A year ago today I began my journey on the Appalachian Trail. Above are pictures of me on Day 1 and Day 151. In honor of my trail anniversary, I wanted to share this piece I wrote about my time on the trail.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For five months last year, I lived in the woods. I left my home in the concrete jungle on March 26, 2014, and flew down to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. I had made it my goal to hike all 2,185 miles of the trail, from Georgia to Maine. During one of my first days on the trail, I misjudged how long it would take to arrive at my destination for the day. As the sun began to set, I was still nowhere near my destination. Darkness was creeping in, and I didn’t know how much longer I would need to hike. I was scared; I did not want to be hiking alone through the woods at night.
I did all I could to stay calm. I summoned lines from my favorite poet, Mary Oliver: “Dirt, mud, stars, water – I know you as if you were myself. How could I be afraid?” These words steadied my nerves. How could I be afraid? How could I be afraid? I repeated these words to myself, and I began to believe that this was where I belonged. I told myself that these woods were my kingdom. I was home here amidst the trees. Why should I be afraid to be home?
And then a twig snapped nearby, and I was once again completely terrified. A sense of shame fell over me. How could I have let myself believe that I belonged here? These woods were for creatures of stillness – and here I was, a creature of anxiety and cynicism and turmoil.
I arrived at camp in the dead of night, feeling like a complete fraud. What was I doing here? Who did I think I was? For the next several weeks, this question haunted me. As I walked, I descended deeper and deeper into my own brain.
I strove to avoid thinking about anything real. It was exhausting enough to wake up every day and walk twenty miles. The last thing I wanted was to deal with the cacophony inside my brain. To avoid deep wells of fear and self-loathing, I would distract myself with anything and everything: I had conversations between any two people I could think of – Susan B. Anthony and Sarah Palin, Harold Pinter and Harry Potter, Regis Philbin and Betty White. I spent a week trying to write down a list of every sentence I was certain I had ever said. I tried inventing sentences that I was sure no one else had ever said out loud.
Even this didn’t work. Try as I might, thoughts came unbidden into my head. Flashes of guilt. The way I had hurt my best friend. Any ingratitude I had ever shown my parents. The fact that I was never going to amount to anything. How was I still so fat, even thought I was burning upwards of 5,000 calories a day? Every day I waged battle against myself. The trail began to appear to me as a five month jail sentence, where my cellmate was my own brain. And we did not get along.
My backpack was heavy, and my knees buckled and ached beneath me. I soon learned that I would never finish the trail if I continued to carry this much weight. I opened my backpack and I emptied out my second pair of pants. I took out my back-up water filter and half of my first aid kit. I took out self-loathing and anxiety, denial and guilt, fear and uncertainty. I didn’t have room for them, and they were slowing me down.
From then on, when I stubbed my toe or tripped on a root, my face would erupt into tears and a moment later into laughter. I felt, for lack of a better word, crazy. I was completely stripped down. I was myself at my most raw. My heart was open and exposed and it hurt to experience life, but there was no other option. I was already carrying so much weight, I couldn’t afford to carry a suit of armor, too. The only way to survive out there was to let it all go.
Towards the end of my trip, as I was walking somewhere through Maine, I again miscalculated how long it would take me to arrive at camp. Luckily, hiking at night was no longer scary to me. As the sun sank below the horizon, I simply took out my headlamp and continued walking. Everything was fine, until the narrow beam of light flickered and went out. I was completely alone in the darkness, and again I was scared.
For the second time, I summoned Mary Oliver’s words. “Dirt, mud, stars, water – I know you as if you were myself. How could I be afraid?” I said them aloud to myself, and I felt a sense of calm fall over me. I waited for those all-too-familiar voice to creep in. I waited to hear the dread and insecurity that had plagued me for my entire life. But they didn’t come. All was silence. Finally silence. And that was okay. I was no longer worried about what I might hear.
For the first time, I was safe.
