leaving only 10.5 hours of daylight to work with. It was almost impossible for me, and from what I could tell of the other hikers around me, to get up and moving before sunrise anymore.
I’d never before appreciated electricity as I was now. Even being at camp, eating dinner and spending the last several hours of the day by headlamp made the darkness outside my little circle of battery powered light even more oppressive by comparison.
The fatigue I’d developed was also becoming noteworthy. I’d witnessed this with the NOBOs, as the toll of 1,700 miles plus began to show and they started to physically and mentally be ready to return to life outside the trail and enjoy what remained of summer.
The days were still extremely long back then, around four additional hours of daylight. Of course, the NOBOs had begun their hikes when the days were very short at the end of winter or early spring, and often had to contend with snow and quite a bit of cold, so it certainly was a trade off of sorts.
When I’d begun walking in mid May, the days were quite long, the weather was mild, and the terrain was relatively easy to hike. All benefits of flip flopping, but the piper must be paid at one point, and a thru hike takes enough time that the heat and humidity, cold and darkness will come for all hikers, regardless of start or end date. It is simply the nature of hiking 2,200 miles more or less continuously over the span of a year.
I have always been a person with fluctuations in my natural energy levels due to various reasons. I’ve also always been talented at pushing myself to do more than necessary throughout my life. For example, not long before this hike I was working 50 hours a week as a sales manager, working out 3-4 times a week, writing 10,000 words a week for the first draft of a novel, taking care of Tika, and managing my own place including cleaning and meal prep, plus self care such as daily meditation, journaling, and all sorts of therapy and doctor appointments to manage my health.
I was completely exhausted, and that is only one of many examples over my life of going all in on things and doing too much. I burnt myself out completely my first semester of college by working three jobs (80 hours per week) and taking five classes.
All that to say my decision to attempt a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail for a second time, and create and maintain a daily blog while doing so is only natural to who I am as a person. I am only aware of one other hiker this year who blogged a daily AT journal, and he finished his Triple Crown this year, so was very experienced at doing both. Many hikers blog, but the daily commitment to share this journey is not one that is often done.
So, plainly, I am very tired. In a really wonderful way, where I wouldn’t change anything or take these decisions back, ever. I will acknowledge, though, that spending one to two hours on this blog every day while undertaking an already very challenging journey has affected my pace and output along the way.
The truth is I have to be very cognizant not to burn myself out. I came out here because I was burnt out. Because I pushed myself too far and too hard down a path I didn’t want to travel anymore. The last thing I wanted to do was push myself too hard down the path I do want to follow to the end, more than anything.
Sure, I’ve had little burnouts here and there along the way, that I’ve managed with dropping miles, zeros, and rest days. I remember leaving the trail in 2015, defeated and at my limit. I still hiked almost a third of the trail that year, but I let it get the better of me. Knowing that, I’d crawl to Springer this time if I had to. I’d take all the time I needed if it meant I would finish this hike.
I started the trail as a begrudging flip flopper this time. The first attempt, I tried a flip flop because I firmly believed in the mission of it. Helping to disperse the traffic on the Appalachian Trail in the spring, where thousands of thru hikers attempt every year, loading down the natural resources and infrastructure of the trail.
When my hike didn’t succeed the first time, I largely blamed it on the fact that I attempted to flip flop. I met a NOBO, started dating him, couldn’t keep up, and began yellow blazing (skipping miles) to stay with him. I was determined when I was able to hike again, I would do it as a NOBO, and belong to the largest group of hikers, thru hiking in the most straightforward way possible.
Yet it didn’t work out that way. Many elements collided in my life to have me attempting a flip flop once more. This time I began 500 miles north of my original starting point, trying a classic Harpers Ferry flip flop this time.
Though I almost made the same mistake by trying to keep up with NOBOs again (my beloved trail family, the Cult), I knew the pitfalls this time and made myself slow down and not skip miles to avoid burning out or repeating the same pattern again.
Of course, once I slowed down, I more or less stayed at a slower pace. I took more days off, I stopped thinking about deadlines, I visited old friends along the trail, and I soaked in the experience.
That has also meant that for a large portion of my northern half and most of my southern half I’ve watched hikers catch up to, then pass me, with regularity. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after a couple hundred miles or so.
At times, this can be a difficult thing for me mentally. It’s always gratifying when hikers tell me they’ve seen me in the logbooks or have heard about me and are excited to meet me, which happens often. However, if they caught up to me, they will almost certainly be passing me at some point.
