Treats' "Whys" for Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail
There are so many different factors that can make or break the success of completing a thru-hike. Knowing WHY you're out there can help you on the rough days to keep going and keep walking.
Completing the Appalachian Trail, or any thru hike for that matter is a feat of endurance not only of the body but of the mind. And I’d argue it’s more so a feat of endurance of the mind. When preparing to hike the AT, I binged a lot of YouTube videos but I also read books about the trail. I unfortunately read *“A Walk in the Woods”. I enjoyed “Becoming Odyssa” and reading from the viewpoint of a solo woman. But the book that helped me the most was “Appalachian Trials” by Zach “Badger” Davis because it did a deep dive into the mental strength you needed to hike the trail. This book had a lot of gems in it, but I think one of the most profound sections was the encouragement to write down WHY you were hiking the trail - to remind yourself in those tough moments WHY my crazy ass was walking in the pouring rain for the 3rd day in a row.
*I know “A Walk in the Woods” is known as THE Appalachian Trail book but before going on the trail and even more so after completing the trail, I feel like Bryson’s rendition of the trail experience and others is very negative and not very inspiring at all. I just find it ironic that this book inspires many people to hike the trail. This is just my opinion.
The beauty of the trail and life is that all of our whys for doing things are different. For some it might have been an escape, an adventure, a dream, an impossible feat, a way to get healthy, and so much more. Hell, there are a lot of reasons why people choose to step foot out on any trail.
There wasn’t one particular reason or why for me to hike the Appalachian Trail - one main reason is that I wanted to go on this grand adventure, the other reasons are my “whys”. And my reasons even changed slightly from when I first wanted to hike in 2017 to when I set out in 2023. I originally bought “Appalachian Trials” in 2018 and wrote down my “whys” twice. I took a picture of those reasons and though I usually could remind myself in my head why I was out there, sometimes I needed the photograph of my handwritten words.
Here are my 2023 why’s for hiking the Appalachian Trail:
“I am thru hiking the Appalachian Trail because…”
I love & want to go on a grand adventure.
Before the trail, I was an avid weekend warrior. Any day, any adventure I could take I was adventuring down a new trail, exploring a new small town. Or I was exploring the favorite pieces of my own town. Though I had been on many weekend adventures, weeklong adventures, I longed for something more. I think there’s something in all of us that longs for the exploration of something new, of something that challenges us. I didn’t know years ago that it would come in the form of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, but my soul longed for the adventure of going back to nature and seeing if I could do this.
Because I love hiking and exploring. And I believe hiking the Appalachian Trail is a great way to explore the East Coast of the U.S.
There are many places I hadn’t been past Harpers Ferry, WV and I had a lot of places I wanted to explore. One of my favorite ways to experience a new spot is by going on a hike wherever I visit. Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail seemed like a great way to do this and also a really fun way to experience the smaller towns along the East Coast. And it was.
I want to see/prove to myself that I can do it.
I was a competitive swimmer for 12 years of my life, a cross country runner, a triathlete, a Dopey challenger, and I longed to be a thru-hiker. Being an endurance athlete and loving the challenge of endurance activities was in my veins. I wanted to see if this epic feat of endurance of living and walking on a trail for 4-6 months was something that I could do. And I also wanted to prove to myself that once again, I could do hard/tough things to accomplish my dreams.
Life is too short to not go on grand adventures and experience life outside of society's norms.
Most of us are told that to be successful in life we have to go to school, go to college, find a career, and then stick to it until retirement. I think for a while I believed in and tried to stick to this timeline and then came the day that I didn’t understand why we would work our life away. We are not guaranteed another day on this planet - every single one is precious. And although money does make the world go round, I don’t want to spend all my best moments behind my desk. I want to experience life, the world, and climb as many mountains as I can, before I can’t.
I want to escape the rat race of adulting.
This and the one above go hand in hand. I fully believe that adulting is a trap. We go to school and then we work until we are deemed “too old” and then we can go and do what we please. There is just something not quite right about having to wait until everything hurts before getting to live the life you dream about. I don’t want to spend life scrolling through social media, wishing I was on the adventure of a lifetime. So I told myself I had to get a big girl job for a while and then I could escape the rat race for a little while and live out my dream of hiking the AT.
There’s something amazing about traveling places and getting there by way of your own two feet.
Ever since I walked everywhere on my college campus, I’ve loved being able to walk to get to places. When I lived in Harpers Ferry for a few months, one of my favorite parts of my day was walking the .5 mile on the AT from my park housing to the office I worked in. If it is feasible to walk there, I enjoy the transportation of my own two feet. And walking the entirety of the East Coast, taking 4-6 months to explore it and the natural beauty … it sounded epic (and it was).
I’m hoping it brings me back a bit of my faith in humanity.
Let’s just say sometimes being in the world is hard and watching the way humans treat other humans is hard. I had heard so many amazing things about the community on the Appalachian Trail. I was hopeful but realistic about my expectations and I hoped that the trail would help bring back my faith in humanity. & it did. The kindness I experienced out on the trail from angels, hostel owners, trail friends, complete strangers, was unmatched. The community on the AT is truly something special to be a part of and something I’ll cherish forever.
Not sure if this one makes sense, but I like that I've been finding myself since I originally added this to my bucket list 6 years ago. And now I guess I’m hoping that now that I’ve found myself, I hope this trail allows me to set myself free.
