A temporary goodbye.

I’m stepping out for a very long walk in nature. I am leaving for a secular pilgrimage into the unknown. I’m fucking off to the woods for six months. My delivery changes depending on who asks, but the long story short is that I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail. Yes, the whole thing. No, I’m not bringing a gun.

I decided that I would one day attempt a long-distance thru-hike after reading Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild, back in high school. The story follows 26-year old Cheryl as she solo thru-hikes the PCT in the wake of her mother’s lost battle to lung cancer. Her book, and the subsequent movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon, has inspired so many individuals to attempt a long-distance thru-hike that the ‘Wild’ effect is now recognized as an official phenomenon. Permit applications for the PCT, the West Coast counterpart to the AT, increased more than 300% following her book’s publication.

While I’ll be starting off my thru-hike under considerably less bleak circumstances than Cheryl’s, I hope to have similar takeaways from my on-trail experience. At the time of reading her memoir, it was a wild concept (pun intended) to me that a woman could attempt this sort of thing by herself. The ‘Wild’ effect truly speaks to the impact and importance of representation in media. Here I am today: a solo female hiker who’s been inspired to take on the longest hiking-only footpath in the world.

All of my coworkers and management were surprisingly supportive of my decision to attempt the AT, and I had a three-part celebration leading up to my departure. My official last day at work was March 29th. After driving home with tears in my eyes, I tuned into my favorite comedy podcast to distract myself as I started to pack up my apartment. One of my favorite cast members announced that it was his last day on the podcast, as he would be moving out of LA to pursue his own projects. This was a full circle moment for me; he had joined the crew back in July 2021, which was the same month I had started my first job. It was time for both of us to move onto other ventures.

The last few weeks have been a flurry of moving large pieces of furniture from point A to point B and giving goodbye hugs. Even with my nonstop efforts and the assistance of professional movers, it took a little over a week to move all of my belongings into a storage unit. I silently cursed myself throughout the process for having accumulated so much shit over the years—one of the many drawbacks to being a certified material girl. Why do I need to own over twenty black sweaters in slightly different fits? When did I ever think I would have the free time to pick up embroidery as a hobby? Why do I need a KitchenAid artisan stand mixer at this stage of my life? I’ve never been more excited to swap out a large storage room’s worth of things in favor of the bare necessities.

All of my material possessions shoved into an ESS unit for the next six months.

Before leaving Denver, my friend Brooke hosted a Peppa Pig themed goodbye party for me at her townhouse. Attendees were required to wear pink and answer a riddle to gain entry. We mic’d up and ran through a karaoke setlist consisting of Chappell Roan, Radiohead, Weezer, and many of my other favorite artists. After singing our hearts out for several hours and finishing the night off with a bar crawl, it was time for me to say goodbye to Colorado.

My dad usually flies out to help drive whenever I need to make the big trip home, but he’s been having some recent health issues that limit his mobility. I set off on the 24-hour drive back to Jersey on the night of April 8th, the day of the total solar eclipse. I had hoped to be in upstate New York at this time, as the northern portion of Cayuga Lake was in the path of totality, but moving out had taken way longer than I ever could have anticipated. Still, there were a few other celestial events occurring; mercury was in retrograde, and I had a number of strange happenings ahead of me.

The drive from Denver back to my parent’s home in Jersey is 1,756 miles–442 miles shy of the distance that I’ll be walking on the Appalachian Trail. I want to thank Red Bull and the Nebraskan sheriff who did not pull me over on I-80 for being able to make the trip in just a little over two days. For long road trips, I have to keep my cats in a giant dog crate at the back of my Bronco for their safety, but it’s still nice to have their company. We spent the first night at a hotel in Kearney, Nebraska. I wasn’t able to make very much mileage since we had just left that evening, and I was exhausted from having panic cleaned my apartment before turning in my keys earlier that day. I passed out on my hotel bed and fell into a deep sleep until around midnight. That’s when a man who I didn’t know entered my room.

I probably would have been more afraid of a male stranger entering my hotel room in the dead of night had he not been so confused himself.

Um, hello?” I said.

[Silence.]

“Did you need something?” I spoke again.

“I-I’m sorry, there must be a mistake. This is my room,” the man finally replied.

“Apparently not,” I said. The man didn’t respond, so I continued, “I think we should resolve this with the front desk.”

I decided that I didn’t care enough to change out of my matching Hello Kitty pajama set before leaving my room. We headed down to the front desk, where the 20-something year old night auditor went pale as we explained the mix up. He apologized profusely and comped both of our rooms for the night. I might have ended up losing half an hour of sleep over the hiccup, but I was able to save a couple hundred bucks on lodging; overall, a win if you ask me. The next day, I was back on I-80 to start making real mileage towards home.

I love road trips and driving by myself in general. To me, it’s almost like meditation without the silence (or the closed eyes, assuming you’re not sleep deprived). I listened to an audiobook, caught up on my favorite podcasts, and mulled over my running list of obligations for the coming days. Spotify eventually shuffled to my favorite Lana Del Rey song, “Get Free”, and I left it on repeat for a while.

Finally, I’m crossing the threshold from the ordinary world to the reveal of my heart.

