NOBOs vs. SOBOs

The following is based on my very biased opinion regarding who reigns supreme between NOBOs and SOBOs. First, I’m sure you remember that NOBOs and SOBOs are distinguished by which direction they are hiking on the Appalachian Trail. In the world of thru hikers, NOBOs start in the winter/spring on Springer Mt. in Georgia, and finish in the summer/fall on Mt. Katahdin in Maine. Contrarily, SOBOs start around the beginning of summer on Mt. Katahdin and finish on Springer Mt deep into fall.

Then there are those flip floppers. They start as one and flip to the other [insert standard Romney joke here]. I think they most commonly start somewhere in the middle, hike north, and then flip south for the end. They tend to retain a douchey-ness associated with northbounders.

As you might well imagine, the relationship between NOBOs and SOBOs is quite complicated. [Btw- I sure do hope you all are pronouncing this right. Noe-bow and Sew-Bow.] There are several reasons for this. First of all, most people hike north. It’s the direction that Earl Shaffer thru hiked for the first time in history back in 1948. Plus, summiting Mt. Katahdin at the end is way more epic than hiking up Mt. Springer. So, like I said, most people hike north. When we passed through Harpers Ferry, WV and visited the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, they had over 900 people claiming to be northbound thru hikers for 2011 and only a little over 50 southbound thru hikers for 2011. Granted, there were still more southbounders to come after us, so I figure the number was more like 100. Still, we’re talking 9-1. And we saw a high percentage of those hiking north, so take it from us, there were A LOT. We saw NOBOs from the first day we were on the trail. Around VT and NH we passed through the northbound “bubble”. We had been warned about this phenomenon for some time. Somehow a high density of northbounders managed to be chunked together over a 4 day span and there were days that we passed 50 people hiking the opposite direction. At this time in the hike, you’d arrive at a shelter and there would be 20 people there because northbounders were coinciding with the southbounders and it was a cluster. We saw the last of the regular season northbounders in CT. However, we even saw some non-traditional north bound hikers down in TN when it was getting late in the year. They planned to hike as long as they could before the weather just became too unbearable. (Crazy).

NOBOs and SOBOs have very different experiences just based on the fact that northbounders are with other hikers alllll theeee tiiiime, and southbounders are much more scarce. But there is another reason that they don’t see eye to eye. While we were hiking around Hamilton Pool today in TX with our friend, Linda Owen, she commented on the fact that the trail we walked down to get to the river looked completely different when we returned on it in the other direction. She hit on a very important point. Yes, northbounders and southbounders both hiked the AT. They both saw the same towns and the same mountain views, but the majority of the time they were just hiking on a trail, and they never saw the same thing as the other. The viewpoint you get from walking one direction is biased. You see one side of every tree, rock or bush. So in a very fundamental way, NOBOs and SOBOs have two very distinct experiences. I think everyone hiking the trail comes to this realization at some point. I mean, you have a LOT of time to think and I’m going to go ahead and assume that this crosses everyone’s mind. And I’m sure it’s a pretty profound feeling moment when they think of it. And I don’t mean to suggest that the fact that everyone realizes it makes it less profound, but it is funny to think of how badass each person probably feels at that moment. (Especially if you know them).

The NOBO-SOBO relationship is further colored by the fact that NOBOs, for the most part, are running into SOBOs in the far northern section of the trail as a result of the seasons that people hike. So as a southbounder, you’re running into northbounders after you’ve hiked 0-700 miles and they’ve hiked 1500-2200 miles. There is an unavoidable superiority complex. Northbounders have experienced more, made it further and are ready to let you know it. They interact with you like they assume you’re not going to make it the whole way. They give you tips about your gear or what experiences you’ll have in the future. They tell you how your body will change, your appetite, your mind. They tell you all of this as if you haven’t been affected at all by whatever portion of the hike you’ve completed. And let me tell you, you are changed by the first week. I think they forget that. I try not to forget that when I interact with other hikers, especially weekend or section hikers. People are changed every time they backpack, but if you do it for too long you forget.

