My Heart's Wishes

Chapter 1 ~ Going Where I’m Led Almost everybody that I told that I was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, AT, asked me why. Lots of thru-hikers asked too. There are a lot of different reasons to do it, probably as many different reasons as there are thru-hikers. Other people were hiking the trail for the adventure of it or to heal some part of their life. I did it because I felt like I was supposed to. My heart, or intuition, said to do it. I know that sounds crazy, like it was a calling or something. I had just known for a long time that there was something I was supposed to be doing, but I didn’t know what it was. I was always attracted to granola-type people who loved the outdoors and I didn’t know why. Then, I started car camping and knew that was getting closer to the thing I was supposed to do. When I started going backcountry camping (hiking out into the wilderness and camping there with everything I needed in a backpack), I knew that was still closer to the thing I felt called to do. The backcountry was where I felt most whole or at home. It didn’t matter where I was, as long as I was living in nature. Eventually I read Jean Deeds’ book, There Are Mountains to Climb. That was when I finally knew what it was that I was driven to do. The Appalachian Trail was my destiny. I was supposed to hike it. I didn’t know how I knew this. I just knew. And not any trail. The Appalachian Trail. Not just for a couple of weeks or a month. The whole thing. I was supposed to go out there and learn something that I wasn’t getting in ‘real life’. (Lots of thru-hikers called the trail ‘real life’ and I could easily see why.) In my normal day-to-day life, I got too caught up in meaningless details that seemed so important at the time. Like, “Oh no, company is coming over and I haven’t cleaned the blinds!” The mundane aspects of daily life became my life. They seemed all important and they crowded out what really mattered. I had lost sight of what was truly important. (Had I ever really known it to begin with?) So, the trail was going to be my teacher. After reading Deeds’ book, I still didn’t know why I felt compelled to hike the trail. I knew that I felt called to do it, but my need to do it made absolutely no sense to me. I simply knew that I had to do it, I wanted to do it alone and I needed to do it right then. Hiking the AT was an essential part of my life’s journey and I wouldn’t rest until I did it. Despite that, for a few years, I put it off. Then, suddenly in the late winter of 2004/2005, I could no longer wait. I had to go hike it, alone, now. I talked with my partner about it, gave my notice at work, told my friends and family, got my supplies together and left within six weeks of making the decision. Still, I didn’t know why.