I am still not sure how to describe this one. When I first decided I wanted to hike the trail, I wanted to go so desperately but in my head and even my heart I knew it wasn’t time. Since that moment and that realization that I wasn’t quite ready to go, I started working on myself so that when it felt right to go, I would be ready. I spent 6 years discovering myself, finding myself, learning myself as much as possible. I did all of this so that when I hiked the trail there hopefully wouldn’t be too many surprises (about myself at least). For me this worked. When I started the AT I was terrified but determined to see it through for as long as I felt I could. So when I began following the white blazes I hoped that the trail would set me free. And although I’m still not exactly sure what that means, I do believe that in some ways the trail did that for me. I’m the same, but yet I’m different than the woman who started the trail.
The mountains and adventure are always calling.
Once I moved to Western North Carolina for school, I was hooked on this area. There is something about the mountains that grabs you in and makes it feel like home. These mountains have felt like home for a long time. Someone once asked me why I chose to hike the AT first out of all the major trails and my answer was “because the Appalachian Mountains feel like home and I want to walk the mountains I call home first”.
Current me is really glad that past me decided to write these down because I also have my original “whys” list from when I first read “Appalachian Trials” in 2018. It’s like a little timebox of how I felt about hiking the trail.
I’m not going to go into as much detail for my 2018 whys but here they are in case you're curious. Though they are slightly different, my dream of hiking the AT and my whys didn’t waver much. I WANTED to hike the AT and that made all the difference.
My 2018 why’s for hiking the Appalachian Trail:
“I am thru hiking the Appalachian Trail because…”
I want to go on an epic adventure.
Ever since discovering my love of hiking, I craved adventures. Small or big, hiking called to me and the AT struck a chord when I really discovered its existence.
I want to see if I can do it. I want to prove to myself that I can do it.
I won’t say never, but 98% of the time, it’s me against me. I like to prove to myself that I can do things. That I can run a marathon, that I can do a triathlon, that I can spend 6 months hiking and living in the woods. I like to prove to myself that I can - not necessarily because I have anything to prove to myself but because it makes me feel alive to do the things that set my soul on fire.
I need/want a break from the real world & a change of pace.
There is a longer story for another time, but back in 2017/2018 I had been dumped and I wanted an escape. What better escape than 6 months on a trail? I was also taking a lot of classes and at the time the “real world” of college felt very overwhelming.
It will give me even more of an appreciation for nature and the environment.
I was just starting to really hone my interest & obsession for plants and mushrooms during this time. I was so excited to hit every trail and see what little forest magic it had in store for me. But I knew that hiking a big trail like the AT would give me even more of an appreciation for the natural world we live in.
I want to be a more outdoorsy person.
The word “outdoorsy” can mean a lot of things but at the time I wrote this, the outdoorsy that I wanted to be was the one that went on epic adventures. I could do day hikes til the cows came home, but what I really wanted was to do all the outdoorsy things. A skier, mountain biker, runner, backpacker, etc. At the time of writing this that’s what I wanted. What I’ve come to learn and realize is that being outdoorsy can mean all kinds of things and that while I definitely consider myself as a more “outdoorsy” person for my own definition of the word, I also appreciate that I don’t have to do all of those things all the time to consider myself as such.
Life is short. I want to spend it wisely and go on cool adventures.
There’s a theme with a lot of these “whys”. Life is meant to be lived. It is so short and so precious and there are so many amazing things to see + experience. I don’t want to miss out on any of it.
I think it will allow me time to think and help me figure some stuff out.
Again, I had gone through a bad breakup and was still mentally recovering. Hiking was my escape, my way to think things through in my head and organize all the wild thoughts in my brain. 6 months in the woods sounded like a great way to figure some stuff out.
It will be out of my comfort zone.
When I decided I wanted to hike the AT I had never been backpacking in my life. So when I wrote this list, backpacking the AT was definitely out of my comfort zone, but still something I strived and dreamed of doing. By the time I hiked the trail it was a little more inside my comfort zone but also still very much out of my comfort zone.
It will be the challenge of a lifetime.
Similar to the above, I love a good challenge. I love pushing myself to my limits and seeing if I can do it. For me, hard things make me stronger but they also inspire me to be the best version of myself. Doing the hard goals that I have set out for myself has led to the most growth and freedom and I love getting to see who I evolve into as a person.
There are so many different factors that can make or break the success of completing a thru-hike. Physically I knew I could do it (unless I got injured). But on the really bad days, the ones where I screamed at the sky (because it did happen a few times) and told my partner I wanted to quit… I wouldn’t really mean it because I would remind myself of why I was out here. And the woman who wrote these whys would have been so disappointed if I had given up on myself. So I repeated my whys in my head in the aftermath of rough moments and as always, I kept walking.
Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail allowed me the opportunity to escape adulthood but it also gave me a new sense of responsibility. A new sense of taking care of myself and the people around me. I thought that on the trail I’d have the time to have that epiphany that only great adventures bring, and while the trail did bring introspection, there’s a lot more energy focused on getting to your lunch spot, campsite, or to town. In the beginning I felt a really big need to save my social battery. With the meeting of so many new people and talking to others all the time, I sometimes felt depleted quickly. But the further I got down the trail, the more I loved the interactions with my fellow hikers - the people quickly became one of my favorite aspects of trail life. The trail gave me time for reflection, but it didn’t solve all my life problems… and that’s okay. Life is short and precious - I had the opportunity to live this adventure and I took it. I met great people, walked the trail, took side-quests into big cities, explored the small towns that dot the trail, ate ALL the treats I wanted. I lived. I walked. I loved and will forever love this trail. And my whys are what helped me accomplish it all.