What’s In A Name?

Trail names are odd. Most thru hikers have one already or receive one on the trail. The unwritten rule is that you are given a name by another hiker, and it shouldn’t be self-assigned, but that’s not always the case. Occasionally you’ll find a hiker that either never took a trail name or decided to use their given name after test driving a trail name, but the general practice on trail is that you take an alternative name. Trail names are kind of like cosplays that hikers assume for a short season. They go around calling each other Hot Dog, Longshot, Juice, Bubbles, Happy, Dumbledore, Running on Empty, Poet, Slinky, Grey Colt, Canada Dry (a Canadian NOBO I met with the driest sense of humor), Papa Smurf, Short Bus (a retired special ed. teacher), even Fart Master. The names are accepted carte blanche as reality. Hikers might spend hundreds of miles together only knowing each other by these assigned monikers and never even know each others’ real names. That’s odd to me, and initially, part of me felt like it’s artificial escapism, however rooted in tradition the tradition may be.

Birth of a Trail Name

When I had rested five days in Monson after spraining my ankle in the 100 Mile Wilderness, I decided that I was ready to get back on trail. While getting my things together and waiting on a shuttle to the trailhead, I was chatting with a few hikers outside of Shaw’s Hostel, explaining the reason for my extended stay. I recounted the harrowing tale of spraining my ankle in the 100 Mile and how it had immediately swollen the size and eventually color of a plum, the only comparison I had come up with that made dimensional sense. At that point, one of the hikers named Barefoot, knowing I didn’t have a trail name, said, “Well, why don’t you just go by Plum?” A couple other seasoned hikers expressed their agreement, saying they had never heard that trail name. I just kinda stood there in a pool of my own shame and embarrassment and said I would think about it, but honestly not wanting to take it on as a permanent symbol of a near catastrophic ending to my thru hike. I didn’t want my trail name to be defined by a mishap that felt like failure, weakness, and incompetence. But earlier that week, another hiker I met named Sharkey!—a multi-thru hiker, retired ICU nurse, and overall trail sage—pointed down to my ankle wrapped in a compression sleeve and brace and said, “Your ankle will grow even stronger as you heal.” And I got to thinking about that and how my injury could be reframed early in this journey as a symbol of perseverance and fortitude. It didn’t have to symbolize weakness or ineptitude, it could be a redemptive emblem of a newer and stronger self moving toward healing.

Mulling It Over

Later that day as I got back on trail, I was running this new trail name offer through my mind, and it struck me that there is an interesting correlation of meaning in the homonym of plum—“plumb”. To make something plumb means to square or center, or it refers to measuring the depth of something. As the dictionary defines it, “true according to a plumb line, perpendicular or vertical direction; to examine closely in order to discover or understand.” So much of this is why I chose to hike the A.T. in the first place. I had lost a sense of center in my life, mostly due to a years long trickling of dashed hopes and dreams at what felt like every turn. Where things should be optimistically vertical, horizontal lines of disappointment and sadness lay strewn about. Where I attempted to establish direction in my life, I was only met with a wall of confusion and bewilderment: career pursuits not panning out, years of infertility leading to not having a family, a struggling marriage, battling some pretty deep depression—just to name a few. In a roundabout way, I am on the trail due in large part to these realities. Some of my friends and family have expressed “jealousy” over my ability to leave for six months and hike the A.T., but my thought about that is,“Yeah, but I don’t think you would envy what brought me to the trail.”

Honestly, Abe

One hiker I was talking to who is dating another hiker accidentally said her real name in a conversation we were having. There was actually a moment of panic in his face, as if he had betrayed her secret identity and exposed her vulnerability. I strangely felt like I’d walked in on somebody naked. He quickly corrected himself. But the more I’ve been on the trail and the more I’ve experienced the culture of thru hiking and the general requirements of a hiker, the more I’ve understood the impulse to be renamed.  The truth is, you actually do have to be a different person on trail and accept that this is not the life you have lived up to this point. Besides the masochistic tendencies thru hikers have toward pain and hardship (especially SOBO’s!), you are doing something that simply is not normal. So it actually makes sense that in the interim you receive a new identity. And it’s really kind of beautiful. In the book of Genesis, we find one of the most famous trail names given when the nomadic Abram becomes Abraham. “And God said to him, ‘Behold my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations’” (Genesis 17:5). The name is given on the heels of a promise, and maybe that’s what thru hikers are reaching for in this strange tradition of assigning alter-egos. There is an acceptance of a new life and calling, for however short a season. By being renamed, you are being inducted into a like-minded community of people who maybe aren’t trying to escape from painful things in their lives as much as they are attempting to walk into new hopes, dreams, and promises.

New I.D.

So with one minor modification, I have taken the trail name “PLUM(B)”. It’s fitting, and the more I hear fellow hikers use it, the more it feels like home for me. It’s symbolic of overcoming adversity, pursuing peace and centeredness, and a reminder that there’s a lot of hope in not having things together. People get confused about the spelling or assume I just like eating plums (which, for the record, I consider a very okay fruit), but that’s fine. A name is more about attaching an identity to self than it is about meeting expectation, or at least I feel so. Not everyone hikes the Appalachian Trail to “find themselves” or dig deep into the grief and disappointment they feel in life. That is perfectly fine. “Hike your own hike,” the mantra goes. But for me, this journey is a way to look inward, simplify, grieve loss, take on joy, and create new rhythms of meaning that I hope will carry back into the normal life I live off the trail. It might work…or it might just be plumb crazy.

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