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Hiking and Backpacking
Sauntering Thru: Lessons in Ambition, Minimalism, and Love on the Appalachian Trail
An excerpt from the new book
Below you can read an excerpt from my recent memoir “Sauntering Thru: Lessons in Ambition, Minimalism, and Love on the Appalachian Trail.” You can pick up a copy here:
As I look about this small patch of woods in mid-Ohio, I realize it pales next to the seemingly endless wilderness I spent so many weeks traversing last year. The gentle hills with their small groves of oak and maple, pretty though they are, only make me long for the mountains once again. It was the journey of a lifetime, an arduous ordeal for mind and body alike; I wish now that it had never ended.
A year ago I finished hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT), a tremendously challenging endeavor, and I was forever changed. My world today is quite different than it was then — enduring life in a global pandemic, separated from my partner by visa and border restrictions, facing political unrest that tested the very foundations of democracy. It makes me wish I were back on that trail; all I want to do is get away from everything and hike.
Completing the AT is not a journey one makes casually: walking the whole trail took me more than four months. When I triumphantly summited Mount Katahdin in Maine — a mountain I’d dreamed about for many years — I had walked 2192 miles and climbed a total elevation gain equivalent to summiting Mount Everest sixteen times. I stood on that peak with my wife-to-be, “Chilly Bin” (her given trail name), who I had met on day two of the trail and with whom I had spent nearly every moment over the previous 143 days.
It was an unparalleled achievement, and at the same time it was really little more than another mountain on a trail full of them. I realized in a burst of emotional technicolor the truth behind the age-old wisdom that the journey is more important than its destination.
