How Did I Get Here? My Trip to the Trail

I decided on March 24th, 2024 that I would thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

I know that because I started a journal that day and specifically noted the date–for posterity, I guess.

I knew if I was going to be serious about this, I’d have to commit myself. And that means telling people about it. Because telling people means I’m starting to not only realize the idea, but also holding myself accountable. Admittedly, this might not have been the first time I said “I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail.”

I think there has been a form of that on the back burner for the better part of the last decade–or even longer.  But this is the time it’s stuck.

I mean, I have all of my gear and I even have a room booked at Amicalola Falls Lodge.

Travel plans are set, and I’m only about 10 days away from the day I start driving down to Georgia. I’ll hit up a few of my old stomping grounds while I’m down that way, and then I’ll set off on a really long walk.

How did I get here?

Well, I’m a bit surprised it’s gone this far. Even after all of the prep of the previous year, I knew if I was going to be serious about my Appalachian Trail aspirations, I would have to get disciplined. And I’d have to get into shape. Years of sitting around have taken their toll. Reviewing video games is a mostly sedentary task. Except for the occasional 5+ mile walk around McCormick Place for various events throughout the year, I spent most of my time playing and writing about video games. 

It wasn’t just about getting in shape though. I knew I needed to make sure I could spend time out in the woods alone. I might have spent too much time watching videos about skinwalkers, but despite creeping myself out occasionally, staying outside by myself actually turned out to be kind of fun. And to get into shape, I created an elaborate training schedule, which I promptly threw out. 

That said, I did spend a lot of time last year hiking various parks around Illinois, and solo camping.

 

I discovered two things during this time:

The first thing is that people look at you funny if you’re hiking Illinois forest preserves with a stuffed ruck sack.

The second thing I learned is that racoons are assholes. Extremely smart, relentless assholes. 

The very first night I spent solo camping was in a park only a few miles from my house. You know, start small, right? I didn’t have all of the gear I have now, but the first thing I got was my tent. I’ll write more about my gear as The Day approaches, but most of what I had back then was old Army stuff. I even had a cooler with me to pack food in. Not exactly ultralight, but this trip was more of a proof of concept. 

Since I was staying out during a weeknight, I was mostly by myself. That also meant that the raccoons that usually eat campers’ food had slim pickings that night. Knowing that the clever jerks would easily get into my cooler, and since I didn’t have a car to lock it in, I decided to tape the cooler shut and go to sleep.

Problem solved, right?

I put the cooler next to the tent in hopes that my proximity would deter them.

Spoilers: it did not.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a racoon trying to wrestle the cooler open.

I said, “ Hey buddy, let’s not do that,” and he hissed in my face and scurried off.

Meanwhile, a headache I’d acquired earlier had evolved into a migraine as I slept. Waking up in pain, and having forgotten my migraine meds, I decided to walk to the shower house that was about a mile from my campsite. Securing the cooler shut with more tape, I stood alone in the empty shower building at 3am getting whatever relief I could from the water. 

I must have been standing in  that shower for an hour or longer. I got back to the campsite to see my cooler completely opened, and the culprit still sitting amongst a pile of Pop Tart wrappers. When he saw me, he grabbed the box and ran off into the woods, sitting about 20 feet inside the treeline, polishing off his ill gotten gains. I didn’t want the little guy to die from gorging himself on Pop Tarts, but by the time I went to scare him off, he had already finished them all.

The next morning as I was cleaning up pop tart wrappers, thinking my first night was a failure, I realized I actually learned some valuable lessons. 

Eventually I got into a routine. I would get a campsite on a weeknight, break camp in the morning and carry my gear with me as if I was on the trail, then set up camp again for that night. There aren’t any long distance trails near where I live, so this served as a way to get an approximation of what I’ll have to do. I also got to spend time in a lot of really cool parks throughout Illinois. My favorite was probably the Mississippi Palisades, though that park had some of the hardest trails I’ve ever hiked in my life.

On my first day of hiking the Mississippi Palisades trails, I passed a couple of park rangers who were standing and talking next to a trail head. I was wearing my full pack, and they watched as I walked past and got onto the trail. The elevation gain was so sudden that I did not make it to the top easily. In fact, I had to stop and rest only a few hundred feet from the trail head.

 I could still hear the rangers talking in the distance. I wanted to yell, “why didn’t you warn me??” but I caught my breath and got on my way. 

Even after hiking about 400 miles last year, I’m not sure I’m in the best shape I could be. I don’t know if I quite have my trail legs yet. But that’s okay. I’ll try to keep it slow, and hike at my own pace. It also helps that I swapped out most of my gear, reducing my base pack weight by almost twenty pounds, but I’ll get to that in my next post.