Trail People

Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time hiking around the Appalachian Trail will tell you that it can be full of some strange people. There are also plenty of great, "normal" outdoor enthusiasts you might run into as well. However, chances are you are going to run into people that there is really no other word to describe them than just weird. The solitude and lack of judgment the AT offers to anyone, especially someone who might leave much of society scratching their head in confusion, is indeed attractive. You don't even have to go by your real name on the trail. In fact, it is discouraged. People you meet don't want to know your real name. Rather, you are always asked for your trail name.  People might have raised their eyebrows and assumed I was a weekend warrior, rather than a thru-hiker, if I were to introduce myself as Dave and not Boomerang. Receiving a trail name and actually using it is part of the thru-hiking experience and it adds to the allure of it all. You can step out of your old life and into a world where no judgment - well less judgment anyway- is passed simply based on the fact that you are a hiker striving to achieve some goal. The culture of the hiking community is very intriguing. One day you can be Steve the accountant who drives a Jetta and lives in a studio in the city and a month later you are "Bear Trap" the homeless, unemployed hiker who travels from state to state on foot.  Nonetheless, this is completely acceptable. It may not make a lot of sense to Steve's friends, family, or employer, but within the hiking community on the AT, it makes perfect sense. You can be whoever you want to be on the trail and nobody will really know the difference. Likewise, people that really do have a few screws loose have the freedom to be themselves without the consequence of alienating people around them, because most encounters on the trail are fairly brief. That person probably took to the trail for solitude anyway, rather than as a chance build long lasting relationships.

Everyone has their own reason for wanting to do a long distant hike and for most, their motivation for it cannot be explained in one simple, concise answer. There is no one common driving force behind every thru-hiker's decision to spend months walking up and down mountains, and that is why it attracts such a wide variety of people. The one thing everyone who hikes the trail does have in common is the conviction and willingness to do something truly out of the ordinary. The idea of spending 4-7 months hiking through some of America's most beautiful places sounds like a great and noble adventure to most people. However, actually acting on the idea is simply out of the question for the majority of people. And I agree, the majority of people are correct in their thinking. It takes a ton of sacrifice and it IS, in fact, pretty crazy by society's standards. Therefore, everyone you encounter on the trail that is spending a great deal of time out there is going to be out of the ordinary in some way or another. Some just tend to be much, much more out of the ordinary than others.

In my next few posts I would like to spend some time talking about some the different people we met during our hike. There were some that became our friends, some that we couldn't get away from soon enough, and some that were so downright strange that we couldn't help but like them.







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