Date: 2009-10-20
From: At home in Charlotte

To: In Charlotte
Miles today: 0.0

EpilogueEp-i-logue (ep¢e-log¢) n.1.A short poem or speech spoken directly to the audience following the conclusion of a play. 2. A short addition or concluding section at the end of a literary work, often dealing with the future of its characters.I wish I had a great reason for taking two months to finally sit down and compose this conclusion to my Appalachian Trail adventure. E-piph-a-ny (i-pif¢e-ne) n.3. a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something. b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.While on the trail, the longer I hiked, the more confident I became that I would come up to an epiphany, laying spreadeagled across the trail in front of me. Alas, the last three weeks of my hike we the equivalent to the last six miles of a marathon. Keep your head down and plow forward. If there was an epiphany out there, I must have stepped over it.Upon completion of my 5 12 month thru-hike on August 13, all my other bodily functions became totally subordinate to my stomach. The first week after completion I was always hungry and I ate anything in sight. My body continued to burn 5000-6000 calories/day. Starting in the second week, my eating continued at an Olympian pace while the ol¢ engine returned to a mere pedestrian burn-rate. How could I write down any pithy thoughts, I was in a death struggle to domesticate my appetite!After the second full week my appetite and burn-rate were at the bodily equivalent of another tense Arab-Israeli peace accord.I developed a tactical plan to 1) begin running again and 2) cut out a hiker¢s favorite food: ice cream (shakes, cones and B&J pints). As for my epilogue, can you recall any meaningful literature that has ever been written while the author was going through alcoholic detox? So after a couple of weeks in the Ice Cream Sanatorium, I was released back into society. I knew I was not fully recovered when I walked downstairs to show Kate that I could fit into the tuxedo I wore at our 1985 wedding! (I did not ask her to go try on her wedding dress. I might have been mentally fragile, but not suicidal.) Well this brings us up to October. My burn-rate has gained ground on my appetite, but the appetite is still clearly the alpha. My navel has gone from a pre-hike ¢inny,¢ to an ¢outty¢ after completing the trail and sadly, back to its preexisting condition. At least I¢m still using those inner-most holes on my belts. Good thing I didn¢t go out and buy new suits!I have come to grips with most of my demons. I still search out and happily consume my favorite beers from the Appalachian Trail: Guinness, Yuengling and Long Trail. But desserts are infrequent for the time being. I will no longer be able to follow my Nuclear Holocaust Theory of Eating. ¢Eat like there is no tomorrow. Start with dessert and work your way back to the vegetables. Eat fast so you can have seconds. Eat seconds, even if you¢re not hungry, there may be no tomorrow.¢ I will miss not having a bottomless pit for a stomach.Are those enough excuses for not doing my final entry to my Trail Journal?   No? Well if you are still looking for a shot of 100 proof epiphany; I¢ll give it my best.Favorite PicturesMy favorite pictures of the Appalachian Trail always included people. There was incredible beauty along the many miles of the trail, but it was always better to share it with someone else. We are social animals, first and foremost. Hiking 8 days and 93 miles in Vermont with my daughter, Shannon, was my best week on the trail. Seeing my parents when they dropped Shannon off in Bennington was really special. Saying goodbye to family, the Underhills, Greeniers and Daileaders on the eighth day in Killington was my roughest day.As I type out this Journal Entry, I¢m looking a framed picture of Shannon and me in Pittsfield, Vermont. That is my favorite picture.People Along the WayMy memories of some of the people I met along the trail will always bring a smile to my face. Including all the people I met in the trail towns hikers pass through, I can honestly say there was only one person I met that I disliked. (Left Toe can fill you in on the specifics.) That is an incredible hit-ratio in favor of the goodness of man.I send out a special hello to my trail friends:Orono, Frosty, Lunatic, Apple, Splinter, Ron Franklin, Elmer, Sunny, Penn-J, Chestnut, Bluegrass, Sticker, Duece, Bob Peoples, Rambunny, Aqua, Caveman, Left Toe, Big Boots, Screech, The Karma Police, Lead Foot, Lightning, Old Spice, Indiana Toad, Chocolate Chipmunk, T&A (Tom & Anna), Dutch, Roy and the Cookie Lady, Rachel, Snuggles, Lingerer, Baggins, Wanderer (the first southbound hiker we met), Soares, Blondie, Hungry, Ninja, Alf, Canada, Thru Thinker, Duster, Houdini, Floyd, First Date and Hoover. I will remember you all.Most Inspiring SightI would have to say the most incredible human sight I saw on the trail came on June 4th in the middle of Pennsylvania. This is captured in one of my photos. On this day I met Beep-Beep, Girl with Flowers in her Hair and their parents, Veggie Mama and One Lucky Guy. This was a family of four, including girls aged 3 and 5 doing a 175 mile AT hike! This hiking family was going from PA to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia over 25 days. After meeting and chatting with them on the trail, I started northward again. I stopped and yelled back to them ¢do you mind if I take a picture of you?