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AT Day 138

Miles Today: 10.85

AT Mile: 2198.5

(The End)

The hike is over now, and I don’t know what to say. That sounds cliche in and of itself, but I don’t mean for it to be. There have been a lot of hours and miles spent thinking about the end of the trail over the last hundred miles, but even with twenty-one hundred miles of foresight, I still find it hard to know what there is to say.

Ultimately, it feels like a “less is more” situation. Nothing that I can put to the page will do justice to the experience of what happened at the top of Katahdin and at the end of the trail, but isn’t that the writer’s enterprise in a nutshell? How many times in these AT journals alone have I resorted to that exact same excuse–that it’s too much to put into words?

Too many to count I’m sure.

The thing that feels safe is sticking to the facts. At least we can begin there.

—

It rained heavily through most of last night and only showed sign of abating around 2am. That’s when I woke up to piss, but it still sounded like it was raining from the drops that were now falling down from the tree canopies above. When I stepped out into the night air however, it caught me off guard to see open sky and sparkling stars where the overhead foliage allowed for a view.

There was so much water in the trees that the sound of drops falling out from the leaves and onto the taut fabrics of our tents remained with us all night. In the morning everything was covered in sand that had been kicked up from our tent pad by the overnight storm. Much of our gear was wet and everything was filthy. Throughout the night I noticed my sleeping bag was becoming wet from condensation and backsplash off the ground, but I didn’t care. Nobody seemed to care about the condition of our dirty and wet gear in the morning. It was our last day on trail. Nothing mattered anymore. Who knows when we’d end up back in these tents and bags next. It certainly wouldn’t be tonight though. So who gives a sh*t if everything is wet in our pack today?

It’s the last day.

It ends today.

It ends… today.

—

The girl in the tent next to me set her alarm for 5:15, and the moment it woke me into conciousness I grumbled an audible “nope” and pulled my damp down quilt up over my head. In that moment I was determained to sleep in today. But within ten minutes everyone else was starting to rumble around in their tents and I could feel a kind of static energy in the air, something akin to what I started to believe in back in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains.

Inevitably I found myself packing up just like the rest of them, and before long we were all at the picnic tables eating lunch, making coffee, and two of them were cracking open the Red Bulls they packed in from the campstore yesterday.

For breakfast I had a Mountain Mixed Berry Cobbler, and *yes* do believe that should be a proper noun! As we were all breaking camp so early this morning, I started to wonder if we were all just going to skip breakfast in the excitement of summiting Katahdin. But after our wet tents were packed away everyone started making food to fuel this last stretch of the hike.

I’ve developed a lot of different routines around breakfast during this trail, but none of them have involved Mixed Berry Cobbler. It’s been tea, coffee, oatmeal, honey, bars, pop tarts, Kachava, or some mix from the list above. But I decided to treat myself a bit for the end of my Triple Crown, and had that cobbler packed away since Shaw’s for my last morning. And my friend… as if I didn’t already have enough happen on this trail to lead me to believe in god… then *this* comes into my life. Needless to say, it was heavenly and by far the best trail breakfast that I’ve had on the whole AT.

Thank whatever higher power above that I didn’t discover how good those things were earlier on. My trail budget would have doubled from those cobbler breakfasts alone!

Anyways, I say all this about the cobbler and the coffee that I let myself enjoy and the electric energy amongst the other eleven hikers in order to illustrate that my last morning of the AT was something special. It felt unlike any of the days that I’ve ever experienced on a long trail. Lest we forget that my other two Triple Crown trails ended in tragedy and trauma. The fact that this one unfolded like it did is just astonishing and stands in direct contrast with how I’ve learned that trails are supposed to end.

—

I wasn’t the first or the last out from camp this morning. I left somewhere in between, refusing to feel rushed today. One of the girls who had packed up a Red Bull said that she didn’t want to finish it and asked if I wanted what remained. I didn’t need the caffeine, but I accepted anyways, figuring that a little bit of extra boost wasn’t going to hurt this morning. The day was going to be short and I’d be off trial before my energy burned out, so I accepted gladly.

