Chapter One:
“One and done!” Two months into my first Appalachian Trail thru-hike, I vowed to never long-distance hike again. I hated it! I hated the cold! I hated the heat! I hated being wet, either from rain, from sweat, or both at the same time! I hated my food and always being hungry! I hated hurting! My feet raged in protest with every step I took. I was tired and I was miserable. I found no joy in being on the trail under such conditions. I can’t remember exactly when, during my 2015 hike, I began saying, “One and done,” but I knew I was never going to long-distance hike again. Hiking day after day with a heavy pack was not for me. I wasn’t going to quit. I am not a quitter, but one and done was good for me. I even remember saying a few times, “If I never hike a long trail again, it will be too soon.” I complained so much that hikers around me wondered if I would even make it to Katahdin that year. When I wasn’t thinking about all the yuck, I absolutely loved it. I loved the way the sun warmed my skin and the birds sang in the trees. I loved the flash of a deer tail and the owls hooting at night. I liked the way the woods would change in character depending on what type of trees were growing there. I loved the people I was meeting. But at times, it was hard to remember the good in the middle of the bad. In hindsight, I learned to embrace all the yuck. The yuck made me stronger. The yuck made me more perceptive. The yuck made me more grateful. Sometime between hating the trail and finishing the trail, I changed. My first memoir, Happy Hiking: Falling in Love on the Appalachian Trail, tells how the trail broke me down only to rebuild a new me. No longer did I despise the misery; rather, I respected it. The tough stuff made me appreciate the smallest of small details and taught me to enjoy the simplicity of it all and of life in general. ____ In 2015, I asked August, a six-time thru-hiker, why he thru-hiked the A.T. as many times as he had. He never gave a definitive answer. Instead, he replied, “Ask yourself that same question when you have been home a month.” I can remember as clear as spring water my response. In no uncertain terms, I informed him there was nothing that could make me thru-hike again. But three weeks post-hike, not even a month, I was begging to get back to the trail! I couldn’t handle life in the real world. I was having nightmares, panic attacks, and a host of other irrational behaviors. My diagnosis was post-trail depression. I had heard about this in my pre-hike planning but sloughed it off as though it wasn’t really a thing, rather, just a saying. I was wrong. It is all too real among thru-hikers. So it was no surprise a year later when my friend Sharon, whose idea it was in the first place to hike the Appalachian Trail, asked me if I wanted to hike the A.T. again and I said, “YES!!!” “Yes! Yes! Yes! I will go again! When?” And just like the that, planning for a second Appalachian Trail thru-hike began. It was only fitting the invite to go on this adventure came via a text message. since that’s how my first thru-hike came to be. But this time my excitement was beyond ecstatic. In 2013 Sharon had texted me, asking, “Do you want to hike the AT?” My initial emotions were neutral and kind of humdrum. Sure, I was happy to be asked and was intrigued, but I knew nothing about the Appalachian Trail, so I had nothing on which to base my response. A year after completing my first thru-hike and three years after her first text, I knew exactly what an affirmative answer to that question would mean and I was all in! This would be Sharon’s debut hike. While it was her idea back in 2013 to go on an AT adventure, life threw her a huge knuckleball. Her for-better-or-for-worse and happily-ever-after ended. The pain, sorrow, and dealings of a divorce kept her from hiking in 2015. But I was ready. I was too pumped up and excited not to continue with my plans, so I went without her. Fast forward to 2016, Sharon’s game smoothed out, and she was ready to step up to the plate again. She didn’t want to hike alone, hence, her text to me asking if I was up for take two on the A.T. Just as before, planning started as soon as we got off the phone, but this time with much more vigor. I am easily excitable. I tend to be the type of person who gets an idea and runs with it, planning as much as I can, as fast as I can. Usually, this jumping in produces little value, but it does create excitement. Sharon, on the other hand, is more of the let-the-idea-hang-out-there kind of gal who doesn’t waste good energy on the what-ifs. Her words and actions are few but mighty. ____ For most hikers, a huge part of the experience is the pre-hike planning. This time, I had the experience of a completed thru-hike to draw from, which elevated my enthusiasm even more. My mind raced as thoughts bounced around in my head. We need to stay at Green Mountain House Hostel. Oh, we have to remember to bring… We can skip that place. The River’s Edge has great hamburgers. I need a new pack. I should check with Bruce to see if he minds if I hike again. Hot Springs is a must! Should we go to Trail Days this year? Ohhh, I can’t wait to eat half a gallon of ice