Don’t get me wrong, thru-hiking ('07) was perhaps the most rewarding and exciting experience of my life. But now that I am back to the daily grind, I can’t stay focused. I am constantly thinking about getting outside. And day hikes aren’t doing it for me. I kind of feel like a recovering drug addict. Once you know how good life can be on the trail, work life just doesn’t cut it anymore. Any sympathy?
TANK
We’re all there. Or maybe I should just speak for myself. Day hikes will never be enough for me, two week backpacks barely cut it. It’s the lifestyle, I think they put some kind of addicting substance in the white blazes.
Bluebearee
Did thru-hiking really “ruin you” or did it rather awaken you to the realization of the insanity of this materialistic world? Its hard for many thru-hikers to “re-enter” society after seeing how simple and beautiful and real an extended experience on the Trail can be. For me the most difficult part of “re-entry” is the mundane, monotonous day after day experience in society versus the fact that every day is new and different and full of adventure on the Trail. Also, it seems that most of our personal relationships in society are fairly superficial, whereas on the Trail, there is a genuine comraderie with a deeper connection with eachother.
I recently finished the book “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Works in her own Words.” The author, Mildred Norman, was the 1st female A.T. thru-hiker ('52) and after her thru-hike she embarded on a 28 year Pilgrimage for Peace. She criss-crossed the country 7 times (walking over 50,000 miles in the process) without any possessions or money. Its a remarkable book of a person who literally dropped everything in persuit of a spiritual calling. If you like “Walden” by Thoreau, you’ll love this book. Happy Trails!
freebird
I’m feelin’ it too. Ever since my first hike in '05 (PCT) I’ve been day dreaming at work. I did a hike again this last summer and it was great but it made going back to civilization even more difficult. For me the funny thing is that I don’t see the need in changing my clothes (except undergarments). i wear the same three outfits all the time. and weekend trips, overnights, weeklong trips don’t quite cut it. In such a short time and knowing exactly when you’ll be coming back stops the whole change of lifestyle experience from taking affect. shorter trips a still great, but just different. Speaking of shorter trips, I’m planning on doing the Long Trail this summer '08 and have a friend doing the PCT this coming summer and I’m planing to hike with him some. hope to see you guys out there!
banjo boy (hiker miker)
TANK…first off, I hiked with you and your brother for a few days this summer in the new york area. Remember we tried to order pizza at RPH shelter but it was sunday? anyway…I finished my thru-hike and am also in the same predicament. I couldn’t wait to be finished at the time. I was miserable and tired of hiking. now…after being in grad school for a little over a semester, all I want is to get back out there and thru-hike again. Maybe I should take a page out of Skurka’s book and just become a professional thru-hiker.
bottom line…I’m right there with you man. Especially when I read all the journals on here about people prepping for their '08 thru-hikes. Makes me a bit jealous and long for another thru-hike of my own.
-lakewood
lakewood
I’m getting ready to start my thru-hike in 2 months. Reading your guys’ posts really gets me excited for what’s in store for me over the next 8 months. I haven’t been on the trail yet, but all I can think about is being out there on it. In addition, once my hike is over, I know I’ll be right where you guys are now. Knowing that will make me savor my hike even more.
Amphibious D
Good luck to everyone starting a thru-hike this year. You’re in for the time of your life. There will be plenty of down times, like when its cold and rainy or when your feet feel like they are falling off, but like the others here have said, you will remember it for the rest of your life. And yes, the trail ruined me too. Life will never be the same afterwards!
Gusty
Do what I did!..retire!..not old enough?..retire anyway and come hike with me this year on the PCT!..I have been back from my AT thru about four months and can’t stand it!..got a clearance from my doctor today to go hike…hope my other doctors say the same thing!!!gonna be out of here by the third week of April to do the PCT…
Bob Davies (JB)
Do what I did!..retire!..not old enough?..retire anyway and come hike with me this year on the PCT!..I have been back from my AT thru about four months and can’t stand it!..got a clearance from my doctor today to go hike…hope my other doctors say the same thing!!!gonna be out of here by the third week of April to do the PCT…
Bob Davies (JB)
I am 58 and have been a card carrying productive responsible adult for some time now. In April I hit the approach trail heading to Katahdin. I plan on getting ruined.
aboman
Best of adventures to you aboman. Have the most fantastic experience on the Appalachian Trail!
Datto
Datto
Ahh Tank. You have touched upon that which I think a few, maybe many, of us AT thru-hikers have experienced. That feeling our natural state is elsewhere from the daily grind. That life is so important, that time spent and experience is so valuable.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before but one of the reasons I ended up thru-hiking the AT was due to one of the first people who had written an on-line AT journal. I was following up with some kind of adult website visit trackdown by the corporate executives where I worked and in my search of websites I’d encountered, by chance, an entry from a woman who was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.
By chance.
I ended up following her thru-hike the entire year. Total rapture in her experience and the writing she could do to describe what it was like.
She was 95 miles short of finishing when her leave of absence was over from her job (despite all the body English I gave over the Internet to get her going faster in Virginia). She ran up-trail and summitted Katahdin on a rainy cold weekend with her family and then – and then !! – started back in her job the very next Monday. One day after climbing Katahdin. Right off the Trail.
Holy cow. Can you believe it? Right off the Trail she went back to work.
I corresponded with her following her thru-hike. She’d told me she was in tears for the first 30 days after coming back from the Trail into her old job. The absolutely positive fantastic experience of the Appalachian Trail and then bam! Back at work.
