Date: 2006-01-26
To: A Final Summary
Miles today: 0.0

I postponed my writing of this summary in the hopes that time would provide more distance and more insight into the experience, but I find myself in some ways as non-plussed now as I was the day I finished in Maine. That my thru hike was a life changing experience is without a doubt, but I still struggle to identify how my life has changed. Even beginning this hike was an act of faith. I never truly believed I could succeed. After all I was a 54 year old woman with limited back country experience and limited physical capacity compared to most of the hikers on the trail. I had never walked farther than 12 miles a day and had done only one long distance hiking experience in England¢s Lake District, a civilized hike from pub to pub over rolling hills. I did train beforehand, walking ever longer distances, up to 12 miles with an increasing amount of weight, but nothing really prepares you for the experience of walking mile after mile, day after day.Because I had a limited amount of time for my hike (I could not start until the end of April and had to finish by the week after Labor Day in order to return to work.) I decided to complete the approximately 200 miles from the Delaware Water Gap to Salisbury,CT on weekends in the Spring. This turned out to be one of my best decisions. The times spent covering those miles were good preparation for the rest of the hike and some of my best memories are from that time. I snowshoed through a late, very deep snow cover in High Point State Park. I saw my first spring robin on one of those hikes, gorgeous early spring wildflowers and the first butterfly. It took the pressure off of me later in the summer and, ultimately, although I probably could have included a repeat of the 200 miles in my hike, when I got to the Delaware Water Gap I elected to go home for 5 days and rest and recharge.My thru hike was everything that life is normally, but at a level of intensity and aliveness I have never experienced before. It was joy and sadness, fear and boredom, friendship and alienation, loneliness and a wonderful intimacy with the natural world. It was pain and misery and wild moments of elation. It was some of the moments of greatest achievement and mastery in my life, and all the while I still struggled with a sense that failure was just around the corner. My memories of the hike are amazing vivid (particularly for someone who sometimes can¢t remember what she ate for lunch or where she left her keys) and I can recall large portions of the trail in detail, as if it had become a part of me now, as familiar as my own hand or face. I learned so much on the trail; how to keep walking when I was so tired I was staggering, how to set up camp in wind and rain, and what really tired and really hungry mean. I slept through my first violent thunderstorm in a tent and a marauding bear at a campsite in Shenandoah National Park. I learned to make decisions by myself in difficult situations and when to ask for help. In Maine I was caught in the tail end of Katrina north of Monson and forded several fast moving, hip deep streams alone until I came to one I could not ford. I partnered with a college group coming behind me and together we found an alternate route and forded successfully.I also learned how truly beautiful the trail is and the joy of hanging out in the woods day after day. I loved being alone. Because I started late (April 28th) I had very little company on the trail at first. It wasn¢t until I reached VA that I began to catch up with other thru hikers, and then, although I enjoyed the company, it was sometimes a little too crowded on the trail. From almost the beginning, ¢though I walked alone by choice, there were always other hikers willing to walk with me for a time. Over the course of the summer I hiked for several days to a week with six or seven different hikers. In many ways I had the best of both worlds, company with interesting people when I wanted it and the opportunity to walk alone and enjoy the woods if I chose. The company of other hikers saved me from the VA blues. I hiked from Pearisburg to Daleville with a young couple and their dog. They taught me to night hike and the joys of hiking with a dog. Hiking companions also allowed me to cross flood-swollen rivers in Maine, kept me safe on the rough sections of New Hampshire and Maine, and saved me from incipient hypothermia on Chairback Mountain, after I had spent the day walking in the remnants of Katrina, when 8 hikers already crowded into a 6 person shelter made room for one more. I summited Katahdin with six of those hikers on September 6, and shared one of the most joyous moments of my life. Although I did not hike the trail to meet people and I frequently sought solitude over companionship, I treasure the companions I did have, because they were with me truly by choice and because the shared adventure gave the relationships a quality rare in every day life. Although we were very different people with different ages, backgrounds and experiences, all of them accepted me as equally capable and entitled to be there. As an older woman with very little athletic experience this was precious to me. The assumption everyone made that I had the same right to be there that everyone else did boosted my confidence greatly and encouraged me to persist when things got tough.I think I also learned what it takes to complete a thru hike. Another hiker told me that he asked a friend of his who had thru hiked for advice before he started, and his friend said he only had one piece of advice, ¢You have to want to be there.¢ This is the best advice I heard. It doesn¢t really matter what your reason for doing the hike is, but it has to be compelling enough to mean that you really want to be there. This became my touchstone. On good days I knew I wanted to be there. Why would anyone want to be anywhere else? On bad days I would stop and ask myself, ¢Do you still want to be here?¢ and the answer was always yes, although sometimes it was only because otherwise I would have to go back to work or go home and tell everyone that I quit. In spite of my worries about my physical ability I completed the trail (all but the 200 miles I did in the spring) in less than 19 weeks. I completed many 20+ mile days and frequently walked for 10-12 hours a day. From that I learned that physical capacity is less important than focus, determination and persistence. I wasn¢t the strongest or the fastest by any means, but I kept walking day in and day out. That intense focus was one of the most rewarding aspects of the hike. I developed an intimate relationship with the trail, almost as if it was a person, which remains with me still. The AT belongs to everyone, but one of its gifts is that for everyone it is their trail, unique to them, and always there to return to, in memory or in another hike.My thru hike was, above all, a gift; a gift from my family, friends and my boss who supported me and covered my responsibilities at home and at work, a gift from the many people who work to keep the trail and to support hikers, a gift from my companions along the trail, a gift to myself of a much desired and much cherished life experience, and the gift that the natural world offers all of us if we stop and take the time to accept it. I remain most grateful to you all. Thank you.