Why I am Hiking the AT

So why now?

Honestly there are a lot of reasons I give for hiking the AT now.  It is the right time?  It is a dream of mine? They are all true, but then they are all a half-baked response I give to people I don’t know so that they stop asking questions.  If you have asked me and I have given you one of these reasons, don’t hold it against me.  Hiking the AT for me is deeply personal, and trying to describe why now, is like trying to talk through a perfect storm of chicken biscuits.

It all started on a bawk and stormy night… just kidding.  But here is the underlying reason.

A lot of things have just added up to giving me the time to do this thing.  I had always wanted to hike the AT with my dog Lily, but in doing some preliminary research 4 years ago, I realized that hiking the AT is stressful for a human.  Your body clocks a lot of miles in a very short period of time, which means that it clocks a lot of damage too.  Now times that by like a bunch, and that is how much stress it would put on Lily.  When her paws started getting shake-y, and I still hadn’t even purchased the gear I made a pact with her, that I would wait until she passed to hike it and instead we could do more local hikes to see and smell the world around us.  It wasn’t fair to her to have to hike all that way, although I know she would tag along, little nubbin’ wagging the whole time.

I also didn’t have the funds, or the free time.  I broke out into the field of taxes because the timelines line up pretty well for taking summers off to do whatever.  But in order to make the money I needed to hike, I had climbed the corporate ladder, which meant no summers off.  Then came August of 2024, a whole month that my partner and I have agreed to say doesn’t exist. 

My job had been wearing me down over two years.  It started out small, little things here and there, little comments about this or that from my higher ups.  You know, limiting kind of language, and convenient forgetfulness.  By the third quarter review in my first year in my role, it was apparent that me and my peer group felt that there was no work life balance, and while the company vowed to fix that, not everyone in the corporate ladder had that message.  My boss’s boss held a meeting in which they plainly stated that if there were others in my peer group leaving their position or getting fired it was because they were not cut out for the job. 

That comment unsettled me; it was so definite, and so lacking in empathy.  It stuck with me, and it has stuck with my peers, even if they don’t talk about it openly.  By the time they let me go, in early August, there was a deep chasm forming inside myself to where I was asking myself “Who am I”?  Deep down I could see the cracks starting long before that day, but I was clinging to the hope that it would get better.  Ultimately the role wasn’t a good fit for me, because I was losing myself, being piled under all of the things being said or implied that was not tolerable, that I kept finding inside myself.    

Not too soon after that we were looking to move to a new place, somewhere cheaper.  Our credit scores were not the best, two relocations in a year wreaks havoc on your finances, even if you are being reimbursed for some of the expenses.  I remember thinking any place would do, panicking and calling around to my family looking for somewhere to land if we got evicted, or our landlord decided to not renew our lease.  I didn’t want my partner and I to be homeless in Chicago going into winter with a dog and a cat.

Then, Lily got very sick.  She was refusing to eat, staining to go to go to the bathroom, and couldn’t get comfortable at bedtime.  When we took her to vet, they diagnosed her with terminal cancer.  It was aggressive, and inoperable.  So we said our goodbyes.  She was already partially sedated from the ultrasound, and we sat on the cold hard tile of the hospice room at the vet screen timing with important people in her life.  I held her head in my lap, smelled her soft ears, and pet her muscle-y body, trying to be calm for her.  When the vet came in, and it was time, I leaned in and told her that I had her over and over again.  She was asleep from the first injection, and gone shortly after the second.  When the vet heard her last heart beat and told me, I felt like the earth had cracked open, that it was going to swallow her whole.  It was like a pit in my stomach and that sudden feeling that you are falling, like clinging to the cliff while the water rushes by, crying and desperate.  I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be somewhere else… somewhere warm, and blanketed in clouds with the stars overhead and Lily bounding down the path to meet me.  She is the light of my life and now she was.

It took a while for me to realize the screaming was me, and a little while longer for me to realize I had to let go of her.  I felt her absence for the first time walking out to the parking lot, and collapsed on the door.  Even now, I turn around in the kitchen, turn off the lights in my bedroom, or I open the door and I see her, like a shadow in the corner of my consciousness, loving me, and reminding me of a promise.

Hiking the trail for me, is letting go of all the things I clung to for the past few years, it is about bridging that chasm within myself, and creating a spark of light that will carry me on.