I still think of her as being such an AT pioneer. I mean, so few at that time had written daily on the Internet about what an AT thru-hike was about and she was so adept at telling me, and so many others I imagine, what it was like to be in the woods for six months thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail with a small cadre of others.
She went back and finished that last 95 miles the following year.
You could not help but feel such great happiness and joy from reading her journal and about her experience on the AT.
I remember seeing her later in-person at Damascus one year during Traildays. Me being a shy one I never went up and talked to her. I should have. I wish I would have done so, particularly after my own thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
I just don’t think there is any other more positive experience a person can have than thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I am one who has had the most fantastic and fortunate of lives and I can say thru-hiking the Appalachian trail is just magnificient! Sensational! Something you remember every day for the rest of your life.
I think I may be preaching to the choir! Ha.
Datto
Datto
Datto
I feel so lucky after hearing about the thruhiker you described. I thruhiked in 05 and had to finish in 4 months because of a leave of absence. I had several hospital stays due to injury and ended up in a race to finish on time. I ended up hiking the big K with my son two days before going back to work. It was so hard going back to work a day later but I had made it. I just do not know how I could have dealt with not finishing.
Steady On
Steady On
Having recovered from a serious illness, I suddenly realized I could have fallen without experiencing true exhilaration. I backpacked the AT and never looked back.
I often jokingly tell people I hike because it’s the only thing I CAN do. I can’t hit a golf ball, drive a nail straight, etc. But it is more than that. I think it’s the freedom…visiting the outdoors, the hills, woods and swamps…while answering to no one but yourself.
I am fortunate in that I have a wife that understands how much hiking means to me. Although she often refers to me as being a member of a “cult” she knows me well enough not to let my absences bother her.
Tank, I hope you can find a way to fly.
skeemer
You aren’t alone. It is very hard to go back to the mundane world after having known the freedom of thruhiking.
My solution was to work for a few years, save more money and go back out again. And Again. And Again. The time I spend working and saving money makes the time I have on the trail all the sweeter. I’ll never have much money in the bank, but I’ve had a very rich life.
Ginny
Oh man, this thread really hits home! After knocking off about 2000 miles of the PCT in 02 I had a tough time re-adjusting to society, everything and everyone seemed bloated and superficial! Well, now I’m 32 and have a wife and two year old daughter, also a mortgage and other expenses… totally different life… I just feel so far away from the trail! Still, there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about the trail, especially when spring starts rolling around.
In fact, the thought of not being able to hike for extended periods of time each year bothered me so much that before I got married 3 years ago, I decided to eventually leave the unfulfilling life I had in the IT field and embark upon getting my masters degree in history by going full time at night while also working…. Well, 3 years later ( during which I bitched constantly, brutally self examing myself- like “why in god’s name am I going to school again full time at 30 when I don’t really have too?”- raising a family, plus commuting a total of two hours a day!) I think though all that extra work though is going to pay off. I now only have my field examinations left, which I’ll do in the spring, and I’m done. I have a position lined up teaching American history at a local community college for Fall of 08. So this summer, me and my buddy (who’s also a teacher) are going to knock off the long trail. I’ll be gone for a total of 25 days and hope to recapture, at least in a small sense, what it feels to be out there for a long time.
Although the last two years I’ve been on a 4 nighter in Yellowstone with my wife (who is an avid hiker herself, came with me on our almost thru of the PCT in 02) and then 10 month old daughter. Then last year I did a 5 nighter in glacier with the wife and daughter. Probably will have to wait until my daughter is 6 or 7 before she could do a two weeker with me.
ldhiker
What a great thread… TANK, I hear ya brother. This bit of verse sums it up a little:
Quote from Francis Parkman – the great 19th century historian of the “American Wilderness”
“To him who has once tasted the reckless independence, the haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible freedom, which the forest life engenders, civilization thenceforth seems flat and stale. Its pleasures are insipid, its pursuits wearisome, its conventionalities, duties, and wutual dependences alike tedious and disgusting.The wilderness, rough, harsh, inexorable, has charms more potent in their seductive influence than all the lures of luxury and sloth. And often he on whom it has cast its
magic finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and remains a wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour of his death.”.
I went back to work 10 days after my 2007 thru hike and I definitely know now a bit more wandering is in store for me.
Easy Strider
This is a great thread! Thruhiking changed my life and I too, have a exper. many of the changes brought about through the transcendence of the exper. After consulting numerous mental health professionals over the years(many I might add, quite envious of my adventures and discoveries early in life), they labeled me maladjusted, Well folks, i just replied that, yes indeed, I am very happily maladjusted and quite content. The thruhike esper. will change your perception, and the extent of that perceptual change you can integrate into everyday existence is very much up to the indiv. needs. Maybe there will be studies conducted on the transcendent exper. of distance hiking, maybe not. But all who have done this have a “knowing” beyond the evryday esteem valuations of society. May integration be part of the cont. journey!
mike
This is a great thread! Thruhiking changed my life and I too, have a exper. many of the changes brought about through the transcendence of the exper. After consulting numerous mental health professionals over the years(many I might add, quite envious of my adventures and discoveries early in life), they labeled me maladjusted, Well folks, i just replied that, yes indeed, I am very happily maladjusted and quite content. The thruhike esper. will change your perception, and the extent of that perceptual change you can integrate into everyday existence is very much up to the indiv. needs. Maybe there will be studies conducted on the transcendent exper. of distance hiking, maybe not. But all who have done this have a “knowing” beyond the evryday esteem valuations of society. May integration be part of the cont. journey!
mike
