Stepping foot on the summit of Springer Mountain, Georgia, was a moment of mixed emotions.

It was last month, May 16, about 12:30 p.m., an unexpectedly gorgeous, blue-sky day in Georgia. The Springer summit signified the successful end of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike. The white blazes, painted on tree trunks and road signposts, which I had followed since climbing atop Mount Katahdin in Maine’s Baxter State Park last June 30, were no more. More than 2,194 miles hiked, through 14 states, up more than 500,000 feet, living for six months on the trail. I finished what I’d set out to do.

The moment of completion of such a large task is fraught with uncertainty and wonderment, triumph clashing with confusion. The most common question posed to AT thru-hike finishers is, “What are you going to do now?” It was asked of me, right there on cue, atop Springer Mountain, by two Florida women who’d day-hiked up from the tourist lodge below.

That question and its spinoffs are the sources of the strange, melancholic sensation that is finishing the AT. It’s a moment filled with elation, yes. But also with a sudden purposelessness and forlornness, already missing the trail and daily hiking that had become your life.

You’re ecstatic in this moment for the physical break, realizing you won’t have to awake and spend 8 to 10 hours every day on rugged trails, climbing thousands of feet up mountains while carrying everything you need on your back.

But the feeling is more nuanced than that. The AT had occupied my mind, and my being, for more than a year. It became my way of life, as it must for any thru-hiker. Your days are spent planning logistics, food, places to sleep, transportation, monitoring your body, taming your mind and talking with other hikers about this endeavor of hiking thousands of miles. When you camp, you’re likely asleep by 9 p.m., sunken in an exhaustive slumber, and up again at dawn to do it all over again.

You train your mind for months on end not to think too far ahead, to take one day at a time because to consider the whole task in front of you is too overwhelming, too large and challenging.

Then it’s all over.

Altered plan

As I completed my AT thru-hike, I was aware that it didn’t all come off the way I’d planned it. The hike started optimistically enough as I hoisted my 33-pound backpack at the base of Katahdin and set off into Maine’s hundred-mile wilderness, a 114-mile stretch of thick-wooded forest devoid of civilization or comfort.

I survived Maine and gained strength for New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I hiked for four months through 11 states, about 1,450 miles, down into northern Virginia as the autumn air cooled the nights and necessitated more layers.

My first setback followed a night sleeping in a crowded hostel bunk room. A sore throat the next day became a six-day bout of COVID, isolated in a hotel room with high fever. I jumped back on the trail and pushed back up to 18 miles a day, but far too soon. Two weeks later, setback number two: a stress fracture in my right foot. Couldn’t walk or put any weight on it, let alone hike. Back home for a winter of recovery and heartbreak.

I returned to the trail in March, wiser and more careful, for a while. The reintroduction was an obstacle course of difficulty. The first few nights, I wasn’t ready or equipped for temperatures in the teens and didn’t sleep much or drink enough as my water turned into solid ice. And for the first ten days, a new pair of custom orthotics (attempting to avoid another stress fracture) gave me multiple blisters on both feet. As I approached southwestern Virginia, I had to take three days off with a burning shin splint in my left leg. Finally, as I crossed the Tennessee border out of Virginia (my Kryptonite, it seems), things vastly improved for the push to Georgia.

My complaints are on par with others’, and I don’t know many thru-hikers who don’t have stories of injuries and other setbacks, especially those of a seasoned age.

In fact, I would argue, my adventure is more valuable and holds more enduring meaning because of the setbacks and the need to have persevered through obstacles. I finished the trail thankful for the lessons it taught me about myself and my capacity to see it through despite difficulties.

Like life

When friends ask me what it’s like to thru-hike the AT, I often say, “it’s like life.” What I mean is, it’s so large, such a long-term, consuming pursuit, that it contains everything. Days of agony and drudgery juxtaposed with hours of ecstasy and swings of mood from one pole to the other. Times when the cold rain won’t stop and you’re saturated to the bone and don’t want to hike anymore but don’t dare stop moving lest your core temperature should drop. Then a moment when the skies clear and you exit the tree line atop a spectacular mountain where the world below looks small and insignificant, and everything makes sense. Moments that define why we do it, why we do anything.

It’s also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’ve had difficult journeys before. I’ve felt the stabbing loneliness of being on the other side of the world with no friends, no money and nowhere to stay. I’ve pedaled my bicycle across the Mojave Desert in July, and waited in subzero temps atop Mount Fuji to see the sunrise. Hell, I raised two kids.

If anything, thru-hiking the AT could be compared to the challenge of parenting. It’s a long-term commitment littered with setbacks and unexpected magical moments. It makes you question your own sanity at times, but contains indescribable, lifelong rewards that could never be experienced without having gone through the entire process and given it everything you have.

This is invaluable. Once you’ve achieved one of the hardest things you’ve ever done, the bar is raised, your dreams suddenly become much bigger, the ceiling on your aspirations pops off. Fears are overcome and minimized. If you can do that, what else can you do? Is there a limit?

It’s mixed

Still, that moment lingers, the one from the completion of the journey, when you don’t have an answer to “What comes next?” and you just want to bathe in the fulfillment of having finished, having done a big thing.

What does one follow that with? The transition back to society and home life doesn’t diminish the emptiness. On the trail, we were doing something special. Difficult as it is, we like who we are out there, our ability to pare down life to the basics, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to be part of the natural world.

More of that, please.

Finishing the AT feels like a monumental achievement. Only somewhere around 20% of thru-hikers make it all the way to the end within a year.

But, as much as I was thrilled to complete the adventure, every moment since has been at least peppered with a little voice suggesting plans for getting out there again and rediscovering that feeling that can only come from big adventure.

What’s next?

Eric Weld, a former Gazette reporter, is the founder of agingadventurist.com.

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