Another hiker offered me cannabis but I declined. Caffeine was the only drug that I was taking today. So much of this trail and intention around the hike has been about exploring altered states of consciousness, and I’ve had the time and the opportunity to do that by now. Over the course of the trail I consumed around 110 grams of psilocybin mushrooms (most of which in the first 50 days), had six experiences with Lycergic Acid, and three experiences with the heart-opening medicine. I’d remained content and stoned for so much of the time as well. But for this last day I had already decided that I didn’t need any of those things. For the last day I summited completely sober, but for the caffeine. Not because I needed to, not because I *had* to, not because I felt some external pressure to, but because I *wanted* to. It felt right for the story to end that way. And so it was.

It was still early and the air was cool when I started out from camp, but it was humid and the climb started early on. It was only six miles to the summit of Katahdin from camp, but they they were steep miles and the trail was aggressive–more aggressive than any of the AT miles that came before them. As such, I found myself soaking wet through and through by the end of the first hour.

That first hour of trail remained below treeline. It was somewhat foggy, but felt like it was going to lift. The air was humid, and I was drenched in short order. I wanted to be able to completely shrug it off and laugh that this is just how the AT is, but it still got under my skin a little bit. Maybe I wanted to be spoiled for the last day of trail. Maybe I wanted to sleep in, sip coffee, eat Mixed Berry Cobbler, and mosey my way through the last six miles with dry clothes and a smile on my face.

But that wouldn’t have been the Appalachain Trail. It had to be hot and brutal. And so it was.

—

Once the trail broke tree line the hike changed dramatically. The clouds were descended to about that same elevation, so visibility was limited, but the wind was intense. The heavy wind pulled the clouds up and over the ridgeline with such rapidity that sublime is the only word that I can find to describe it. I felt so incredibly small within the pull of the wind, the drag of the clouds, and the enormity of the mountain.

I continued to climb in soaking wet clothes as the terrain became progressively more technical and steep. But in the last mile before the summit things started to level off and so I dropped pack, changed into dry clothes with the wind still whipping by so fast that it left my naked skin stinging as I stripped off my shirt to replace it with the dry sun-hoodie in my bag. But that wasn’t enough, and so I added my orange down jacket as a top layer. From there I was worried that I might sweat through those layers as well, but it ended up being so cold and windy for the rest of the climb that I never came close to sweating again until well in to the descent back down. Instead, I found myself comfortable and warm–a feeling that I almost never found in the 2,200 miles that preceded. In a twist of fate, I realized that those were the same layers that I had been wearing at the start of the trail, 138 days before, all the way back in the spring time that morning in April at Amacalola Falls, Georgia. I ended the journey in the same outfit that I entered it… I can’t help but wonder if there’s foreshadowing about life in that, and if maybe I go out kicking, screaming, and as naked as I was when I came into it.

—

In the mile before the summit the clouds were thick and there was no one else around. There were other hikers ahead and behind, but for those last couple miles in the Table Lands, I was almost completely alone again. It felt right to me to be that way. Although so much of this hike has been about the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made along the way, my ultimate reason for being on this trail was to try and find myself again, and a lot of that journey has been undertaken alone.

I ended the walk much as I began it–by myself.

In the isolation of the Table Lands and the clouds and the wind, I took out my phone and played the start of a song. It was the same song that I listened to at the start of the trail and that I have quoted over and over since then. It starts with a poem by an author called “IN-Q.” It goes like this:

You’re not going thru it,

It’s going thru you.

And once it’s all gone, it will become the new you,

With a different perspective from the same point of view,

Fully unaffected by the old truth you once knew.

I was alone with those words and the open air, and I literally dropped down to my knees and cried for a minute. It would still be another half mile before I reached the end of the trail.

I cried in the final, full, and complete acceptance of that last line of the poem: Fully unaffected by the old truth you once knew. I never wanted to have to let go of the things that used to bring me safety and happiness. But I lost that truth two years ago and I’ve been fighting to find myself since then. There was no singular moment along the trail where the change took place, and if I’m being honest, I’m not even sure that I felt it before that last day. But up on Katahdin, I cried in acceptance that that old truth is gone now. I tried to hold onto it as tightly and for as long as I could. And there’s still a part of me that is trying to clasp it, but it’s like grasping at water. It’s impossible now. Those things and the name(s) associate with them don’t exist anymore.

