1-Year Post Appalachian Trail | Post Trail Thoughts, Realizations, & More

a year later and in simplest terms I still miss the trail everyday and crave the simplicity + realness.

It’s September 21, 2023, we’re up before dawn again. We don our headlamps and silently divide our things into essential and nonessential. I pack up Scale (my Osprey Eja backpack) for the last time. We leave anything we don’t want to carry for the final climb in bags at the Ranger Station, trusting that it will all be there when we return. We begin to walk the Hunt Trail and start the long climb to the final summit of the Appalachian Trail, Mount Katahdin. 

I’m sitting at my second coffee shop in two weeks. Post-trail, I enjoy early mornings - something that was never a thing before the AT. There’s something about letting your body sleep with the moon and rise with the sun. Plus, I love hearing the birds in the morning. But as I sit at this coffee shop, before the crowds wander in, trying to come up with the words that actually depict how I’m feeling, unlike when I was hiking, I struggle to find the words. I have written and rewritten this post a few times now. They either sound terribly depressed or they don’t hold enough of the truth of how I feel. 

As I’ve been reflecting about the day I summited Mount Katahdin and what it means to me, how I want to commemorate it - I’m conflicted as I always am with too many options. I’ve been told that the date itself is just a date, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t encompass the entirety of the trail adventure. And logically they’re right. But when those dates, the start and the end, mark such a pivotal time, such a life changing experience, it’s hard not to embrace the significance of those dates with everything I have. In a lot of ways, those dates were the end of something, the end of a feeling that I’ve been trying to find my way back to ever since. 

I feel like my brain has been in a fog since I stood atop that iconic brown sign. A sign that I’d been walking toward even before I set foot at Amicalola Falls in Georgia. Thru-hikers talk about post-trail depression, but I think we choose to hope that maybe it won’t affect us. That maybe the profound and life-changing impact that the trail had on us won’t affect our assimilation back into reality. As a die-hard creature of habit, I knew it would be hard for me to adjust back, but I hoped that eventually I would find my groove again back in the real world. I hoped that maybe one day my heart wouldn’t ache for the trail *quite* as much - a year later, that’s not the case.

When I descended Mount Katahdin, I was lucky enough that I did not have to run straight back into reality’s arms. My mom had purchased a camper van “Bob” while I was out on the trail and she had come on a grand adventure of her own to pick me up in Maine. We spent the next 4 weeks driving from Maine to North Carolina exploring everything from Acadia National Park to the town of Sleepy Hollow in New York. Although I missed the trail, I had the best time with my mom - it's a time that I will cherish forever and I am so glad I didn’t rush back to reality, that I took that time.

Then with a heavy foot, I stepped back into the real world… or I tried too. I worked on my side projects - my art, my writing, my YouTube channel, channeling my energy into things I hadn’t done on the trail but wanted to do. I also channeled my energy into finding a job. In some ways, I wish I hadn’t tried so hard to jump back in - it now feels like it was too much time that I could have spent elsewhere. And I just ended up back where I was prior to the trail. After moving forward for so long, that felt like taking a step backwards.

And now here I sit in the wee hours of the morning, it’s officially a year later. I’m finishing writing this piece from one of the places that ignited this dream, the Roan Highlands. I’m still trying to determine how I feel and just how big of an impact the Appalachian Trail had on my soul, on my psyche. I know eventually I’ll find a new normal, one that blends trail life and real life. But a year later and in simplest terms I still miss the trail everyday and crave the simplicity + realness. 

I miss the people. I miss how on the trail almost everyone you met was an old or new friend. I crave being outside again everyday. Mentally and physically I know I was probably the healthiest I’ve ever been while on the trail. With exception to the amount of Nutella + other treats I inhaled. 

I miss the freedom that it had. The feeling of that freedom and knowing that everyday I was out there was a choice I made because I truly wanted to be there. No one else but me was pushing me down the trail. I long for the realness. Out on the trail the first things you learned about a person wasn’t what they did for a living, it was their dreams, why they were on the trail, and that led to deeper connections. Because you were receiving so much more of a person, not just “what they do”. 

I miss the rawness. I have never been much of a crier until I thru-hiked the AT. I cried so much on the AT. But I also laughed harder, smiled wider, and felt every emotion with all of its intensity. I miss that rawness and realness of emotion. We dull them down, the highs and the lows, I don’t feel them as much anymore.

I’m re-reading the Instagram captions I wrote about finishing the trail and in a lot of ways it’s hard to recognize the girl that wrote those. I know she’s here but some days I feel so far from her. The words + emotions that once came so easily on the trail, now feel clogged. And I feel a disconnect within myself, one that I’m still trying to piece back together. But, but I know that as soon as I set foot on the gravel of Carver’s Gap today, it felt like where I was supposed to be, it felt *almost* as good as a hug from my mom, it felt like coming home. 

Maybe I’ll never recover from this spell the Appalachian Trail holds on me. In some ways, I hope I don’t ever fully recover - I never want to lose the magic I feel when I step on the trail and spot a white blaze. But I do know this, because of the Appalachian Trail, I will never be the same. And even if I spend the rest of my life longing for white blazes, I’m forever grateful. 

Treats 🍪