Methods of Motivation: Overcoming the Mental Battle

As I’ve continued to research and prepare for my thru-hike, the one thing I fear the most is the mental battle. I’ve experienced several times what it’s like to fight against my wants and I know what it feels like to admit defeat. It might feel negative or like a mistake in the moment, but it’s merely a time of potential growth. It’s up to you weither you treat it like a building block or a mallet. In this post, I will discuss the lessons I have learned and the methods that motivate me to continue when everything in my body is screaming at me to quit.

The Lesson of Suffering

My time with the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) taught me several lessons. Firstly, they showed me how much suffering a human being can go through. This is not an exaggeration. Trail work is tough and it demands everything from you. Those who work or have worked in the conservation field generally know that MCC is one of the more hardcore conservation corps. I had no idea what I was signing up for.

I knew someone who worked for the Southwest Conservation Corps and he said that he got to sit and count how many people he encountered on trail. Meanwhile, I removed downed trees, built new trails, created retainment walls, fortified switchbacks, and lopped overgrown brush. There were some days that when I saw that I had another hill to climb, I sat down and sobbed. I wanted to quit several times due to a variety of factors, but never did.

While hard to see, this is a retainment wall that I built over several days (3 layers deep). It was necessary because a Ponderosa tree uprooted and destabilized the hillside. I climbed all over searching for the perfect rocks to use.

At the end of the season, during the typical Americorps graduation ceremony, a former MCCer got up and made the most profound statement: “You have suffered. Trail work is rough. Just know going into the future that the suffering you experienced will be your greatest strength because none of the other bullshit you’ll experience can compare.” It’s been a year and a half since I heard those words and in moments of weakness, I reflect on what he said and keep on fighting.

Here’s Some Advice

In my short time on this planet, I have come to realize that life is filled with challenges. It wouldn’t be called life if there weren’t. If you are someone who hasn’t experienced a life changing moment filled with the lowest of lows and highest of highs, it’s coming. When it does, embrace it. When it came for me in the summer of 2022, I really struggled with the experience. Several times, I wanted nothing to do with it. I can imagine the Appalachian Trail will be the same.

Additionally, know what battles to fight and when to back away. It’s not a weakness knowing and testing your boundaries. Pushing through the hardships that came with trail work worked well for me and I was able to grow. In other cases, when I stuck it up, my mental health and emotional wellbeing suffered. Unfortunately, it’s trail and error and only you know what works best for you. Just note that admitting defeat can be the best option.

How Does This Relate to the AT?

Bruh, if you think thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail is all butterflies and rainbows, you are romaticizing way too hard. I have accepted that my days won’t always go the way I planned. Weither I take it in grace is a whole other conversation. My body will be in pain and I’m going to question why I did this – voluntarily I may add. The suffering I’ll experience will be rough, but if I can push through, I’ll be a better person than when I started.

The Lesson of Flexibility

The ability to accept change is a hard lesson to learn. I move two to three times a year doing different jobs each time and change is a hard pill to swallow even still. It’s human nature to resist it. I have many experiences that I can speak on to drive home how important it is to be flexible in certain situations. Let me discuss one that applies to the AT.

My found family on our last full hitch at the intersection of Deadman Creek Trail and the Rainbow Ridge Ridgeline. This was the moment our journey came full circle. We started the 2022 season on Deadman Creek and ended there in October. Left: Delia Kail. Middle: Morgan Schmidt. Right: Joey Morgan.

My first exposure to backpacking was when I began working for MCC and it was there that I learned the importance of making a list. During orientation, a senior crew lead said, “If you want this season to be successful, you need to write down what you want out of this experience. This season will test you and you’ll need to fall back onto why you’re doing it.” That advice stuck with me, but I never did write a list. Generally, I was doing it to get good views, explore a new part of the country, and to lose weight. Spoiler alert: those three reasons to keep going did not hold up.