Obviously it’s all about perspective. There is a strong degree of relativity involved…as is well expressed through the AT mantra “Hike your own hike”, however there is also a component of objective truth. I think there is a common experience that is unchangeable. At the core, hiking just “is”, and something about it is the same for everyone, but this truth is veiled by all these other consequential factors.

That being said—hiking SOBO is way better than hiking NOBO. J I know I’m contradicting what I just said, but the sameness of the experience be damned. There are too many elements that layer on top of the base truth of the experience to make them in any way equal. I preferred hiking south because: you get the hardest part of the trail done in the beginning, which makes the rest of it seem like a breeze; you are less crowded, yet there are enough people that you are not lonely; the Smokys are less likely to be impassable due to snow; and you’ll hit the south in the fall rather than the summer so the temperatures will be much more bearable. Plus you won’t be a douche.

Sol would add: When we ran into the flip floppers when we were headed south, he remembers feeling that he was trying his hardest to not act like a “NOBO” to these newly southbound hikers. Translation: We were scarred enough by the people who were dicks to us in the beginning that we tried not to act like a dick to those we met as we continued, even when we had hiked over 1500 miles.

A Typical Day

Even though we were all hiking, the hikers we met all had different routines. Some started before sunrise (usually old people), and other started way late (usually stoners). Some hiked 10 miles a day (usually old people and stoners) and some hiked nearly 30 miles a day (crazies). Some cooked a breakfast (usually old people) and others didn’t even cook dinner. You get the idea.

Here’s a very generalized skeleton of what a normal day hiking was for us. It took a couple of weeks to really settle into this routine, but it was pretty similar the entire time.

We woke up around 6:30-7:30 am. This varied only when we got lazy toward the end of the trail, before the time changed, and we realized we could start hiking at 9-9:30 am and still make good time. However, it changed back to this time when we lost an hour of daylight at night and gained it i the morning. We were moderate in our waking up time. Then I’d get up almost every time and start boiling water on our stove to make coffee. There was a period in the first few weeks when we didn’t carry coffee or have anything hot in the morning, but we found ourselves gouging on coffee whenever we were in towns because we missed it so much. I’d have dreams about coffee. And it’s not healthy to go from not drinking coffee for 4 days to drinking 5 cups in one day in town. We decided to just start carrying it. It was awesome, especially when it started getting really cold in the morning.

Sol waking up in the Smoky Mountains

For breakfast we were pretty lame. We both love breakfast when we get to go out to a diner type place, but if we’re on our own we don’t really care. More often than not we ate pop tarts. If not pop tarts, then a granola bar or the “power cookies” that Sol’s mom sent us. Somehow we never got sick of pop tarts. We’d switch it up and get strawberry sometimes or cookies and cream, but still pop tarts. We actually knew a hiker that made it from ME to VT and then skipped to PA and hiked for another 2 weeks before dropping out for good that ONLY ate pop tarts. He was in his 50’s, fit and a really nice guy that we got along with very well. But the pop tart thing was crazy. He’d eat pop tarts for breakfast and dinner and snack on Luna bars and almonds during the day. He was like a pop tart spokesperson. He always said the pop tarts were a trifecta of 1. Color, 2. Variety, and 3. Fun.

After breakfast we started hiking within an hour and would go until lunch. We usually tried to hike about half of our mileage for the day by lunch. We usually took a small break to snack after a couple of hours of hiking. From the very beginning of the trip I realized that I needed to eat about ever 2 hours. I could push it to 3 hours, but that might make my blood sugar dangerously low. And we can’t be having that!

Snack time in Shenandoah NP

Lunch was our biggest break. Since Sol and I were always hiking together, we’d stop and chill and take a good half an hour. We’d often try to make it to a shelter that was between 7-11 miles away, since that would be around lunch time. If there was no shelter at a convenient distance we’d choose a scenic spot to eat. I’d say 9 out of 10, if not 99 out of 100 times, I was the one that said “I’m hungry, let’s stop for lunch.” Sol would almost always be like “Good, I’m hungry too.” And I would always wonder...why didn’t he just say “let’s stop for lunch.” Sometimes I’d wait and not say anything for a while around lunch time, trying to wait him out to see if he’d propose stopping, but he never did and I always gave in and said something first.