¢ Being with other people on the trail gives you someone to share the adventure with. Having those people be your immediate family, now that is the adventure of a lifetime! I will always wonder how those girls will turn out with an AT hiking experience like that at such a formative stage of their lives.Best Nature PictureOn April 24 I was with Penn-J and the Karma Police. We had set our alarms for an early start. Early enough to pack up our camp and hike 1.7 miles (in the dark) to McAfee Knob near Catawba, Virginia. Watching the sunrise from that cliff was an incredible experience. I got some great photos too.Hiking StatisticsFor all you quant jocks here are the numbers: I started on February 28, 2009 and finished on August 13, 2009, a total of 167 days. I took 25 days off along the trail. Fifteen of those were for my ¢sabbatical from my sabbatical¢ - a visit home and then an 8-day cruise to Alaska with Kate. I also came home for the Easter weekend in March and Shannon¢s birthday/graduation in June. I only took five days off while on the trail. I hiked a total of 142 days.My Average Miles/Day for Total Days: 2,178 Total Miles/167 Total Days = 13.04 mpdMy Average Miles/Day for Hiking Days: 2,178/142 Hiking Days= 15.34 mpdI had nine weeks of 100+ miles, five weeks in the 90s, three in the 80s, four in the 70s and one week of 63.8 miles. My biggest week was 145.7 miles (through Shenandoah National Park).During the 24 weeks of my trip, I hiked 7 days in 14 of those weeks, 6 days during four weeks, 5 days during three weeks, 4 days one week and two ¢zero¢ weeks during my sabbatical.My highest average mileage day of the week was on Saturdays (16.56 mpd).The lowest, Sunday (14.17 mpd). I wish I could say I was at mass.I hiked everyday from June 15 until August 13 (60 days) and averaged 14.91 mpd. Shocking to me is the fact that I averaged 15.66 mpd for the first 82 hiking days of my trip! That just shows the impact of ¢racing the flats¢ of Virginia with well-tuned trail legs and how much the terrain of New Hampshire and Maine slowed all hikers down.The Best QuestionEarly in my trip my friend Paul posed the following question to me. ¢How many days into your trip does the inner voice start to get quiet; and it becomes a silent one foot in front of another? Is it two weeks, two months or several months?¢I wrote that down in my travel journal and revisited it often. AT hikers typically hiked solo during the day and would catch up and re-engage with other hikers at the various shelters at night. This was my modus operandi during my hike. This gave me a lot of time to think. I was always thinking of something, but it was never so deep a thought that it caused me to trip on a root or walk off the trail. It was very rare for me to have negative thoughts for very long. (Why ruin an otherwise good day?)But if another hiker asked me what I thought about for the 9-12 hours I was out on the trail, I couldn¢t honestly recall even the major topics. I figured this was my inner voice going quiet.The great part about this was that I became more aware of the world around me. I was not John Muir, cataloging my discoveries, but rather I was just going with the flow. This calm frame of mind let me concentrate on the act of hiking. People ask ultrarunners what they think about during 50 or 100 mile races. Most would say ¢nothing;¢ but in their mind, they would constantly be checking the dials, the fuel level, the engine temperature and the wheels.Maybe this is why I never had an epiphany on the trail. I was just concentrating on being happy and doing my 15 miles a day.2009 Appalachian Trail StatisticsIf you haven¢t been, go and visit www.appalachiantrail.org This is the website for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Navigate around this, especially into the history of the trail. They publish Thru Hiker statistics; here are the 2009 stats up through 10/19/09:1,425 Hikers started at Springer Mountain, GA heading north100 had dropped out by Neels Gap, 30 miles into the hike.Only 911 made it to Fontana Dam in North Carolina, 160 miles into the AT.708 signed in at AT Headquarters in Harpers Ferry, WV, 1,000 miles into the AT.233 registered at Baxter State Park in Maine, climbed Katahdin and completed the entire 2,178 mile trail.I¢m proud to say I was the 124th hiker to sign it at Harpers Ferry and the 104th to summit Katahdin. I was one of the 16% of total hikers that started and finished the AT in 2009. In past years, the completion percentage is typically in the low 20%s. There won¢t be many more Northbound completions given weather conditions and the fact that they close camping in the Baxter State Park after October 15.As an aside, only 214 AT hikers started at Katahdin and are walking southbound. Six have finished, but most won¢t get to Georgia until November or December.My AdventureThe word adventure comes from the Latin ¢adventura,¢ which translates to ¢what must happen.¢ Sebastian Junger, the author of ¢A Perfect Storm¢ wrote ¢An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control.