A few years ago, while on a streak of otherwise very interesting Bill Bryson books, I came across his then-newly-in-paperback A Walk in the Woods, and it sparked my interest in one day hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Recently I’ve been trying to get fit, but I haven’t had any real goals to press me along. “To be more healthy,” to be sure, but that’s such an amorphous statement— just how do I measure that? How do I know when I’ve finally hit the “healthy” mark? (…other than by keeping daily track of various statistics about my body chemistry, which as anyone who’s read this blog can tell you— keeping up with little things on a daily basis is not one of my strong suits.)
Now, reading another man’s tale of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail for the second time— only two years after his first time— I’m brought back to that idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Now, I have a real goal I can look forward to: I’m going to train for hiking the Appalachian Trail in three years, which should be enough time to physically and financially prepare for the event. I’ll need some help, I’m sure, since I’ve never done a long hike before, I’m way out of shape right now and I have that whole allergy equation to consider… but three years is a reasonable amount of time, no?
If any of you have ever hiked the Trail, know anyone who has, or heck— knows anything about hiking at all, I’d love to hear from you.
This has been a dream of mine for 30 years. Also to parachute from a plane. Guess I should hike the trail first. But now, I’m planning to take it a few weeks at a time, pick up the next year at the point of exit, and so on until the Trail is done.
Happy Trails!