My tears up there were in mourning for having lost those things.

I spent a minute crying, then wiped my eyes, turned off the music on my phone, and walked the last half mile or so that remained to the summit.

—

Time dialated during my last mile of the Appalachain Trail. The cloud coverage was thick and wind pulled the air heavily. It felt like something important was happening.

Once I was within a hundred yards of the summit I could start to make out the dim silhouettes of other hikers, then with a little bit more distance closed, I could make out the outline of the Katahdin signpost. I shed more tears, paused my hike, and once the spell had passed continued up the last stretch to the end.

I was overwhelmed at the summit. Other hikers were scattered about, maybe five or six of them in total, but I may as well have been alone. They were all in a celebratory mood, giggling and looking at their summit pictures. I didn’t notice any of that in the moment though; rather, I recall it in hindsight, as if it were the memory of something that I wasn’t even there to attend.

The first moments at the summit were of a kind that I’ve never felt before this. Just two feet away from the signpost marking the end of the Appalacahin Trail, I dropped down again. I don’t know how in control of my actions I was at that time. I dropped down to my knees, put my face into my hands, and I wept.

I remained there for several minutes as I remember, but time was hard to track in the moment. However long it lasted, I am aware that I cried heavily and tears washed down my face. It felt like the mourning of something. It felt like the end of something important.

The line at the end of that poem came to mind again–“…fully unaffected by the old truth you once knew.” I thought back to everything that has unfolded for me since starting the Contenental Divide Trail, everything that trail brought into my life, all the ways that I thought I was alive after that hike, how I thought that I understood what I was going to do with my life from that point forward. And how I had to lose all of those things. My tears at the top of Katahdin felt like a final goodbye to the relationship I had to lose before I could begin this walk of the AT. And in honesty, it felt different than I’ve felt about it before. It was like I finally accepted that the woman I was engaged to marry is finally and completely gone, and that she no longer owns me. I never wanted to let that go, but it’s absolutely gone now. And maybe my breakdown at the top of the mountain was the real end to that story as well, and not just the end of my hike of the Appalachain Trail.

There was a moment of awareness of the other hikers who were around, and I pulled my face out of my hands to wipe the tears away. I gave some passing thought to the others who may or may not have been watching me in my grief. Unbeknownst to me, one of the other hikers there snapped a picture of me, just before I stood up, wiped my tears again, and took the last step to end the Appalachain Trail. I put my hand on the Katahdin summit marker, and folded over myself again. I crossed my arms on the sign, leaned against it, and I cried.

Again, I don’t know how long any of this went on. A couple of minutes, I would guess. Maybe it was longer or maybe it was shorter. It’d be impossible to say.

What matters, I guess, is that it happened. That the walk found its end.

The end of my Pacific Crest Trail was filled with fire.

The end of my Contentnal Divide Trail was filled with snow and ice.

That the Appalachain Trail and my Triple Crown ended peacefully and without life-threatening challenge was a unique experience for me. It ended without undue resistance. In spite of the wind, the clouds, and the cacophony of energy that swirled around the top of that mountain, it ended in peace.

My tears were not only representative of loss, but also of accomplishment. I felt like for the first time since I started thru hiking in 2011 that I am finally strong enough, worthy enough, and good enough to be proud. I cried because it shouldn’t have taken walking across the country three times in order to find value in myself. But “should” never got anyone very far.

I cried in accepting that this was maybe the way that it had to be. That it couldn’t have played out any differently.

It happened this way becasse it had to happen this way. There really was no other way for the trail to unfold, and my thinking otherwise was only an illusion.

It happens this way because it needed to.

—

A lot of what happened at the summit exists as a contradiction in my memory. It might have been two minutes or it could have been twenty. I cried and then laughed with the friends I’d met along the way and who were already at the top once I arrived. I took pictures, but don’t remember taking any of them.

Reality existed in a whirlwind of self-contradiction. Maybe we aren’t meant to feel so much all at once, and the consequence of trying is not being able to make sense of it all.