One of the benefits to a flip flop is having longer to finish a thru hike. NOBOs have to contend with cold weather in the beginning, and Katahdin closing in October. SOBOs can’t begin until Katahdin opens at the end of May or early June, but don’t have a deadline to finish because Springer never closes.
Flip floppers typically start mid April to mid May, and also do not have a deadline ending at Springer, effectively giving them the longest hiking season, with more flexibility and ability to take their time and not have to hike faster than necessary.
Though there is this pervasive aura of competitiveness that imbues the trail frequently. I am certainly guilty of it, myself. How many times have I calculated my pace, pushed myself to hike faster or longer, bragged to other hikers about the risks I’ve taken to be a “better” hiker?
The trail is full of hikers in their early 20s who just graduated college, especially SOBOs and flip floppers, who chose to hike that way due to timing factors of leaving school. I used to be a 23 year old on the trail as well, and they are young and strong, fast and agile.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and that is plenty true on the trail as well. It’s easy to feel bad about myself because I got left behind, because I’m taking a little longer to finish, because I’ve never hiked a 30 mile day or done any of the myriad trail challenges that just always sound rather unpleasant to me.
Another phenomenon that has recently come to my attention is how few hikers I ever see leave the trail as a flip flopper. A thru hike is something that thousands of people attempt every year, and consistently only around 25% of people actually succeed in accomplishing.
However, I feel the vast majority of those who are going to leave one way or another typically do so earlier in the hike. This is a lifestyle that I have found either clicks with you or doesn’t rather quickly. Overuse injuries, running out of money, things like that also probably happen before the halfway point where I started.
Because there is no way I ever saw more than a few people get off trail permanently while I’ve been hiking, and I’ve hiked through a lot of people on both halves of my hike. The fact of the matter is that I’m hiking both the NOBO and the SOBOs second halves, and by the time I arrive they are 1,000 miles or more into their hikes, and are most likely going to finish, especially because I was always with the fast bubble of NOBOs and never ended up in the main bubble this time.
It’s easy, therefore, to feel that all these hikers are better than me at this. I’m looking at roughly a six and a half month thru hike, and constantly comparing myself to people who are consistently finishing or will finish somewhere around five months or so.
Yet I’m forgetting the fact that only 25% of total would be thru hikers are going to finish at all this year. I’m not comparing myself to the 75% of people who had to get off trail and were unable to finish for various reasons.
In reality, I am the only person I should be comparing myself to. It really shouldn’t matter how long it takes me to finish, because a thru hike is determined by finishing within a year, and six and a half months is still plenty less than that.
All that should matter to me is that I do finish, period. I set out with two goals: to hike every mile of the Appalachian Trail in 2022, and to document the experience.
This echoes lessons I’ve needed to learn in my life, magnified on the trail as they so often are. To stop comparing myself to everyone else, to stop caring what others think of me, or rather what I think they think about me (because the truth is no one cares as much as we think they do), to live life in the way that works best for me, and to be proud of what I do accomplish, to stop being so hard on myself and have more compassion for my own humanity.
It took years for me to fully understand what my first hike attempt meant to me, and I can only imagine I will be reflecting on this experience for many more years to come.
I know it will be work to finish this hike, and I will be fighting my tiredness, as this will be one of the longest endurance challenges I will have undertaken thus far. There’s no reason to make it more difficult on myself mentally, or focus on anyone’s hike other than my own.
People like to say a lot of things about other hikers out here. NOBOs vs SOBOs, yellow blazers vs purists, aqua blazers, blue blazers, platinum blazers. Hike Your Own Hike exists for a reason, no matter how many people nowadays interpret that as an insult rather than a credo.
I’ve always been of the opinion that if you let what other people do on their hike affect yours, you’re doing something wrong. It’s all well and good to want to hit every white blaze, but if you’re going to lose sleep over the fact that someone else skipped a few hundred miles and whether or not they are a thru hiker, I firmly believe you’re doing something wrong.
We all have to hike the hike we can live with, as Hambone advised me when I was stressing out about making up miles in the 100 Mile Wilderness. I need to take my own advice, as well.
In five years when I look back on this journey, I highly doubt what I’ll think about is how long it took me or how long it took anyone else. Rather, I’ll reflect on the growth I experienced, the people I met, the things I saw, the places I went, and the person I became over 2,200 miles of walking and learning through the wilderness.
“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
