“Holy shit! I caught you!”
A year ago today, as I was descending a hill leaving Wapiti Shelter, 600 miles into my thru-hike, I saw a familiar purple-shirt/zebra-print-shorts/purple-sock combo bounding toward me and and a familiar smile beaming up at me. It was Snapchat, the very first person I met on the Appalachian Trail.
I was elated to see Snap. We met at the top of Springer Mountain and hiked together for the first 450 or so miles, but a side trip home took one of my main hiking partners away from me just shy of Damascus, Virginia. Since she had returned to the trail about a week prior, she had been hiking a grueling 20 to 25 miles a day to make up for the lost time and catch up to me.
We immediately fell back into step -- commiserating about the rain and fog, updating each other on our trail friends’ whereabouts, and planning out the next few days. Although I had enjoyed doing my own thing and hiking with new people since Damascus, there was a sense of familiarity with Snapchat that felt like home on the trail.
Our reunion came at a great time -- it was rainy, foggy, and kind of dismal. I had planned to hike farther that day, but Snapchat and the reunion convinced me to cut it short and stop at a popular hostel half a mile off the trail -- Woods Hole Hostel.
Fate may have led me there, because it turned out to be one of my top two hostels on the entire trail (it’s a toss-up between Woods Hole and Shaw’s in Monson, Maine). At Woods Hole Hostel, we warmed up by a fire, continued to catch up, and Snapchat even snagged me a slice of chocolate cake from inside after dinner.
It wasn’t long before we lost each other again (see: My Worst Day Yet on the AT), had another rollercoaster-like reunion a day later, and then split for basically the rest of the trail.
Snapchat and I only hiked together for about a third of the trail, but, maybe because it was the first third, I looked back on those days with extreme nostalgia during and after the trail. We were fresh, baby hikers who had no idea what was ahead of us. We had our best and worst days early on. We laughed harder than ever before, bonded quickly, and became family.
Now, a year later, I still have pangs of trail nostalgia at least once a week.
But my nostalgia triggers aren’t what I expected them to be.
It’s not the backpacking gear that I’m surrounded by every day thanks to my job. It’s not the weekend backpacking trips I take with new San Diego friends. It’s not even the instagram posts of current Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers that I follow.
Instead, it’s walking into a post office and feeling that familiar empty, sterile space that’s consistent from state to state. It’s seeing a stack of Pop-Tarts in the grocery store and noticing not much has changed in a year despite the plethora of options. It’s stepping into a musty hotel -- again, all the same across the country -- and instinctively looking around for a hiker box or a pool.
I miss the trail, but more, I miss the experience. For nearly six months, I explored the country by foot, eagerly collecting boxes sent by loved ones to remote but nearly uniform post offices, restocking on unhealthy pastries and snacks from regional grocery stores that really only differ in name, and occasionally taking respite in a simple but comforting hotel or motel room with friends.
There are only a handful of people in this world who understand this completely. People like Snapchat. It’s tough to come down after such an experience, and even harder when nostalgia rears its backward-looking head during the most mundane tasks, but it’s comforting to know that we’re not alone.
