Date: 2006-04-12
To: Me, Pre-AT
Miles today: 0.0

Let me tell you a little bit about myself and how I came to hike the Appalachian Trail. My name is Brownie (do you have any idea how many times a person has to repeat that phrase to make it sound natural?). I received my trailname on the second night of last year¢s Appalachian Trail adventure. At first I protested and rebuked the name, thinking it unnervingly girly, but it stuck and I¢ve grown to adore it. The first exposure I had to the idea of long-distance hiking came from the primitive resident Girl Scout camp I attended each summer as a girl. There I learned about outdoor cooking, low-impact practices and leave-no-trace camping. I went on miniature backpacking trips, learned to purify water, to pitch a tent and how to pack a pack. From the first summer I was in love. On one of these trips I met a hiker who claimed to have hiked from Georgia to Maine. I was shocked. Was that even possible? He regaled us with stories and anecdotes from his six month adventure. That one glimpse at the possibility of spending half a year in the woods was all I needed. I was hooked. At twelve I went home and told my parents I was going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trial. They smiled, probably thinking ¢this too will pass¢ and the idea remained quiet, brewing somewhere below the surface until my Junior year of college. I escaped the rigors of college to backpack as often as possible in the mountains of North and South Carolina. My fondness for the backpacking grew and I started making vague plans for a thru-hike on the AT.   I called home one fall and tentatively informed my parents I wanted to graduate early. This would mean attending summer school and overloading two semesters during my junior year at a University where a ¢normal¢ course load is understated as overwhelming. Naturally they wanted to know why I would inflict this upon myself. I sucked in my breath and explained that I wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail starting the March of my senior year. They were surprised and probably a little incredulous, but most importantly they were supportive. Painstakingly (but successfully), I completed two overloaded trimesters plus summer school. While most seniors were applying for jobs and looking at apartment ads, I was researching tents and water purifiers. I handed in my final term-papers and graduated college a semester early and was ready for a much-anticipated adventure. Planning and preparing for this hike had occupied the majority of my waking moments for the better part of the previous year. I obsessively packed and re-packed my gear, intent on somehow lessening my packweight without sacrificing a single item that I knew I needed. My tent was erected in the living room, my bedroom and the backyard. My initial food supply was counted, sorted, resorted, evaluated, weighed and repacked. During this time any unsuspecting person who came within a plausible conversation-holding distance of me was subjected to copious amounts of trail information, gear statistics and trail gossip. Finally March 15 arrived and I found myself standing in the parking lot at Amicalola State Park. Despite the innumerable hours I¢d spent preparing I suddenly felt completely inadequate to embark on this adventure. I mean, who walks 2200 miles? I discretely studied the hikers around me, convinced that each one was somehow more suited to this task. My prep work seemed inconsequential. Pushing those thoughts away, I hefted my pack from the car and joined the other hikers in the tradition of registering to thru-hike, weighing our packs, and taking the requisite pictures by the signs to the approach trail. With one final wave to my parents I took that first step toward Maine.