There is no “done”: Reflections on a completed Appalachian Trail thru-hike (2022)

The Ghost of Habit

I woke up this morning and, acting on pure muscle memory, tapped the weather app on my smartphone. As I stared into the blue light, a sigh escaped me: four of the next ten days were forecasted to be rainy.

On the trail, there is nothing quite as soul-crushing as a forecast filled with rain clouds and lightning bolts. To a thru-hiker, rain isn't just weather; it's a catalyst for misery:

• Physical Pain: Walking for hours on shriveled, pruned feet encased in sodden socks.
• Olfactory Assault: Everything you own smelling like a wet dog until the next town—which could be days away.

I blinked, stretched, and tried to run the mental calculations to figure out my current coordinates and my next destination. Then, it hit me. I was lying on a real mattress with real sheets. The most strenuous journey of my day would be the short walk to the mailbox.

I had reached the summit of Katahdin. I had finished the thru-hike. I was back home in Virginia. Most importantly, I realized I never had to hike in the rain again unless I explicitly chose to.

(And let me be clear: I do not choose to.)

The Silence of the Blog

You wouldn't know any of this from my online presence. My last update was four months and roughly $1,800$ miles ago. Back then, I was still fueled by a level of enthusiasm that framed rain as a "novelty" or a "challenge" rather than the grueling inconvenience it actually is.

Once I hit Virginia, the pace shifted. My daily existence became a repetitive cycle of endurance:

I toyed with the idea of blogging. I wrote a few scattered paragraphs, but by the time I reached New Jersey, I realized I simply lacked the cognitive bandwidth to form a coherent sentence. I needed to be done before I could speak.

The Paradox of Joyful Suffering

Now that I am cocooned in the luxury of four walls and dry toes, I am trying to translate the last five-and-a-half months into language. The word "Hard" is the only one that fits, yet it is entirely insufficient.

How do you describe the $\text{Physical} + \text{Emotional} + \text{Spiritual}$ cycle of breaking and healing? How do you explain the "joyful suffering"—that bizarre paradox where misery and ecstasy coexist?

"I cannot describe the agony of walking twenty miles through driving rain to someone who has not walked twenty miles through driving rain."

There are things that simply cannot be communicated to the uninitiated:

1. The sheer awe of a rainbow sunrise atop a mountain.
2. The "trail magic" of timing: arriving at a shelter seconds before the clouds burst.
3. The strange luck of my friend, Red Panda, who seemed to find cash on the ground whenever his wallet ran dry.
4. The spiritual visits from my late father, who appeared as an owl, hooting softly above my tent until I drifted off to sleep.

Without these experiences, I sound like someone who has spent far too much time in the wilderness.

Grief as a Compass

After my father passed away, the fundamental order of my world shifted. His death was a tsunami that demolished my beliefs about stability and control. Grief taught me a brutal but necessary lesson: do not just expect the unexpected—accept it.

This mindset was the best preparation I could have had for the Appalachian Trail. Every single day presented a hurdle I didn't want to face:

• Weather I hated.
• Terrain I dreaded.
• Mountains I didn't want to climb.
• Sickness and injury.
• Chronic exhaustion.

I realized that the common thread between thru-hiking and grief is the necessity of accepting what is rather than what should be.

The Case of Mahoosuc Notch

I spent an entire week panicking about Mahoosuc Notch—a mile-long field of boulders. I am not a natural climber. I obsessed over my map, searching for any blue-blazed bypass to avoid the Notch. There were none.

I emerged from the Notch a bit shaken and bruised, but I survived.

The Only Way Out is Through

When I started in March, I told everyone—and myself—that I was hiking to "deal" with my grief. In reality, I was processing trying to distract myself from it.

Logically, I knew that the only way to move past a feeling is to let it consume you fully. But grief is a soul-deep sorrow; when it reaches its peak, it leaves you breathless and wondering if you will survive the intensity. Choosing to feel that is an act of immense difficulty.

However, the trail strips you naked. When you spend hours alone in the woods focused on primitive survival, the "real world" shell vanishes. I used to be the person who:

• Smiled through the pain.
• Pretended my emotions weren't that deep.
• Acted "okay" when I was falling apart.

On the trail, that facade was impossible to maintain. Everything had to come out: the anger, the fear, the joy, and the grief.

The ultimate lesson in acceptance: If I wanted to finish this hike, I could not afford to be numb. I couldn't spend every waking hour with my thoughts and still suppress the one tragedy that defined them.

It is a strange, vulnerable feeling to sob uncontrollably in the middle of the forest. At first, I felt exposed and embarrassed...