After lunch, we’d hike for another 5 or 6 hours until we arrived at the spot that we were going to camp, or the shelter that we were aiming for. At the shelter we got into the distinct habit of Sol getting our water. We’d have to refill our water two or three times everyday. Once in the morning before hiking, usually sometime in the middle of the day, and then once at night when we got to our shelter in order to cook and hydrate. Sol hated that we fell into this routine, but like I said, he was in charge of figuring out where the local water source was (a stream or a spring), walk to it (sometimes it was as far as .2 miles away), and fill up our water bottles. I’m not 100% sure how I pulled this off, I think it’s because I always cooked. Plus I was always more tired/weak. I couldn’t handle collecting water or my one shred of mental stability might snap.

I’d begin making dinner once I got water and Sol would bring out the whiskey that he carried with him for at least 130/152 days we hiked. We’d chat with the other hikers we met at the shelter, or if we were alone, we’d put on our am/fm radio that we got in Front Royal, VA (always to NPR or some classic/80’s rock station). We would rarely make fires if it was just the two of us, but once we started hiking with Sam we had a fire every night because he needed it to cook on. Also, since I cooked, Sol would wash our one dish with his finger and some water.

Prepping for dinner in NY

We’d go to bed whenever we were done with dinner, had enough whiskey and got bored. Sometimes this was ridiculously early like at 6:30 pm, and sometimes we were able to push it until 10 pm. It really depended on how exhausted we were and how entertained we were. Then we’d repeat.

So this is how we managed to make it the whole 2000+ miles. This kind of routine allowed us to hike a good distance everyday and not get very burned out. Every once in a while we’d get an interruption and adjust, like the time that 3 dogs followed us for 10 miles before we realized that there was no way they were just going to ‘find their way home’. Or the times that we decided to push it another 3 miles to get to a road to go into town. And then there were all the days that we hiked into a town, which we tried to keep to 10 miles or less so we’d have an extra half day there.

The day with the dogs in Virginia

As you can see, life pretty much involved hiking, eating and sleeping. Visits to town basically involved tv, eating and drinking. Come to think of it, since finishing life has pretty much been a “town visit”.

Trail Dating

A lot of couples meet on the trail, and oftentimes these couples only exist on the trail. Even though there is a disproportionate number of men and women, couples form quite often. Really...since there is such a disproportionate number...hormones are all ablaze. Especially in the 20 something hiking group. Just spit balling here, but the male to female ratio hiking is probably near 10-1. A more conservative guess would be 7-1. Then count out those females that are hiking as a couple already, like me, and you have a small population of available women for trail dating. (We’re going to count the girls who have boyfriends back in civilization because, from our experience, they function under the rule “out of sight out of mind”.)

Despite the odds, a lot of couples form. It provides a lot of gossip, which is basically all we have besides the rocks and trees, so we love and hate it. We spent a lot of time speculating whether two people that we knew from the beginning of the trip in Maine were hooking up. The girl had a boyfriend and the guy was clearly in love with her from the moment he met her on the trail. They began hiking exclusively together for the last half of the trail. We’d run into them in towns where they split hotel rooms. They’d also do crazy stints like hike for 50 miles in 22 hours. A lot of contradicting impressions...I guess only they know the truth. Either way, at the end of the hike her boyfriend picked her up and they left together.


This is a pretty good example of the main characteristics of trail dating. It involves doing a lot of hiking together, sharing hotel rooms in towns and usually ends while hiking or as soon as the hike is over.

Once we were hanging out in a town around the outfitter taking a zero. There were a bunch of books in the outfitter written by people who hiked the trail. It all seemed like the usual stuff...all about the “journey”, the animal encounters, the bad weather, the sore muscle, the worried parents...all stuff that we were pretty sick of hearing of day in and day out. I opened up a book by a girl who titled her book after her trail name, Cinnamon. By just flipping to the middle of the book I found an excerpt that stayed with me for the rest of the trail.