Halfway through the season, I realized that my reasons meant nothing to me. I was burnt out and frustrated with the lack of leadership and support. Since my reasons for staying held no sway, I was ready to leave, right? No. Turns out, my reasons for being there simply changed. By that point, two things kept me going: the family I found within my crewmates and the glow-in-the-dark MCC Nalgene water bottle that’d be gifted at the end of the season. That’s it.

Connection to the Appalachian Trail

Currently, I have sixteen reasons to hike the Appalachian Trail. Experience tells me that some won’t mean anything to me halfway through. Experience also tells me that my reasons for being out on trail will change. I’ll need to be flexible in whatever is thrown my way. During the many long hours of time that I’ll be able to ponder life choices, if a new reason pops up, I need to write it down. The list I’m starting off with isn’t set in stone and will need to change as I change as well.

The Lesson of Small Steps and Breaths

The lesson of small steps and breaths can be taken metaphorically or quite literally. It’s akin to, “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” Our society is very much go go go and it can be hard to pull back and ‘take in the view.’ Similarly, we, as humans, have a nasty habit of seeing in black and white; that we take in life as a masterpiece or fully focused on the details. It needs to be a spectrum and a balancing act. Let me elaborate.

The Issue of the Big Picture

When I first started to get serious about hiking, I had absolutely no pace control. I would hike as fast as I could to keep up with the people I was hiking with and/or to get to the best views/end. The journey wan’t important – only the end goal was. Was this method sustainable? Hell no. I would take twenty steps uphill before needing to stop and catch my breath or wait for the pain in my calves to stop. A good friend of mine said I should try taking smaller steps and slowing my pace to minimize my stopping time. It felt stupid when I hit portions of trail where I was moving at half a mile an hour and watching myself move heel toe heel toe, but it worked.

Another example I can use are my routine moving trips across the country. I have done this so often that I hate being in a car for more than an hour. Somedays, I just hate being in a car. On these trips, I put in at least ten hour days. When I first started doing them, it was up in the fourteen to eighteen hour range. I started to loathe them because the destination was so far away and all I wanted to do was get there.

Me at Devils Tower National Monument on my way to Oklahoma. Anybody else take weird pictures on purpose?

Ever since last year, I realized that I couldn’t keep doing this sprint to a new destination. Since then, I break down my route and add in places of interest. For me, a new destination every two to four hours works best. On my way back from my season at Glacier National Park, I went to The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Montana, Devils Tower National Monument in Devils Tower, Wyoming, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Harrison, Nebraska, and a Chipotle in Wichita, Kansas. These places gave me something to look forward to as I continued towards my destination.

The Detailed Problems

I’ve had several months to think about how I want to approach my Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Unfortunately, I tend to go back and forth in what I want to do – even when I’ve invested time and money into a plan. The one aspect that I’ve struggled with the most has been food resupply.

In December, I made the unpopular decision that I will dehydrate my meals and ship them to me on trail. I did this for both financial and health reasons. I dedicated several hours to this endeavor. On the positive side, this task kept me busy. On the negative side, I stressed myself out in the extreme. Questions like “Did I dehydrate this properly?”, “Is anything going to spoil?”, and “Where am I going to resupply?” plagued my mind on repeat. Still kind of does. I focused so much on the details that I was causing a headache. It took me a while to see that I needed to back away and view this from a different perspective.

Finding Harmony

The examples I shared have two things in common: (1) they were all taken as extremes and (2) were helped when I backed away and viewed them from a different perspective. The AT will provide me with more experiences that will need to be balanced out if I want my thru-hike to be successful. That’s way it’s so important to slow down, take a deep breath, and take in the moment. Decisions are best made with a clear head.

Methods of Motivation

Now, to the part I’ve been wanting to discuss ever since I began writing this! This section is assuming you have a list of reasons to hike, but none of them seem to have much impact in the moment. I can’t force you to keep going, but I can make a few suggestions that has helped me persevere through tough times.

Break it Down

Sometimes the destinations to keep on going can be small. I took this picture of the William’s Peak lookout and its glorious privy because they gleamed in the afternoon sun. If you know, you know.

