Foreword, 2022
As I write this prologue, I am about one week away from my start date of March 1, 2022. For about ten years I did not really tell anyone that I was considering hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. I had hiked short sections and had talked to friends and family about those trips, but I never wanted to let people know that I was seriously contemplating walking almost 2,200 miles for no other reason than it seemed like a good adventure for me to undertake. Until that point, I had enjoyed a pretty successful career path and I lived relatively settled life.
So who in their right mind decides to put their life on hold for six months, spend lots of time and even more cash to be able to walk across the eastern end of America? As it turns out, lots of people make the decision to try. Every year about three thousand people attempt a through hike. Of those three thousand, only about ten to fifteen percent finish.
I decided around 2017 that I was going to look into what it would take to make my through hike plan a reality. It took five years of planning, buying gear and training to bring me to the point of being able to say to people that I was planning a through hike. The most common question i was asked was "Why?". The next question was "by yourself?" The first question was the hardest to answer. For me there was and is no firm or definitive answer. I had thought about why I wanted to try to hike the AT, and honestly I did not have one good answer. I had many reasons and smaller motivations that all combined to help me make up my mind to try to hike the entire trail.
The second question was easier to answer. My answer had always been "yes." While I planned to try to hike the AT alone, I would not be by myself.
So now it is the evening before I am scheduled to start walking. I am as anxious as I have ever been about anything in my life. During my career, we always created a plan for our work, and then usually another plan incase the first plan did not work out. My soon to start hiking adventure cannot be planned much farther than a week. I now have to be "in the moment" and able to change at that moment's notice. This is a different operating procedure for me. I still look forward to the adventure tomorrow. I know that the nerves will subside when I get moving. I have heard from many people who have wished me good luck and safe travels. I appreciate every one of them. As I think about it, once I start I will not be alone. God is there and we will walk together. He made Maine too and he knows they way.
