Good Thing I Was an Idiot: The Real Reason I Hiked the Appalachian Trail

Why did I get into thru-hiking? People always ask me this, and it’s a fair question, considering I see thru-hiking as a core part of my identity.

I can name lots of reasons off the top of my head: I wanted to get stronger, I wanted to prove that I was capable of anything, I just really liked walking.

All those things are true, but none of them are the actual reason I set out on the Appalachian Trail. The truth? I didn’t know what else to do. In spring 2018 I was 23, aimless, and afraid to commit to a long-term relationship or career path. I wasn’t sure who I was or what I wanted from life.

 In short, the AT was a way to kick the Adulting Can six months further down the road, having deemed the four-year punt I gave it by attending university insufficient.

Pro tip: Not sure what to do with your life? Why not put your world in a backpack and spend six months trekking through the mountains and sleeping in the dirt every night? Nothing could go wrong! I was a bit too naïve to appreciate the sheer audacity of it.

Send it!

Good thing I was such an idiot. If I hadn’t been, I’d be living a different life right now.

Back then a five-year plan felt out of reach, but thru-hiking would at least give me a six-month plan, and that was something … right? Right?

Planning to thru-hike is quite the undertaking. It was a goal that I could shape my life around, giving me structure and purpose as I bent all my passion and focus to the task of getting trail-ready.

What would happen post-AT? I had no idea, but I presumed I would figure it out somewhere between Georgia and Maine. Epiphany would strike me like a lightning bolt, and my life’s purpose would magically become clear. Yes, that seemed likely.

With that excellent plan settled, I figured there was no need to think any more about my long-term future. So I squeezed all future-related anxiety into a tiny little box that I pushed deep down into the darkest, most cobwebby recesses of my mind and focused instead on the daunting but still much more fun task at hand: figure out how to hike from Georgia to Maine.

Looking back now, I’m amazed by how easily I made this choice, considering all that I was sacrificing. Hiking the AT meant giving up my apartment and most of my belongings, quitting a stable government job, turning down a place in a promising Master’s program, and breaking up with a good and reliable man who, according to Facebook, went on in subsequent years to grow a really and truly excellent beard.

At 23 I may have felt aimless and dissatisfied, but I had the makings of a decent life. And I just casually walked away from all of it like it meant nothing.

Life Lesson: There Is More to Life Than Men With Good Beards

Thank goodness I was such an idiot. If I hadn’t been, I might have let fear and conformity guide me down a more sensible path, away from audacity and adventure and desperate leaps of faith. If you asked me today to choose between the life I suppose I could have had and the one I actually have, I wouldn’t hesitate. I would choose my current life every time. I love my life. And none of it would have come to pass without the AT.

Admittedly, this all comes from a place of extraordinary privilege. Middle-class white girl brushes off her advantageous but “unfulfilling” life so she can go find her true self in nature. Yippee, I’d like my gold star and smiley face now please!

Yet it does take some courage to jump without being able to see where you’ll land. Maybe I didn’t know where life would take me post-trail, but I had a vague idea that I wanted a change. I at least knew what I didn’t want and acted on that knowledge.

I didn’t want to go on living in the endless suburbs of northern Virginia, wasting 90 minutes each day commuting to and from a dingy cubicle farm in some forsaken outpost of the US government and spending my free time on Tinder dates with dull men who also work in cubicles (beard potential notwithstanding).

Nope, I wanted more, whatever that meant, and I was all too willing to leave everything behind to get it.

Roth IRA? More like Roth IR-NO-WAY, Amirite?

Good thing I was an idiot.

The AT changed everything for me: it made me a more confident person. It taught me to think outside the box and finally imagine more for myself than the traditional 9-5.

That hoped-for epiphany never materialized while I was hiking, go figure. But life did its magic life thing and piece by piece, things fell into place anyway. After the trail I was so obsessed with hiking that I started writing for this super cool website called The Trek just to stay in touch with the community. One thing led to another and now I am full-time employed by said super cool website.

If I had been more sensible, more appreciative, more literate about the advantages of a good 401k, who knows where I would be now. I wouldn’t be typing up stories from a sun-drenched patio in Bosnia, that’s for sure.

Because I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I now get paid to test backpacking gear, write about hiking, and chat up fellow thru-hikers every day.

Because I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I have the flexibility to travel the world while I work (and, yes, contribute to my retirement at the same time).

And because I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I now question the limitations society places on me in all aspects of life. I am freer, more creative, and more agile as a result.

Time To Humble Brag!

The epiphany didn’t come during my six months on the trail. Instead, it’s been an unfolding revelation six years in the making. Through a combination of luck and courage and an incredible amount of privilege, it all worked out. Or at least it has so far.

Someone recently shared with me this quote by John C. Maxwell: “Nobody ever got ready by waiting. You only get ready by starting.” We don’t always have the longed-for roadmap from where we are to where we want to go. Heck, sometimes we don’t even know where we want to go — but that doesn’t mean we should just stand still.

I started by moving away from where I was, where I knew I didn’t want to be, and figured out my destination along the way. Actually, I’m still figuring out the destination, but I at least know I like my general heading at this point.

And that’s OK. Because life is short, it’s meandering, and it’s not a foregone conclusion. Sometimes you just have to Send It.

So yes, in conclusion: good thing I was an idiot.