A lot of people have structured their lives so that long distance hiking is a central part of it. Warren and his 13 hikes, Jack and his seven, Yogi and her five years on the trail, there are many more. There are ways to live cheaply and hike every year or every other year. Trouble is, that can be very hard on the body after a while and you may end up burning out either physically or emotionally. I’ve known a couple of multiple hikers who ended up hating hiking.
For me, I find I do best if I have a break between hikes. We did the PCT right after the CDT and I didn’t have the same kind of enthusiasm for the hike that I did before. I kept thinking, “This isn’t as good as the hike last year.” If we had waited a year or two, I would have been eager to get out again, and I think I would have enjoyed it more. I did end up being happy there, but it took a while to get into the groove. I’ve known a few AT hikers who said, “The people this year aren’t as cool as the ones I knew last year.” Again, if they had waited, the memories would have dimmed a bit and they probably would have appreciated the new people as much or more than the old. Right now, we are preparing for our next long hike and I am as excited as if I had never done a long hike. I have the advantage of a repeat hiker of being relaxed about the fact that I know I can do it and that I will go with the flow and accept whatever comes, but the enthusiasm of a total newbie. For me, best of both worlds.
If you wait a year or two you have the benefit of being able to earn enough money to enjoy a comfortable hike with any extras that you choose to pursue. You also have the chance to establish real connections where you are. The trouble with living temporary, just waiting for the next big adventure, is you don’t make strong connections where you are. You might be missing out on good friendships or lovers or other experiences because you are living so much in past and future that you aren’t living in the present.
The disadvantage of waiting is that you have to disrupt your life completely every few years. That is hard. Putting all your stuff in storage, quitting your job, leaving your friends – and then coming back and starting over looking for a new home, new job, new friends. That is not easy, at least for me. That’s why we did the back to back hikes of the CDT and PCT; we figured that as long as our stuff was all in storage, we might as well go now. This next hike is going to be really complicated since we have bought a house in the meantime.
For us, our in between times have been good. We still would rather be thruhiking, but we have been able to do vacations to Alaska, Canada, the Beartooths, etc. as well as hiking every weekend in PA, VA and MD. So life is good. But we are counting down the days until we get out again.
Ginny