It was Cinnamon talking to her mom on the phone. She was a single female, thru hiking north and she had just graduated high school or college or something. She had made friends with a group of hikers and had a big crush on this guy named Manhattan. She was telling her mom how they were “kinda trail dating”. Her mom, understandably, asked, what the hell is trail dating? She told her mom “Well, you know. It’s when you hike together during the day, or plan to meet at the same shelter at night. Or one of you will say ‘you wanna go grab water together’.” Gross. Lame. Totally gross. Needless to say Manhattan ditched Cinnamon and just started hiking faster than her.

By that definition, Sol and I were trail dating with our friend Sam for 800 miles, which we enjoyed telling people along the way.

There are some great love stories that come out of the trail. We met a middle aged couple that met while the guy was thru hiking north. He made it about 30 miles to the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) in NC where he met this woman who lived locally. She honed in on him immediately and the next morning in the restaurant the waitress sat them next to each other. The rest of the story involves him hiking up to ME and her meeting him with a RV to support the end of his trip north. They got married a year later at the place they met. Then we met them while we were hiking through the NOC and stopped in for a beer, dinner and a bed. They recognized us as thru hikers, told us their story and bought us all a beer. It was awesome.

Trail Lingo

As with all subcultures, there is a whole jargon associated with the hiking culture and an even more specific vocabulary linked to the Appalachian Trail. The best way to learn the language is to get on your hiking boots and immerse yourself in it. We’ve been in and out of the outdoors/hiking culture for the past several years while we were in AmeriCorps and doing Trail Crew, but there was a lot left for us to learn.

Here’s an attempt at a mini dictionary:

Hiking Styles:

White blazing: Hiking on the AT. It refers to following the white blazes (rectangular white markings that mark the trail, usually on trees and rocks).

Blue blazing: Hiking on a trail that is not the AT. There are a lot of side trails that parallel, cut off and lead into the AT. These are often marked with blue blazes. Blue blazing refers to hiking on one of those trails rather than the AT for a section. We enjoyed doing this as a change of pace, especially at the end.

Yellow blazing: Catching a ride via road rather than hiking a section. The yellow in yellow blazing refers to the yellow dotted lines on the roads, which look similar to the white and blue trail blazes. It usually is done by hitchhiking from one town to another and skipping a section of the AT. I guess we technically did this 3 times… in NJ, VA and TN. Twice because of weather issues and once because of food shortage.

Green blazing: Bushwacking. Although it takes a really ‘gifted’ individual to lose the trail completely, some really do. Green blazing gets its name from having to hike through the forrest. It’s usually the result of being lost, but it might be done on purpose by some.

Aqua blazing: Using a boat of some kind to travel via river rather than the trail. This is possible going northbound on the Shenandoah River and the Housatonic going south.

Pink blazing: Changing your hiking pace in order to follow a girl. You get the idea with the “pink”. Usually it means that a guy is slowing down his pace or distance every day to hike with a girl; or, in some cases, he yellow blazes to catch up with a girl. It will become more clear why this is common whenever I get around to the Sausage Fest 2011 post.

Pole blazing: I think we were with a couple of people when they made this one up. It’s the counterpart to pink blazing. It’s when a girl changes her pace or skips a section to hike with a guy.

Types of Hikers:

Thru hiker: Someone hiking the entire AT in one go.

Section hiker: Someone who has an extended plan to finish the entire AT in several trips over several years. We met people who were on the 20+ year plan, and some who had the 5 year plan. Quite often these are groups of men who are friends from work or church, although we also saw a lot of guys who are doing it alone with the ground support from their wives. Yes, mostly men.

NOBO: This is a hiker that is hiking northbound on the trail (much more common). Usually it’s reserved for thru hikers.

SOBO: Hikers hiking southbound, like us.

Flip floper: Someone who starts at some point in the middle of the trail, hikes in one direction to the end and then returns to that point and hikes in the other direction to the other end. We mostly met people who started between VA-PA and hiked up to Katahdin in the Spring-Summer, then returned to that point and hiked down to Springer in the Fall. These are people who plan to complete it in one year. We met several people that we passed in VT and NH going north again down in TN and NC going south at the end.

Yo yoer: Why anyone would do this...I’m not sure. It’s when you start at a certain point on the trail, hike to one end, then turn around and hike back.