Part of me remained unwilling to let go of the anxiety and fear that I wouldn’t make it to the top. Again, this was the first long trail that I’ve walked that ended like this–with decent weather, an unbroken footpath to Georgia, and with people whom I’d grown fond of over the last two thousand miles. In all the ways that it needed to be perfect, the moments at the top of Katahdin were just that. They were imperfectly perfect. They were everything. They were painful and full of joy… just like the trail itself.

—

Before leaving the summit I asked another one of the hikers to take my picture with the summit sign. One of the others handed me small, folded piece of paper that had some letters written on it. I’d seen her folding the page out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t take note until she handed it to me.

“Here,” she said, reaching out and handing me the folded piece of paper. “It’s an origami Triple Crown for your completion!”

I took it into my hand and looked closer; in the ten minutes since she’d been up there she had torn out a page from her journal notebook, folded it into an oragami crown, and written “PCT” “CDT” and “AT” all around it. Her name was Sunshine, and although we met only once along the trail before the night prior, I still felt a closeness and connection with her that was unique and special. She barely knew me, but knew that this was the third trail of my Triple, and the fact that she took a few minutes from her summit experience to do that for me meant the world. It broke me out of the sorrow of seeing things come to an end, and I smiled without restraint. It was a reinforcement of the good that this trail has brought to me.

We took our pictures, individually and as a group.

And before I left, I did one last thing.

I ate a coyote tooth.

I had been thinking about it since starting into the Hundred Mile Wilderness, first thinking that it would be a good idea, then rejecting it outright for fear of it causing some internal harm. But the symbolism of the act resonated with me still, and so I thought about it again as we were all up there, and decided that this is how I wanted my journey to end.

I’d spent the summer gifting coyote teeth to all the good people that I’d met along the way, and this seemed like a good way to end the story–to take one for myself, and to make it a part of me. Or, as it were, to become a part of it. To meet somewhere in between.

I unzipped the little pouch where I’ve been carrying them since Virginia, looked through the small collection of teeth that still remained, found the smallest one there, and looked at the other hikers who were with me.

“I think I’m going to eat a coyote tooth,” I told them. And as one asked about the potential health consequences of eating a coyote tooth and another asked if I planned on chewing it, I popped it into my mouth, felt it on my tongue, and swallowed it down. I was under no disillusion that it would stay with me forever, but the symbolism of the act mattered to me still. I wanted this hike to remain with me, and the act of eating a coyote tooth felt like a way to fully accept everything that has happened over the last ten years since I started out on the Pacific Crest Trail, completely unaware that I’d someday set out to complete the Triple Crown.

And then it was done.

—

Several of the other hikers took another route down to avoid seeing the same miles that they climbed on the way up, but my goal was to get out. For all the good that the trail has gifted me over these 138 days, I had accepted the ending of this walk over a week ago. It was done, and I was done with it. I was ready to leave.

So I took the same route down as I walked on the way up. During the descent the clouds cleared and views of the enormous world below started to make themselves known. It was hard not to feel some significance in the clearing of the clouds as well. They seemed to reflect a similar clarity in my own life, after fighting up and through so much unknown to get to the top of Katahdin–the fog of the mountain and the fog of life. Both were clearing now, and it was becoming easier to see.

After the tears at the top there was no more grief. I left all of that at the summit, and although I wasn’t sure how I would feel hiking those same six miles back down to the base of Katahdin, I felt changed. I was lighter in body and in mind. I felt free and alive. I felt validated. “Happy” isn’t the right word for it, but maybe “content” is. Whatever the feeling was, it was a good thing.

Maybe for the first time since I started hiking the Appalachian Trail I felt good enough. Maybe… maybe the first time since I lost my hope for “The Old Truth You Once Knew.”

—

Boots had started her drive up from Tennessee two days before I started my summit of Katahdin, and shortly after I arrived at the base of the mountain, she arrived as well. When she pulled into the parking lot I dropped my bag and my hiking poles to embrace her as she stepped out of her car.

