#002 Why the Appalachian Trail?
“Daddy, when are we going to hike the whole A.T.”? Asks my young son.
In 2009 my ten-year-old son and I drove across the country to meet up with my wife and her high school mission team at Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. They work somewhere different every year doing various duties from serving in homeless shelters in Toronto, Canada to home repair around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This year the team had been repairing homes at Rose Bud Indian Reservation in South Dakoda. The team had planned to hang out at Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse for a day or two on their way home.
On our two-day road trip to meet up with them, my son and I listened to a various audio book (CD’s) we picked up from the library in our hometown. Some he chose, some I chose to keep me company when he would inevitably fall asleep. One of the audio books we listened to together was an account of someone’s Appalachian Trail (A.T.) backpacking trip.
Though my son and I had gone on several weekend backpacking trips together we have never talked about doing anything as big as the A.T. He turned to me part way through the audio book and asked with excitement in his voice, “Daddy, when are we going to hike the whole A.T.”?
After doing some quick math in my head and replied, “2018. You will graduate high school in the spring of 2017. We will start in March of 2018.” I figured it would make a fun gap year experience anyway.
Our conversation lived on for a few years. We continued to backpack and camp when we could. Sometimes we went with his scout troop, sometimes with my friends, sometimes just the two of us. His biggest hike was in the spring of 2013 when we joined a couple of my friends for four days on the A.T. in Smokey Mountain National Park.
I had been backpacking with friends for several years prior to our conversation. We were all married and/or held full time jobs so we usually only got out for one or two nights. In 2010 I was invited to join a friend for his final A.T. section hike in Maine. My son was too young at the time to join us, so he stayed home. My friend and I hiked in the Hundred Mile Wilderness then climbed Mount Katahdin.
The summit of that mountain marked the end of my friend’s long journey but became a major first step in the direction of my new ventures. It sparked my passion for bigger ventures and was a great opportunity to prove to myself that I could handle them.