Trail Memories

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau

Two years ago yesterday Jesse and I began our journey on the Appalachian Trail. It seems crazy to think that it has already been two years, but that is the way it goes I suppose. Time goes on and things are constantly changing. It seems like we just got back, but as I was thumbing through my journals from the trip I began to realize how cloudy some of the memories had become. For example, in the entry from today two years ago I wrote about details concerning the terrain we had covered and the shelter we were staying at that I had forgotten about completely. There was a kid named Bobby who was staying at the shelter who was getting off the trail after just day two of his thru-hike. Bobby had taken a semester off of school, spent who know how much money on gear and transportation, and had maticulously planned his mail drops over the whole trail only to have his thru-hike likely end on the second day after he fell and hurt his leg. We must have brought kid up in conversations a few thousand times randomly throughout the four and half months we were out there. After a long day we'd sit back and say, "Daaaaaamn my feet are killing me! But hey, at least we're in Pennsylvania and not on the couch back home like ol' Bobby probably is right now." Or as we were heading into a hostel we might say, "Dude, I'm going to flip if Bobby is sitting in that place and has somehow got back on the trail and crushed some miles to pass us!" It was ironic and we felt really bad for the guy, but it was one of our numerous running jokes and it gave us something to talk about when we had exausted every other subject. Until I just re-read that journal entry I had kind of forgotten about Bobby.

Now looking back over this journal I can remember sitting at the Gooch Mountain shelter on Februrary 8th of 2010. I remember Bobby hobbling around with his cell phone trying to get a hold of someone to pick him up the next day. I remember sitting around a fire listening to my little radio and enjoying a beautiful, unseasonably warm north Georgia night. I remember what the Gooch Mountain shelter looked like and how I felt that night. However, the only reason I remember all those things is because I have a journal entry about it, and I have a picture of Jesse reclined in his crazy creek beside our fire.

What if I didn't have that picture and that journal entry? I didn't even remember about poor old Bobby and his misfortunes until I looked back at the journal, despite it being something that we talked about all the way to Maine.


We stayed in so many shelters and met so many interesting people that it is sometimes hard to recall them all only two years later. Of course I remember a lot of things after jogging my memory a little, but if I flip to a random page in my journal and look at the headline I can't remember the details about that day. Let's try it...4/28/2010 it says we went from Pine Knob Shelter to Tumbling Run Shelters and traveled 26.3 miles. Sounds like a pretty big mileage day so we must have seen some really cool things right? Hell if I know. Without doing some math I could't even tell you what state we were in at that time, let alone what Pine Knob Shelter looked like, what we might have seen that day, or what people we might have met. However, it turns out afer reading my journal entry that this is the day we crossed into Pennsylvania and met our buddy, Uncle Frank . We had been following him in the shelter registers since Georgia and had been excited about meeting this eccentric character. It turns out he was no dissipointment. We ran into him while he was standing in the trail staring at the sky directly on the Pennsylvania border. He  had excitedly greeted us and offered us a couple pieces of fried chicken that he pulled out of his pocket (yes, of course we ate chicken from a strangers pocket). Uncle Frank would hike with us for almost the entire rest of the trail and turned out to be one of our best friends on the trail. Uncle Frank is a topic for aother blog entry altogether.


The point is that I could not remember details about such an eventful day on the trail on my own. I have a journal and pictures but there were week long strechtes I would go without taking a single picture, and there were plenty of days that I didn't write a journal entry because I was just too tired or felt like doing something else instead. So what about those days? Are they just lost in space and time? And if I didn't have a journal or take any pictures would the entire trip be pointless because the details are going to fade with time? The asnwer is no. Of course not. I'm thankful I do have pictures and journals to remind me exactly what things looked like, what I was feeling, and what people were with me at certain times. The details are great and I love looking back at the things that remind me of specific memories. Still, the core of the journey cannot be be summarized in one snap shot. The greater things I took away from the trip are more internal realizations and no lost picture, written account, or memory of any one instance can take away from the overall impact the entire trip has had on me. I found the Thoreau quote at the beginning of this article in a book by David Brill in which he reflects on his thru-hike in 1979. In the book, Brill explains, "I doubt that any other even of my life will choke me with as much emotion, fill me with as much pride, or define more clearly who I am than my summer on the Appalachian Trail." I would have to agree with Brill on that. I pushed myself harder than I have ever been pushed and I was lucky enough to make it all the way. The prize certainly wasn't any physical gain. There wasn't a trophy, or medal, or plaque waiting on me at the top of Mt. Katahdin. I wasn't awarded a signing bonus to a hiking team and I didn't even make the Sportscenter top ten. I can't even remember all the details of the trip, and my memory surely isn't going to get better as I continue to get older. However, something I will never forget is the pride I felt when I finished. I experienced the wholehearted kindness of complete strangers and realized the world is a lot better than many people are willing to give it credit for. I experienced beauty in nature that literally was able to snatch the breath right out of my lungs.  I lived deliberately, and I learned what I was made of. I may not remember every detail of the Appalachian Trail, but time cannot tarnish the core memory of the journey.