What I learned

I don't want that last post to be the last thing on here -- it really is a downer, and I'm really not that depressed. Everyone has post-hike blues, and I'm no exception. I did want to put on here, though, some of the things I've tried to take away from the hike.

1) Hike Your Own Hike.
This is the single biggest cliche you hear among hikers. But like most cliches, it is a cliche because it's true. The point of it is that there's no "right" way to hike: you have to decide for yourself whether you want to hike fast or slow, alone or in a group, etc. You can get advice; but ultimately you're the one who has to do the miles. The life applications are, I suppose, obvious.

2) Keep Your Pack Light.
When I was taking all my stuff out of storage after I got back, it amazed me how much crap I own. And not possessions: I mean crap. Useless stuff that I don't need. I've also started to think about what else I've been carrying that I don't need: habits, ideas, beliefs ...

3) Enjoy Every Sandwich.
You don't appreciate warmth until you've been cold, and you don't appreciate getting a ride into town until you've spent the last three days walking on a foot that feels like someone jabbed an icepick in it. Life really is simple. You're warm, dry, fed and safe? Be happy.

4) Embrace the Suck.
I learned to accept the fatigue and the hunger, not merely because they made sleeping and being fed that much nicer, but on their own terms. Life is not all about the great moments, and for every ten minutes I spent on a mountaintop, I spent ten hours walking through boring forest. For every cool mountain stream I could dip my feet into, there were miles and miles where I was soaked to the skin in my own sweat. For every time I had a really cool human experience, I spent an afternoon trudging alone, wondering why I don't have more friends, or a hiking partner, or a girl.

You can deny those realities, pretending you don't think what you think or feel what you feel, or you can accept that this also is life, and take pride in the fact that as miserable as you are, you're still in the game -- that indeed, your misery is something to be proud of, because it's a misery so many others proved unable to face.



So there you go: I spend six months walking through the forest, and I come back with four trite, schlocky slogans.

It was worth it.

Three Months Later

A lot of people (by "a lot" I mean, like, three) have asked me why I never put a summary posting for my hike, a sort of valedictory summation of the whole thing. What grand insights into life have I gotten from the hike?

I wanted to write that up. I meant to. But every time I even though about it, it was just profoundly depressing.

When I was heading back to the trail out of Gatlinburg, I caught a ride with a guy I met at the outfitter. He’d done a thru-hike several years ago, so we swapped stories. As the truck was getting up to Newfound Gap, where he’d be letting me off, he started talking about how much he envied me. “Man, enjoy your hike, ‘cause after you’re done, life just sucks in comparison. I’m not complaining about life – I’ve got a girlfriend and a good job and all, but nothing you ever do is going to be this awesome. You’re gonna finish, and be depressed for a year.”


He pissed me off ... mostly because I knew that he was right.

Real life does suck in comparison, and I have been depressed for the last three months.

I’ve told a lot of people that during the last two months of the hike, I wanted nothing more than to be finished with the damn trail; but that after two weeks, I wanted nothing more than to be back. Of course, if I did go back, that enthusiasm would last about three days, and I’d again be pining for a refrigerator.

What I want to go back to is not the trail itself, but the summer of 2008. I want to go back to the handful of moments on the trail that will be forever burned in my memory: Mt. Moosilauke; walking into Damascus for the first time; Cool Breeze pulling up in that SUV; Raffle Queen and Lipstick showing up, repeatedly, just when I needed them to; hearing my name called out as I summitted Katahdin. Those were some of the best moments of my life, and I want to live in those moments, the way other people would, if they could, live forever in their honeymoon or at the birth of their children. When I was a kid, I would reread my favorite books again and again.

The problem is, of course, that while you can read those stories again, you can never read them again for the first time. And I can never again climb Clingman’s Dome for the first time.

Shit, this is gotta be a downer to read. But there it is.