Day hiker/weekender: These are hikers that are out purely for fun without any goal of completing the trail. Maybe “for fun” is an assumption. A lot of kids and friends were pretty miserable being dragged out by their one enthusiastic hiking friend.

Misc:

Trail name: A nickname that you receive on the trail. You are not supposed to name yourself, someone else has to give it to you. However, I think probably about half the people name themselves. You go by this name the entire trail, you introduce yourself with your trail name and you sign the trail logs with your trail name. A lot of times you don’t know someone’s real name. My trail name was JTree and Sol’s was Whiskey.

Slack packing: When you hike for a day with a light pack (usually just a day pack), because you will be either returning to the same place at night or someone is dropping off your big backpack at your end point for the day. It require someone to shuttle you or your pack at some point in the day. It’s one of the best things to do once in a while because it feels aweeessooommmee to hike with just a day pack after months of a heavy pack. We did it only a couple of times- in CT with the help of Elsa, in VA when the weather was bad through a B&B we were staying at, and in TN just for the hell of it through the help of another hostel. It usually costs money to be shuttled/have your pack shuttled so it’s a treat. Usually you push for a longer distance since you’re not weighed down.

Trail magic: A treat that is either left for you on the trail by a stranger or receiving some treat from someone you meet on the trail. It could also be a ride when you need it or someone buying you a meal in town when they find out you’re a hiker. We found beer, cookies, crackers, candy bars, etc. in many random places along the trail that someone local left for hikers. The best trail magic was a tent set up on the side of the trail outside of Franklin, NC by a guy who stocked it full of soda, candy, cookies and a stove for making hot chocolate, coffee and hot dogs. Awesome.

Trail Angel: People who perform trail magic. They may do it once on a whim when they meet a hiker, while others basically make a career out of it. There are a few well known Trail Angels that live in towns along the AT and take in hikers as they pass through, or are available to give rides to and from the trail for free.

Zero: A day that you hike zero miles. An off day.

Nero: A day that you hike “nearly zero” miles. The amount of miles that qualifies as a nero varies by hiker, but we considered it as a day of 10 miles or less. Usually we had neros in or out of town.

Triple Crown: Thru hiking the AT, Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail. It doesn't matter what order you do it in and it doesn't matter how many years apart you do each trail. We met several people who are triple crowners... crazy/impressive.

That’s about it. Now we can talk freely about our trip with any of you and use the vocabulary freely without a bunch of confused looks.

The Worst Day Ever

I'm writing about“The Worst Day Ever” to get it out of the way. We were recently asked what was the most memorable experience, and our immediate response was “Well, worst memorable experience or best memorable experience” because worst was easy. We are still scarred by it.

You must understand, every hiker ever, wherever they have hiked, has a horror story. Whether it is due to weather conditions, animal encounters, getting lost, or getting hurt, no one is unique in their bad experiences. We all tell the stories with the utmost detail and intensity, but we’ve also heard it a thousand times from others. I guess I’m suggesting that this story isn’t actually as badass as I make it sound as I tell it because we are not unique in the experience. But you know what, that’s crap. Just because so many people make similarly bad judgment calls and end up in a bad situation, it doesn’t make our particular experience any less intense.

It took place on the North Carolina-Tennessee border. We had just spent a night at an awesome bed and breakfast/hostel with two of our favorite southbound hiker friends. There were a couple of reasons why we set out that next morning in spite of the imminent bad weather blowing through. 1) The hostel didn’t have any space for that night and was in fact overbooked and 2) there were a few other hikers in the hostel that were driving us absolutely crazy. Sometimes you just meet people that you don’t click with and these people sucked. We even left the place a little earlier than we originally planned just to get away from them. (For the record, on the surface these people were perfectly nice. There were several things that just rubbed us the wrong way. But I feel bad complaining about them, I’m sure they are good people. But I look back on them with a lot of malice.)


(This is a photo I took of the hostel/bed and breakfast that was so great)


Anyway, we only had something like, 8 miles to go for this day. We were heading up to a shelter that we’d heard rave reviews about for hundreds of miles. It was an old barn that had been recommissioned as a shelter for hikers. It was supposed to have the best views and was so big it could sleep as many people as was ever necessary, which was great because space could be an issue in places that only slept 6-8 people. It was going to be a short day, which should have meant an easy day.

