To the 2008 AT thru-hikers…
You are in for the most fantastic experience of your life.
Remarkable! Unbelievable! Confounding!
Every single thru-hiker I know, bar none, considers their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail to be one of the best, if not the best experience of their life.
It’s fantastic!
Sometimes I play Monday morning quarterback and think what a lucky soul I was to have had the experience of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Of all the remarkable experiences I’ve had in my short life I consider my thru-hike of the AT to have been the pinnacle. I’d met the best of people, the cream of society – the people who I’ve thought “got it”.
When you’re eighty years old and look back on your life, you are going to widely smile and think of your thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
You know, it’s about the experience. The people you meet. The breathtakingly beautiful scenery you’ll see. The things you’ll find out about yourself. It’s the remarkable sound of Mozart, the beauty of Halle Berry and stipilation of Van Gogh all rolled into one.
It’s fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!
Some, maybe most, could not describe why they were out on the AT in the beginning. Why they were heading along a path that went, well, seemingly forever? Into eternity?
Can you imagine more than 2000 miles?
It’s like hiking to Mars.
No, most can not imagine the distance. I certainly could not in the beginning. It’s in the realm of light years and millenniums and…
Well, not until you see someone having hand-written in chalk the numbers 2-0-0-0 in the middle of a road out in the boondocks. Yeah, simple little numbers carved into the pavement that you just happened to notice while your cruising past to the white blaze you’d seen on the other side of a road.
It still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. Seven years later.
I hadn’t even realized it had been that many miles.
I’d looked upon those numbers in the middle of the road with amazement –- astounded – with a buddy of mine who’d I’d met way down at Shenandoah in Virginia. Down there he’d fallen upon a big honking rock and had bounced his chest off the surface in a slip and fall, cracking a rib – having worn his New Balance just a touch too long, gotten them to be a little too slippery in the scheme of things.
Oh the sound – that thud – I still remember it loudly to this day. It hurts me to think about it.
He’d told me at the time that he’d thought he’d hurt himself.
Even after that injury, and his trip to the medical folks, I still could not keep up with his naturally torrid pace later on. His hiking pace. His fantastic desire to reach Katahdin.
And I guess my own.
I have had that pace in my life, in a past life, oh my, just not while hiking. He was driven. I’d just tagged along to make the miles. To my great benefit to hike alongside him.
And so many others.
More than a thousand miles later, way up in Maine, he would still hike me into the ground. I would be so out of breath hiking with him although he would not know that at the time. Each of us in the absolute best physical shape we could be in a lifetime – if we could dream of us in shape within a dream.
Ah, particularly with the distraction – Oh! The beauty of Maine in the autumn. I don’t think I’ve every seen anything so remarkably beautiful. Not Kauai, not Milford, not the Highlands. Absolutely every day astoundingly gorgeous, one day after the next.
I say to myself I am such a lucky guy. The most fortunate of souls. How could I have been so fortunate to have experienced this?
Along the way it was no longer the pace but rather the experience.
We had such a good time. What a good time we had.
I’d had the most remarkable experience. Met the best people of my life. Seen such memorable sights.
You are in for the most fantastic experience of your life.
I wish you the best of adventures.
Datto
Datto