I have a tendency to overlook the journey to focus solely on the destination. I’ve been working on this flaw of mine, but it continually needs working at. Sometimes the journey to the destination is so overwhelming, I get stuck in my own head. So what do I do? I make the destination closer. Instead of wearily thinking that Mt. Katahdin is over a thousand miles away, I instead say that I only have two miles before I get to see a waterfall or that I’m more than halfway through the next set of one hundred miles.

If you can recall your school days (unless you’re still in school (so sorry)), did you ever say, “I have one hour before I leave. There are six ten minute or tweleve five minute intervals. If I can make it through five minutes tweleve times, the class is over.” Sound familiar? If that helped you, it’ll help with your thru-hike. Break it down by miles or time or whatever you want.

Encouraging Comments

This can be done in a variety of ways. For pre-trail preparations, I took to Facebook and ended up writing on The Trek. I do this to (1) hold myself accountable and (2) hear words of affirmation and encouragement. It means the world to me when I see that people are rooting for me and are invested in my journey. It means that I’m doing something worth reading about.

For while I’m on trail and internet connection is sparse, I had those closest to me write in the back of my journal with words of encouragement. I don’t know what they have written and will continue to be clueless until I need help to continue. If you don’t carry a journal, sealed letters work just as well. It’ll be an extra boost to keep going when you know that there are others who support you.

Stickers (And Other Things)

My precious sticker board. If my house caught on fire and I could grab only one thing, it’d be this.

This is just an observation, but it seems like the outdoor enthusiast community loves stickers. Gear companies will send you stickers when you buy their products and you feel disapppointed when one is not included. I certainly do.

When I first started to really explore the United States, I collected stickers to remember all the places I had been. I didn’t really know what to do with them because a water bottle, car, or luggage bag never seemed permanent enough. I wanted it to be an art piece that I’ll never forget, so I bought a sheet of metal from a hardware store and started sticking. I’ve been doing this for a few years and I am obsessed. Sometimes, it’s the only motivation to get me to keep exploring some days. The amount of stickers I’ll be able to collect while hiking the AT makes me giddy. I have a plastic bag specifically for them.

If you enjoy collecting stickers or stamps or coins or whatever makes you happy, consider applying that love to your thru-hike. It may be difficult depending on what you’re collecting, but if it makes you happy, who cares?

Trail Games

Trail games require at least another person, so if you’re not hiking alone, trying these games makes the time go by.

A very unhappy me when I realize the we are spending the whole nine day hitch lopping. Trail games made the boring, repetitive work managable. Photograph credit: Delia Kail.

Ink Pink…Inky Pinky…Inkity Pinkity

This is a game of rhyming syllables. For each set, there must only be one, two, or three syllables – you can’t mix the amount. One person chooses what the answer will be. For example, I think of red and bed. I don’t announce my answer, but instead say “Ink pink – one syllable. It’s a color and something you sleep on.” If someone gets part of the answer right, you can say so.

When I was working on trails, a crew mate gave us this hint: “Inkity pinkity – three syllables. The first is what we are doing right now and the second is a type of fish.” Want to know how long we played that round? Two hours. Aparrently, we were doing a ‘corridor’ and the type of fish was an albacore. Here’s a suggestion, don’t let the seafaring coastal people let you guess types of fish. They will win. Every. Time. Especially since everybody else playing that game lived in landlocked states for their entire life.

 Human Versus Monster

This is a game like Twenty Questions, but with an unlimited amount of questions. One person thinks of a human (living, dead, or fictional) or monster (think real animals, fictional animals, supernatural creatures, etc.). You keep asking questions until you guess what the other person thought of. Just make sure that others can guess whatever it is you’re thinking of. One crewmate told me to do a hard one. So I did. Towards the end, he asked, “Who is a dead Hungarian woman from the 1500s who killed young girls and bathed in their blood?!” Any guesses?

Other Games

There are so many other games you can play. If you’re seriously interested, look them up. I mostly played Human vs. Monster since time just flew on by, but there are other fun ones. Otherwise, we didn’t play games and just sang. Belted is the better word. I won’t soon forget how my crew and I crapily sung the High School Musicial playlist as we tried to ignore how much our feet hurt.