It was the first time we’d seen one another in two months and represented the start of two weeks that we’ll share before I return to Arizona.

—

It took about an hour to complete the drive from Baxter State Park to Shaw’s, the last hostel I stayed at before starting into the Hundred Mile Wilderness.

We stayed there for two nights, hanging with the thru hikers who are headed into the last stretch of the AT, and getting to meet some of the people whom I had passed earlier on. Several of them I had not seen in over two thousand miles!

After our first night at Shaw’s, six of us booked a reservation at a Sauna and Cold Plunge spa just down the street from the hostel. We spent two hours going back and forth between the intollerable heat of the sauna(comparable only to the heat of Connecticut and Hell) to the cold water of the lake, and back again. As sweat poured out of my body by the liter, I almost felt like I could feel the beginning of detoxification taking place. My diet had deteriorated so much in the time that I’ve spent on trail that cleaning out the bad and replacing it with the good has been one of the things that I’ve looked forward to the most.

When the person in charge of the sauna told us that we could stay for two hours, it seemed like an excessive amount of time, but with the cold lake near by, it made staying for the two hours quite natural. I might have even stayed for longer if the others had wanted to.

—

I also went running on that first day after the trail. My family had mailed my town clothes and running shoes to Shaw’s, and I have had the plan to start training for an ultramarathon since before starting the AT. So, the first day after reaching Katahdin, I ran 6.5 miles before our sauna session.

For dinner Boots and I both had a salad and refrained from the chance to endulge in ice cream. My addiction to sugar needs attention in the coming weeks as well, and I knew before starting the trail that this is how I wanted for it to end–by focusing on restoring what I may have lost in my health over the last 138 days.

—

It’s been several days since I finished the Appalachian Trail now, and I’m with Boots in the very northern part of Maine. And by “very northern part” I mean that we can literally look out the window to see the border crossing to Canada.

We’ll remain here for the next week. I’ll focus on running, exercise, writing, and hopefully a bit of mindfulness meditation.

I have no doubt that my feelings towards the Appalachain Trail and my experience of having walked the trail this summer will continue to take shape and meaning over the time that I have here, and undoubtedly over the coming years as well.

For now, I try to remain in gratitude and serenity.

A lot has happened since I made the choice to walk the Appalachian Trail. And although there were a lot of times where I hated the trail, hated the world, and even hated myself for thinking it might be a good idea to hike the AT, I never faultered in my conviction that doing it was the right thing. My resentments came from a place of feeling like I had no other choice and that I *had* to walk the AT, but within that resentment still existed something akin to joy, even if it might not have sounded like it at the time.

—-

I feel obligated to say something profound at the end of these journals, but just like I said at the start of this entry, I wonder if less might be more. I’ve done what I can here to try and list the facts as saliently as I can, and in doing so I hope that I’ve created something close to what actually happened out there on that mountain on my 138th day of hiking the Appalachian Trail. But in the end, I don’t know.

At least I can say that I gave it my best and that I remained honest and truthful to the experience as it happened. There were times no doubt where my story may have veered away from the narrative that my readers *wanted* to hear, but I kept my pledge to honesty, and I can say now that I’m proud to have held that sacred. I didn’t always write what I *wanted* the story to be, but I did write it as it *actually* happened.

—

So ultimately, I end this story from a place of contentment and resolve. I’m grateful that it happened the way that it did. Even if it’s a story that I never wanted to begin in the first place, and even if I never wanted to hike the AT from the start, it happened because it needed to, and for that I am grateful.

In the coming weeks there will be more to say, and I’m sure that distance will help me to make more sense of the experience. But for now, I’ll leave it at that. Grateful for the hike. Grateful for the life that led to it. And grateful to have had this medium of the written word to try and capture it as it unfolded.

And finally, I thank those of you who have followed along the way. Whether this is the first journal entry you’ve read from my walk across the country, or if you’ve read every letter on every page, I thank you all the same. If I thought I was just shouting into an empty void, I probably wouldn’t have written these pages to begin with. The support that I felt just from knowing I had readers who could bear witness to the steps as they unfolded meant more to me than I can put into words.

And on that note, it’s time to take a step back and begin my life on the other side.

