Kind friends, I hope you will celebrate with me today as it is the 4 year anniversary of the completion of my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. It probably goes without saying that it was an amazing experience, and half a decade on I still don't know how to adequately summarize it. (Indeed, in pure "joy is in the journey" fashion, I never journaled about my Katahdin summiting or attempted to pen meta-thoughts on the walk, because I knew I could do justice to neither.) So, though I won't wax philosophical about it all, I will bust out some dirty stats:
(10) Bear sightings
(26) Snakes, (1) face-to-face after tripping over a rock
(2,175.5) Miles hiked, from Springer Mountain Georgia to Mount Katahdin Maine
(1) Bout with Giardia
(6) Days off because of it
(0) Linear inches of official white-blazed trail skipped
(28) Days of rain in May
(dozens) Shin splints, cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc.
(40) Miles on Mothers Day, to get to the next town to call Mom
(10:15) The time at night I arrived there
(9) Days of hiking with my dad
(1) Psycho threatening to bash people with tent poles in the Maine woods
(100,000+) White-blaze route markers passed. Kissing the very last one in the photo above
(4) Pairs of shoes
(10lbs) Weight of backpack-- including everything except food and water
(6,000) Calories consumed per day
(1) Magical, life changing moment in Front Royal, Va (although unbeknownst to me at the time)
(14) State lines crossed
(many) Homesick nights
(100s) Of friends made
(1) Textbook anti-lightning positions assumed
(5,000,000) Steps
($2,500) Dollars spent on food, occasional hostels, more food, etc.
(3) Weak moments of truly hoping to break my leg so I could go home without being a quitter
(10) Days spent just chillaxin' somewhere
(1) Large peperonni pizza, easily consumed, whenever I could find a Pizza Hut
(loads) Of instances of Trail Magic-- displays of charity towards hikers by townspeople
(1) Times serendipitously receiving Trail Magic from a former hiker who'd received it from me years before
(1) Online photojournal in the works
(100s) More stories
(1) Heck of a time.
To borrow from St. John, writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit-- "There are also many other things that [happened on that Blessed Path]. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."
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