cream again! Oh dear! I haven’t even finished my first memoir yet! A multi-ball pinball game ping-ponged in my head, and with each ricocheting thought, I heard the bells sounding and saw the lights blinking. Stimulus overload for sure. It was like I was having a “positive” panic attack, if there is such a thing. During my 2015 hike, I learned how to control my panic attacks. I wasn’t, and I am still not, always successful, but at least now I can recognize one coming on and I possess the skills to stop them. So instead of letting the noise and lights of my thoughts run rampant in my mind, I took a deep breath (like I did when I got lost after crossing Max Patch in 2015) and stepped away from thinking about my next hike for a day or two. I couldn’t stop long though; after all, we had less than six months to get ready. Once I took that timeout, I came back with a plan, and a good plan starts with a list. Out came the notebook and those pinball thoughts bounced from my cluttered brain down the pen and onto the paper with ease and calm joy as hike number two’s planning began. Sharon no longer lived an hour from me in Maine. After her knuckleball, she packed up and moved to North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. She couldn’t have chosen a more perfect place to live. Not only is Asheville a quaint, hip town and one of the hottest growing places to live in the United States, it isn’t far from the Appalachian Trail. Sharon’s new location was only a three-to-four-hour drive, even much closer in several spots, from most trailheads for the southern half of the trail, making it an ideal home base for my husband, Bruce, to work while he supported us. Poor Bruce still had to work. ____ Since distance prevented us from in-person strategizing, our planning took place via texting and a few phone calls. Sharon didn’t really care too much for the planning, whereas Bruce and I loved it. In the beginning, I let my first hike overshadow this hike. So I adopted the saying, “It’s not about me” to help keep the focus on Sharon. This was her hike, not mine. I was just along for the ride. While I wasn’t always successful at not letting hike number one cloud hike number two, the experience from the first go-around was valuable in making certain decisions, like when to start hiking. I don’t like to be wet and cold at the same time. Usually, I can handle one or the other without too much discomfort or danger. It is inevitable that hikers will be wet or cold and, unfortunately, often both at the same time. A good start date, though, can help reduce the number of times these two conditions collide. I started in early March in 2015 and endured my fair share of cold rainy days. I really didn’t want to repeat that, so we chose to start in late March, hoping for better weather. ____ Now that lists were being made, Bruce and I tackled logistical plans. No more bells and lights and excitement mayhem. We ordered The A.T. Guide for 2017 by David “AWOL” Miller and updated the Guthook app, co-founded by Paul Bodnar and Ryan Linn and now known as FarOut. Most successful thru-hikes begin and/or end with one or both resources. I will admit, Bruce again did most of the logistics. I threw out ideas while Bruce calculated why the idea would or would not work, then we presented it to Sharon. Sharon was all too easy to please. But just like most plans, there were changes. Walking Home, a documentary about a father-son duo who hiked the Appalachian Trail together in 2015, created by independent filmmakers Ryan Leighton and Cody Mitchell, was scheduled to screen in early March. Since I had hiked with the men for a while, I wanted to see it. We postponed our start date. Then the screening was pushed to mid-March. We again pushed out our date. The screening still didn’t take place, so March 24, 2017, became our start date, and we decided we would catch the movie screening later when it finally debuted. Our hiking speed is on the sloth side, so we knew we needed to start hiking if we had any plans of making it to Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, before it closed for the season on October 15. Even with the start date push-outs, before we knew it, it was time to put our plans into action and head south to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus for the Appalachian Trail. It was 11:29 p.m. the night before Bruce and I needed to leave, and I still had several items on my list that were not completed. But I always set high expectations. I believe in aiming for the moon. If I miss, the worst I can do is fall among the stars. Before we knew it, Bruce and I were making the bed together without a word. It was a task we did daily together like clockwork. With less than six hours of sleep, we were surprisingly refreshed. It’s amazing how much energy you have when you are chasing a goal. Any other day, we would be whining and complaining about the lack of sleep. Just as we did in 2015, Bruce and I loaded our Outback with all our gear, pulled out of our driveway in Lowell, Maine, and headed south. We drove as far as Winchester, Virginia, the same layover we had in 2015, but this time without the pillow-surfing pooch of my 2015 hiking buddy.