As you might expect, it was the opposite of easy. The last 2.5 miles of the hike that day was on a bald. A bald is a mountain that naturally doesn’t grow trees. In the southern Appalachians there is no treeline like you find in the north. So, the only times you get 360 degree views is when there are just meadows on tops of mountains, and these are called “balds”. What would have been an awesome view for over 2 miles turned into hell. There were 70 mph winds blowing sideways without trees to break it up. It was raining initially, but the windchill made the rain freeze to your clothes, hair and body. You were soaked within minutes because the wind drove the rain into you, all on one side (so really half of your body was dry for a while until osmosis took effect on the fabric of your clothing). I was bracing myself hunched sideways, my backpack acting as a crappy parachute trying to carry me away with the wind. My hands were so frozen that I couldn’t hold my hiking poles for fear of frostbite on my fingers, so I held them under my arms like a rifle. We were all running on the wet, icy trail and we could only see 15 ft in front of us.

This lasted for probably about 45 minutes, until we got to the shelter. When we got there we were all freezing, soaked and completely shaken up and it was only 2:30pm. There were two people already in the old barn. One was a guy who was doing a “wilderness experience” on the trail. He started somewhere in North Carolina, tried to live in the woods hunting and gathering but found it too difficult to sustain himself. He hiked north and stopped and worked at different hostels for room and board. He also hiked barefoot. He had a pair of Keene sandals, but those were just for emergencies. He had hiked in the day before when it was nice weather, saw the awesome view, took a picture of it (which he showed to us on his iphone...I know...wilderness?), and decided to not hike out when he saw how bad the weather was that day. In hindsight this guy was pretty wacko, but at the time it was awesome because he had collected a bunch of dry firewood and was an expert at making fires. The other guy was in his 60’s and from Alabama. He was clearly pretty well off and had a lot of adventures in his life. He had been hiking for 4 weeks on the trail north and planned to do one more week. He just arrived from the other directions, which was similarly horrible.

We all put on our dry clothes and set up our sleeping bags. Sol and I were the only ones with a tent, which we planned to sleep in to capture our heat. We were lucky, since this old barn had tons of cracks between the wood, and there was a big door opening that had no doors, which let in the wind (and by the morning, the snow). We all were sleeping on the second level. On the bottom level there was a narrow hallway and we set up tarps like walls on two sides to create a wind block and built a fire between them. We all hung out around that fire until dark, only leaving to get food or (god forbid) pee. We went to bed at like, 6, and used all of the tricks we had learned to save heat. We were wearing all of our dry clothes, we had our sleeping bags (at this time they were rated to 20 and 30 degrees but the temperature was well below that), and we lined our sleeping bags with trash bags that we kept in our packs for extra waterproofing to act as extra insulation. We had picked up some handwarmers from a shelter in Virginia a couple hundred miles earlier (you think in terms of miles, not time at the point), and we threw those in our packs. We also boiled water on our stove and put it in our water bottles and threw those water bottles in our sleeping bags. We were comfortable enough to sleep all night.

The next morning we woke and all of our stuff that was outside the tent was frozen. Solid. Our boots were frozen, our clothes were frozen, our packs were frozen, the condensation on the tent from our breaths = frozen. It had been lightly snowing and there was a film across most of our clothes as it blew into the barn. It was miserable. At this point, the guy with no shoes was calling people to get a ride off of the mountain and we were all ready to jump on that bandwagon. There was a hostel south of the mountain that offered rides to-and-from the trail that he had just worked at for a couple of weeks, and then there was the hostel just north of the mountain that we had stayed at the night before. In the end, it worked out that the hostel we stayed at was able to pick us up. The husband that ran the hostel/bed and breakfast was dropping off a truckload (literally) of hikers at the top of the mountain. Poor suckers. On his way back, he swung around and picked us up on a road that led up to just about a quarter of a mile from where our shelter was.

