This forum will give her the most biased answer as most people in here will say “go for it”. Like Frazer said, she should ask in a family site that is neutral. The fact is the wife wants to be away for six months and it doesn’t matter if it is hiking the AT or desiring to enter a nun camp for six months.
h21
Any non-hiking forum could hardly be neutral on such a topic. Doing that would be similar to asking this forum if she should become a microbiologist in Ecuador. Microbiologists in Ecuador would encourage it, but this forum would be clueless and uninformed on such a topic.
NOLS instructors will tell you that you’ll get killed by bears or escaped convicts or wolf spiders. Nature laughs loudly at hierarchical human concepts such as “National” and “Outdoor Leadership,” but I digress.
Maybe by asking hikers if she should hike she’s looking for the support and encouragement she needs to make it happen.
Human beings are biased based upon who they are at the moment. Impartiality, neutrality and objectivity are myths.
You gotta do what you gotta do. Hike. You won’t regret it.
Brian