A WALK IN THE WOODS
The star of books and movies, the beautiful Appalachian Trail speaks to nature walkers, serious hikers, soul-searchers and adventurers. Whatever you’re looking for—you just might find it here.
I t stretches more than 2,180 miles, through 14 states, over some of the world’s oldest mountains, into forests thick with oak, across grassy balds dotted with huckleberry and into sheer wilderness. Its beauty will etch itself onto your heart, and its challenges may break it. The Appalachian Trail “has this aura about it,” says Executive Director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Ronald Tipton, 67, whose thru-hike (covering the entire trail in a single, long trip) at age 29 changed his life. “There’s no other hike like it in the world.”
Almost 3 million people a year walk some portion of the A.T., whether it’s a thru-hike, a one-mile loop on the River Trail in Falls Village, Conn., or the 870 miles Bill Bryson tramped in 1996 before documenting his experiences in
A Walk In the Woods, the New York Times bestseller soon to be released as a movie (see page 7). Yet only a small fraction—fewer than 1,000—complete the A.T. in any given year, including section hikers (people who hike in bits and pieces over months or decades). This year, some 3,000 people will set out to thru-hike, but barely a quarter will finish.
And yet people still set off into what Bryson calls “the vast tangled woods that have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years.” Why do they do it?
“If you talk to 100 hikers, they’ll have 100 reasons for being there, but they all tie in to finding the time and space to solve problems and emerge at the end completely different people,” says author David Brill, who thru-hiked in 1979.
Here are a few stories of the real people who have answered the call of the A.T.
THE WARRIORS
On Sean Gobin’s last day in the Marine Corps, he drove out the gates of Camp Lejeune and straight to Springer Mountain, Ga., the southern end of the A.T. “It was something I always wanted to do,” says Gobin, 39.
Then he started hiking. “I realized it was a transformative experience, especially coming off my third deployment,” he says. “The physical activity of hiking every day,
plus being out in nature, helped me destress mentally, physically and emotionally.” Even more restorative was the camaraderie he found with other hikers on the trail. “After three deployments, you’ve been exposed to the very worst of humanity. Meeting all these people who were so incredibly supportive really helped change my perspective on the inherent goodness in people.” Gobin completed the A.T. in October 2012, and went on to found the Warrior Hike “Walk Off the War” program, which provides equipment, supplies and support to a number of returning veterans each year so they can thru-hike the A.T. or one of five other National Scenic Trails in the U.S.
Vickie Holloway, 51, is a massage therapist from Clarksville, Tenn., whose husband, a Sergeant First Class with the Army’s Special Ops Aviation Regiment, is often deployed to unknown locations for 30 to 45 days at a time. To distract herself from his absence, she section-hiked 35 miles of the A.T. this summer with her dog, Max. The hike helped Holloway confront two of her greatest challenges: fear of the dark and shyness. The people she met on the trail and at the shelters were welcoming. “There’s something magical about the A.T.,” she says. “It’s beautiful and great for grounding.”
THE WILDERNESS LOVERS
Ron Tipton was already interested in environmental issues when he set out to thruhike the A.T. in 1978. But by the end of the hike he knew he wanted his future work to “be about protecting wild lands.”Two months after completing the trail, he took a job with The Wilderness Society. “I came full circle,” he says of the 35 years from his thru-hike to his position with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “I started at age 29 and spent my 30th birthday in a spring blizzard near Clingmans Dome [in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park]. It was a moment in life. It was extraordinarily life-changing. ” Sticking it out is a matter of “how much you want it.” As he marched through one of the coldest, wettest springs on record, he often thought, Why am I doing this?
“The end of that thought is I really want to. I want to be part of something unique.” Tipton was one of just 77 people to thru-hike that year.
David Brill’s thru-hike in 1979 at age 23 set the stage for a life-long love of wilderness. He has since hiked Mount Rainier and Mount Denali, and written books about his treks, As Far As the Eye Can See: Reflections of an Appalachian Trail Hiker (University of Tenn. Press) and Desire and Ice: A Search for Perspective Atop Denali (National Geographic).
Brill remembers “dazzling shooting stars” and sitting on a mountaintop with the fog layer 100 feet below, “as if someone had poured cream into a bowl of blueberries. There’s a strong spiritual component to hiking the trail,” he says. “Everybody awakens spiritually a bit.”
THE ‘BECAUSE IT’S THERE’ BACKPACKER
Last April, longtime hiker and outdoor sports enthusiast Ashli Baldwin, 26, quit her job at the outdoor co-op REI, shouldered her pack
and set off for the trail. Baldwin (trail name: “Katniss Neverclean”) expected the rigors of carrying a heavy pack, hiking difficult terrain and battling weather. But she wasn’t prepared for some of the mental challenges.
“When you’re hiking 20 miles a day it’s beautiful, but a lot of it is learning to be OK with being alone in your head,” Baldwin says. The hike changed her in ways she didn’t expect. “I’m much slower to make decisions; you learn that things tend to sort themselves out on their own. I’m much more self-assured.” And the friends and “trail family” she made along the way will stick with her for life. “There are no computers, no cellphones to distract you, so when you sit down to dinner at night you talk to each other about your experience that day, where you’re headed the next day. Your whole life encompasses something that sounds so simple, but it’s everything you have.”
THE BUCKET LIST HIKER
In 2013, Jane Congdon, 69, read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild chronicling the author’s thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, then devoured 38 other hiking books. “I was just fascinated,” she says. So she researched equipment, made a schedule, got a physical and, this year on March 30, stepped onto the A.T. with a friend.
After all the reading she’d done, Congdon thought she knew what to expect. “But I really didn’t know anything,” she says. She folded up her tent when it was still wet with rain, and spent the next night with water dripping onto her and her sleeping bag. She pushed so hard at first that she got exhausted and had to walk 20 steps, then rest, another 20 steps, then rest. She had to watch her feet every step to avoid tripping on the trail’s many rocks and roots. A month into the hike, her friend had to leave because of a family member’s illness. “The first night by myself, I woke up and thought, Do I really
want to do this hike alone?” In the morning, she pressed on. She had a token—a little blue stone with a rabbit etched on one side, a gift from a friend. “It was supposed to be some kind of spirit guide. So when my hiking partner left, I talked to the rabbit. I’d say, ‘Ms. Rabbit, that shelter ought to be over the next rise, don’t you think?’ We made it through the Smoky Mountains.”
And nothing prepared her for the experience of what she saw. “I will never look at a mountain the same way again.” Congdon (trail name: “E.B.” for “Earlybird”) had finished more than 800 miles of the trail at press time, and was heading back out to hike some more.