Every step I take – The walk

Will my AT Thru-hike be monotonous or momentous? Depends on attitude, I guess.

On a typical weekday (I’m retired now!), I would get up, feed the cats, make coffee, eat breakfast, rush out the door to go to work, drive, work, drive, then go home for dinner and whatever task I could muster the energy to do, before going to bed and repeating it again, day after day. In everyday life, at least on work days, you seem to take the same “steps”, it tends to become routine and you start to take things for granted. If you’re not careful, life starts to fly by. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around from time to time, you could miss it.” Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job in my pre-retirement life, but at times it felt like Groundhog Day…repetitive.

As I prepare for my AT hike, I am filled with giddy anticipation, having read numerous accounts of past hiker experiences. I imagine the peaceful serenity of the “green tunnel”, the wonderful people I will meet, the places I have yet to see, being able to eat an entire large pizza in one sitting, having to think about little else, but putting one foot in front of the other… which brings me back to the monotony. If you think about it, you could say that there is nothing but repetition along the way. You wake up, you eat, you walk, you walk, you walk. You stop walking and set up camp. You eat, stretch, and go to bed so you’re ready for the same itinerary tomorrow. I repeat, repeat, repeat and hope to last this for 2200 miles. I’ve read posts that sound very similar to those words, some hikers seem to be in a daily routine, focusing on the fact that every tree, every rock, every footprint is the same, day after day. Surely that can’t be the case.

I look at it through the lens of my childhood. We lived on a one-acre lot, but our neighbors owned over 70 acres of field, wetlands and woods, and it was ours to explore! We touch every inch of land, we climb trees, we hunt frogs, we roll in the swamp mud, we go sledding in winter, etc. It was always the same land, but it wasn’t. Every time I walked along the trail, passed “the stream” and entered those magical forests, it was a new adventure, in the same place. I can’t imagine a better place to grow up.

I imagine my trip as anything but repetitive and monotonous. I will walk the same path every day, but every step I take will be something new and special, steps I may never take again. Unless you go back, in the wrong direction (it happens!), each day will be different, different terrain, on the same path. Different trees, rocks, streams, bugs, sunrises, sunsets… you name it, none of them will be the same. Is this a slightly romanticized version of what the AT will actually be like? Maybe a little. I know it won’t be easy, physically or mentally, but I plan to take the bad with the good and not think about things I can’t control. So we’ll see how that goes.

Hike

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