(We were afraid that our camera was frozen -and it was- but I took this one picture of the experience the next morning through that open doorway from the second floor of the barn)


We had an hour to kill, but we were in pretty high spirits at the promise of warm coffee and being inside. We all paced around the barn, with our frozen boots on, trying to thaw them out. It was the most painful thing I had to do. I was almost in tears, it was miserable. In the end we got our ride back to the hostel and it was awesome. There was one other hiker there already heading south who decided, due to the continually crappy weather, to solicit a ride to the next legitimate town along the trail. We decided to hop on that train, since we were more interested in forward progress than waiting around for the weather to clear up in a couple of days. We were broken and beaten and we just wanted to hang out in a hotel, with our own rooms. We ended up staying there for two days, drinking a ton of beer, watching a ton of tv and eating a ton of McRibs.


(This speaks for itself. Hotel. Beer. McRibs)


Other of our least favorite things:
-Getting a wet butt. This happened from the rain falling down my pack cover and dripping onto my butt or from my water bladder leaking from my backpack.
-Butt chaffing. The wet butt didn’t help with this.
-Putting on wet boots.
-Being cold at night. Waking up in the cold may have been worse.
-Bugs buzzing around your head all night, and people snoring all night and mice scurrying by your head all night.

Adjusting after the AT

I am excited to begin writing on this blog again. After finishing the AT it seems like a cool medium to share different things that I learned with my friends and family. I figure I’ll use it as a way to answer all the questions that each of you are asking, as well as just talk about different things I’ve learned as they are revealed to me.

Since being off the trail people are always interested in the superlatives: What was the best part? What was the worst part? What was your favorite state? What was the scariest animal encounter? I’ve been fielding these questions, many of which I don’t have a clear answer for, as best I can. Some have obvious answers that stand out bright and clear in my memory (most likely because I am scarred by them!), with others I find myself sounding like a politician deftly maneuvering around the question, talking about several related (slightly off) topic points that I am more comfortable with. It’s just really hard to figure out what the best part was! It’s really easy to figure out the worst part. These posts will come in due time, I’ll try to do about one a day until I run out of topics. So far I have a brainstorm list of things I’d like to write about. They include (off the top of my head):
The worst day ever (as expected)
The best day ever (this will probably be some rambling about how I can’t figure it out)
The things they carried (everyone asks what we packed, and it changed over time)
Trail lingo (there is a whole vocabulary accompanied with the AT)
The least wilderness-y wilderness experience (about how many people hike the AT to have a wilderness experience, but how I think that is impossible on this trail)
Trail culture (the elusive and difficult to explain subculture surrounding the trail. this might also warrant a Trail Names post)
The lessons I’ve learned (still figuring this out)
A typical day (also a popular question)
Sausage fest 2011 (life as the only female for 3 months)
What 500 miles felt like, and 1000, and 1500 and 2000
NOBOs vs. SOBOs (the difference between those who hike north and south)

Anyway, if you have other ideas shoot them at me and I’ll write about it. Maybe one with our recipes and food ideas, or one with the towns we stopped in.

For the first post I figured I’d address the question of “Is it hard getting back into real life now that you’re done?”

The short answer is “no”. I know, disappointing. It’s been over 3 weeks since we’ve finished the 5 month journey, so maybe it is too soon to tell? But still, there was no shock to the system, no pained re-figuring out how to function in a house and with cars. There is a slight chance that it just hasn’t hit us yet that you can’t just stop walking 20 miles a day after 152 days and feel like everything is normal.

I figure part of the reason that the transition feels so smooth is that we were pretty connected during the trip. I would email, facebook and text every time we got to a town, which was at least once a week. I would even call and text from the trail if I felt like it and we had service. We were also constantly receiving letters from people on the trip, and we were taking videos of the journey with the rest of the world in mind. Therefore, we were very cognizant of the world beyond the trail and vicariously interacted with it as we documented our trip.

Another reason that it is an easy transition is that we were such lazy slobs whenever we went to towns, we really never forgot what not hiking felt like. We’d hang out in a hostel or hotel and watch tv all day, order pizza and drink beer. It felt like any other weekend that you just wanted to relax. We also bought an AM/FM radio in Front Royal, VA so we listened to NPR in the morning. Between tv and radio, we were more tuned in to news than I was in college. We also were up to date on all the new South Park episodes this season. We also caught a couple Republican debates. We heard all about the Occupy Wall Street movements around the country. Really, we didn’t miss any of the headlines, we just felt a serene sense of detachment since it was so far from our present worldly concerns. It was great (not so great now).