¢ Mountain climbers and firemen both enter into adventures when they do their thing. Mountaineers are heaped with glory for their accomplishments; firemen rarely so. Junger questioned this and wrote that ¢because it is not necessary, it is not heroic.¢ Hiking the Appalachian Trail may be as much adventure as most of us are given permission to pursue. There are many opportunities for something to go wrong on the trail. Sometimes they do, but the odds are small. AT hikers take on the incremental risks that comes with being away from the comforts of home. That risk is compounded by sharing the habitat of bears, moose and rattlesnakes. It may be adventurous, but it is certainly not heroic. I would suggest that the majority of the 1,425 northbound hikers that started the trail this year, knew the risks they were taking. These were not ¢Lewis and Clark¢ risks, but more than if they stayed home and went to work everyday.My AT thru-hike was an adventure because everyday was different. I had not seen 1% of the trail beforehand that I was to hike. Experiencing three snowstorms and the record levels of rain in the northeast did add some hardship and increased the risk of falls during my walk. But all things considered, hiking the Appalachian Trail was not that tough from a risk perspective. It was a mental challenge, no question, but except for one day in Tennessee, I was never close to throwing in the towel.Would I do it again?   That is an interesting question. Even if I had the time and had recently won the lottery, I honestly don¢t know if I would. I hiked in Tennessee with a hiker named, Chestnut, a mid-fifties, semi-retired electrical engineer. He had completed the AT three times and had done half of it another time. He got off the AT this April and flew out to San Diego to start the Pacific Crest Trail. This is 2,600 miles and goes from the Mexican border to the Canadian border in Washington State.I wished I had asked him why he did it the second time.Many ThanksI want to thank all of you, friends and family for following my walk on the Appalachian Trail. Your guest postings were a great pick-me-up elixir when I was able to read them on my blackberry at night. My master plan had always been to let all of you know what I was doing. Short of a compound fracture of a femur or a large animal bite, I knew there was no turning back with you following me. No one in their right mind would want to face that. If I had quit I would have to go through life as the second coming of Cubs fan, Steve Bartman.Thanks also to all those people who I didn¢t know before my hike and offered me just as much encouragement after meeting me on www.trailjournals.com. Welcome to the family.I extend a very special thank you to those friends who spent some time with me on the trail. While my typical hiking day was solo; those opportunities to hike with a friend for a day were an incredible pick-me-up. To those of you unfortunate enough to live close to the trail and dumb enough to take me home for a shower, a meal (or two), beers and a bed, I can¢t thank you enough. As much as I enjoyed the trail, I could never get enough of the creature comforts. There were also some friends that provided me rides home or to and from airports. Thank you for helping me reconnect with my family.To all of you, Thank you!Rich, Ed, Sonia, Mike, Bart, Danny, Kevin, Mike, Shannon, Blaine, Eric, Deb and Gary, Bob, Lenore, Kelly, Jim, Brian, B. Rubble, Christopher, Casey, Laura, Pat and David, Kevin, David, Karola, John, Chris, Anna, Noah, John, Heidi, Matt, Katie, Daddy Jack, Clue, Mom and Dad, the Lyness family (and their wonderful Fourth of July feast), Mary Pat, Stefan, Kerri, Mary, Maddie, Orono, Beth, Cammie, Lilly, Thru Thinker and family, Aunt Marcia, Ted, Lara, Fred and the Hurleys.Finally, a very special thanks to my immediate family. Only after returning from the trail did I come to realize the sacrifices you all made in my absence. Shannon and Chris, I understand the hardship you both endured of only having your Mom around for gas money (just kidding). Shannon it was great to share a week on the trail with you. Chris, I look forward to our Yosemite hike together next summer.Kate, you are the best! I¢ve heard from too many sources how many wives would never ¢allow¢ their husband to go away for 5 12 months. You strapped on the helmet and took all the reps! (pretty romantic, huh?) You¢ve always let me be me (within bounds) and I sincerely appreciate that. The federal deficit has nothing on the chits that I owe you. I truly love you.ConclusionWell was that epiphany or what?! I was on a roll. It was funny, that when I did my Journal entries from the trail, I was usually in a small town library, a hostel or a two-star hotel (at best). The computer was typically shared and sat in a heavy trafficked area. There was usually a seat close by that was always occupied by another hiker waiting to get on line. I always felt like a war correspondent trying to meet a deadline while not getting hit by shrapnel. Well, see what you get when you give me two months and a fully stocked kitchen only a flight of stairs away?! This journal entry is six pages long!Well, I think I¢ll stop here, but don¢t be surprised if I do an Epilogue II, now that I¢m on a roll.See you all down the trail.