I spent some time reflecting on the series of events and personal epiphanies that led me to finally taking the leap and attempting the trail. The feelings of remorse and stagnation that have ultimately compelled me to just go for it. I’ll touch on some more of these thoughts in writing at a later date.

This is my commitment, my modern manifesto. I’m doing it for all of us who never got the chance.

I’m intimidated by what I’m about to attempt—I won’t lie to myself and act like I’m not. But what’s even more terrifying is the thought of waking up, decades from now, with the weight of regret and thoughts of the person I could have been were I only a bit more brave.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve got a war in my mind. I wanna get off, but I keep riding the ride. I never really noticed that I had to decide: to play someone’s game or live my own life.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that, sometimes, you have to be willing to disappoint others a little in order to live a fulfilling life. This is my era of being a slight disappointment, and I’m learning to be OK with being a little bit selfish and misunderstood. The recovering people pleaser inside of me is screaming, but she’ll get used to the discomfort.

On the second night of my road trip, I stayed at a hotel in Notre Dame, Indiana. The next morning, there was a brunch for the parents of Saint Mary’s College in the hotel lobby, and one of the parents invited me over to grab some breakfast before hitting the road. The mom had a fresh blowout and wore a pretty shade of orange-red lipstick. She told me about her daughter, an accounting student at Saint Mary’s, while I loaded up a plate with scrambled eggs and filled my thermos with black coffee. I quickly thanked her and took off with my free breakfast so that I could squeeze in a tour of the Notre Dame campus before hitting traffic. The campus buildings were an eclectic mix of modernist and gothic architecture, and I was able to catch a glimpse of the famous golden dome during my drive through. After completing my self-guided tour, I turned back onto I-80 for the last stretch home.

My parents were kind enough to offer to watch over my two cats while I’m living off-grid. To help assuage some of the guilt I have for abandoning my children, I spent a good portion of my last paycheck on setting up a special room for them at my parent’s house.

The children’s bedroom, courtesy of my last paycheck. Yes, that is a miniature tent—I wanted them to feel included.

In between running pre-trail errands, I continued my goodbye tour with friends in New York City. It’s a pretty quick train ride to-and-from the city, so I’m able to stay in Jersey while easily making day trips to Manhattan.

I stopped by my old hair stylist down in Chelsea, and we agreed that I would chop half of my hair off. While undergoing the big chop isn’t a necessary part of preparing to hike the AT, there are a few advantages to having shorter hair. Since I probably won’t be showering any more frequently than once a week, having mangy hair all the way down to my lower back doesn’t sound very appealing. Summers on the AT are nothing short of brutally hot, so I also don’t want to be wrestling several feet of matted hair into a ponytail as part of my morning routine. I briefly considered just buzzing my head, but I ultimately decided that I didn’t feel like giving 2007 Britney in this season of my life. My hair stylist also happens to be a part-time psychic, so he gave me a complimentary reading for my upcoming adventure. Let’s just say that I now have some extra motivation to make it to the very end of the thru-hike.

Later that same day, after grabbing dinner with a group of my high school friends, I was walking towards Penn Station when a man tried grabbing my attention. I did what any self-preserving New Yorker would do–ignore him and keep walking–but the man was persistent.

“Excuse me, ma’am? Can I get your number?”

“Thank you. This was very brave of you, but I’m not interested.”

I turned away and started heading back towards Penn Station when a second man’s voice shouted from behind.

“That was weeeeeak!”

A shorter man wearing a backwards baseball cap and gauged ears approached us. He had a body camera strapped to his chest and was holding a separate recording device in his hand. I immediately clocked him for what he was: a wannabe YouTube pickup artist. That’s almost as bad as a full-fledged YouTube pickup artist.

He walked up to his “student” and started whispering in his ear, no doubt giving him a play-by-play of what he did wrong. I then walked up to the “coach” to ask him a few questions.

“So, what are your credentials?”

The wannabe pickup artist looked up at me and his eyes went wide, obviously surprised that I hadn’t run away yet. He became defensive and said, “I-I choose to be single!”

I turned to his student and said, “I do not believe that this man is qualified. Don’t listen to him,” I then pointed to the coach’s body camera, “You shouldn’t be listening to him, either.”

I then scurried off towards Penn Station before the confrontation could escalate any further.

The following days consisted of checking off all the remaining boxes on my personal “before you hike the AT” to-do list. Even without having that many responsibilities at this age, there is a laundry list of things to take care of before going off-grid for six months. In the evenings, I tested out all of my new equipment in my parent’s backyard to ensure that I was comfortable working with systems like a non-freestanding tent. I also spent a couple of nights out in my parent’s backyard to test out my new sleeping system, as I had never worked with a sleeping quilt or inflatable sleeping pad before. I still haven’t quite managed to figure out how to hang a bear bag, but I’m sure that I can learn on the fly.

My shoddy backyard tent pitch. It’ll get better with time.

Nine months of reading everything I could get my hands on, attending survival workshops at REI, watching successful thru-hiker’s YouTube videos, spending ungodly amounts of money on ultra lightweight equipment, and I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for such a colossal undertaking.

Next stop: Amicalola Falls State Park, Georgia.

Current book: Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh

Previous
Previous

Welcome to the Appalachian Trail.