Finally, hiking by the end just felt so normal! It was like having a job. A job you enjoyed. A job where you set your own schedule. Yes, we did have people point out to us how lucky we were, “You can take a vacation day whenever you want!”. And some hikers, I’m sure, cringe at calling it a job. However, I’m just trying to express a certain feeling where you wake up early in the morning and you know you have stuff to get done (i.e. hike 20 miles). You can’t dilly-dally too much or else you won’t make it to your goal. You push through rough times (rain, cold, wind) in order to complete the objective. You are tired and go to bed, wake up and repeat. Then you get time off (i.e. going into towns for a night or a day) and you freaking love it like it’s TGIF every time. Ya know what I mean?

Luckily I never got sick of hiking. I literally would be walking, my poles clinking next to me as I took my steps, watching the trail disappear before me as I walked forward through an ever-changing landscape of woods, thinking “I can’t believe I’m not sick of this.” I really wasn’t. Ever. I was bored sometimes and in a bad mood, but we’d stop and change things up a bit and continue and everything was good again. I wasn’t itching to finish by the end, but I was also ready for it to be done. I think it was probably just the right timing to finish the trail and 1) not be jerked out of a different sense of reality brought by hiking for so long and 2) not be overdue for my life back in civilization, which I’m sure carries its own consequences.

Hilarious collision of worlds

As many of you know, my boyfriend, Sol, and I just finished hiking the Appalachian Trail (from Maine to Georgia). After five months of hiking, I subjected my wonderful and supportive rugged outdoorsman to a weekend hanging out with all my college friends in NYC. NYC just 2 weeks after finishing the Trail smacked us in the face with a very plugged-in, metropolitan lifestyle after nearly half a year in the same clothes, with no electricity, wandering through the woods. Needless to say, he was a little out of his element, but he's always a good sport and truly does appreciate the company.

Before we left NY to head up to visit his parents in Maine, we visited our friends Priscilla and Brad. Priscilla gave me two books to read, one about Chelsea Handler's evil pranks and one by Mindy Kaling about life in general. In the past she has given me some great Chelsea Handler literature. Absolutely hilarious, dirty and girly stuff (some of you had the opportunity to hear me read portions aloud when it was just so ridiculous)....not exactly Sol's normal reading repertoire.

However, during our 2 day drive from NY-NH/NH-ME, I started reading "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)" by Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly from The Office. It was so hilarious from the very beginning that I started reading it out loud to Sol as he drove. In those two days I read the entire thing to him in the car. Hilarious, because some aspects of it are so far from anything he ever cared about or thought about, but a lot of the stuff is just straight up funny enough for both of us to enjoy. And each time I picked it up, he insisted I read it out loud to keep him entertained. Anyway, there was the most epic paragraph ever, and I had to share it with you.

Imagine Sol driving his Subaru outback, me reading, the car on the back roads of Maine. We've made it to page 163 at this point. So you can get an idea of the type of stuff we're dealing with, this section of the book is called "The Best Distraction in the World: Romance and Guys" and the sub chapter is called "Guys need to do almost nothing to be great". Also, imagine me reading it with the sassiness that I imagine Mindy had while writing it. Here is the paragraph:

Forgive me, but being a guy is so easy. A little Kiehl's, a Bumble and Bumble, a peacoat, and Chuck Taylors, and you're hot. Here's my incredibly presumptuous guide to being an awesome guy, inside and out. Mostly out, for who am I to instruct you on inner improvement? Let me say here that if you're some kind of iconoclastic dude who goes by the beat of your own drum, you will find this insufferable. I totally understand this. Buy why are you even reading this book at all? Shouldn't you be hiking the Appalachian Trail right now or something?

Amazing moment. Thanks Priscilla, thanks Mindy.


Here's a photo of Sol, in all his glory, hiking in the AT in VA. For anyone who reads Mindy's book, specifically this chapter, you can decide for yourself how well Sol fits into her "awesome guy" vs. "iconoclastic dude" breakdown.