Thank you for following.

Thank you for reading.

And thank you for your support.

It’s time to begin a new chapter now.

Wormwood.

AT Day 137

Miles Today: 10.37

AT Mile: 2193.2

(Birches Shelter [tent])

Don’t take my distain for the Appalachain Trail to mean that I have not enjoyed this experience. It’s hard for me to find the right words for it (and hasn’t that been the theme of this entire hike?), but I feel two conflicting feelings at the same time–a coincidencia oppositorum. I will miss this hike and shed tears today in accepting that it will be over soon, but I’ve also hated the trail itself. Make no mistake about it; the AT is often a terribly built and miserable hike. But the thru hike itself is something separate from that. The hike has been a life altering experience. It’s changed my world views and perspective in ways that I expected and in ways that I could not have.

Although I am sad to see it coming to an end, I remain resolute in my being ready for it to be over. I have felt “done” with the hike for several hundred miles now. I had a suspicion when I started this trail that after it was over I would feel that it didn’t measure up to the PCT or the CDT or the miles I’ve walked in Grand Canyon, but deep down I wanted for that not to come true. I truly wanted to fall in love with the Appalachian Trail and be changed in a way that made me understand why so many people worship it over the other long trails of the United States.

But alas, here we are, at the end, and that’s how I feel. I’m saddened that the trail wasn’t more, but I’m grateful that it was beautiful in the ways that it was. I’m grateful for many of the people I met both on trail and in towns. I’m grateful for the opportunity to see and experience the Eastern United States. I’m grateful for this time away from the trauma I was dealing with in Arizona. I’m grateful for the companionship I found in Damascus. I’m grateful to be able to say that I have hiked the Appalachian Trail and know what it’s all about. I’m grateful that I have made it (at least this far) mostly uninsured and still healthy. I’m grateful that although the weather was fucking intolerably hot most of the time, that it wasn’t pouring down rain the whole time.

—

I should note that as I write this I’m in my tent, early in the evening hours. I’m sharing this tent pad with three other hikers who are all posted up in such close proximity that it’s almost like being back at Trail days.

And it’s absolutely dumping rain outside.

We were all gathered around the camp fire, many of them drinking beers, some of us passing a joint, all of us munching on our last trail dinner of the Appalachian Trail. There are 12 of us here, and the fire pit circle is large. But then it started to sprinkle, and within five minutes a sprinkle became a downpour and we all retreated back into the tents that we’d set when we’d individually arrived.

—

Last night felt sort of weird because there was this pressure to get up early so that I could hike that mile to where they issue permits for the Birches shelter where I wanted to stay tonight. As I wrote last night, they only allow the first 12 people in line to camp here, and I quite wanted it, but I didn’t think that there would be 11 others… but there could have been.

So I slept in a bit, but then at 5:30 I started packing up and breaking down camp in a bit of a rush.

When I arrived I was the 10th person in line at 6:30! The ranger didn’t even open the booth until 7. So I’m glad that I did make it in early, but also glad I didn’t get up earlier.

Two guys I have been hiking with a bit this last week said that they both woke up at 1am and hiked 4.5 miles to get there at 3:30 in the morning! They said they felt a little silly about it when the next person didn’t arrive for another two hours. I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of them rushing to get there, thinking that there was any chance in hell that 11 other thru hikers were going to be getting there before 4am! They both said they’ve been tired as hell the rest of the day, and I understand why.

After getting my permit, I hiked the mile back to the Abol Campground Camp Store to get a few resupplies for this last day and a half, then shot the shit with the other hikers for an hour or so. I knew all but four of them, and made friends with the ones I didn’t know quickly. It’s amazing meeting someone at this point and having so many miles in common, that even if we haven’t met before, we already have this shared bond from the trail.

Several of them started cracking beers early, and it sounded great, but I also was resolved to not drink anymore on trail, or maybe for a while after the trail too.

I have been listening to the autobiography of Flea from the Red Hot Chilly Peppers and his discussion of drug and alcohol abuse and his near 30 years of sobriety and spirituality now. The book is called “Acid For the Children” and he speaks VERY positively towards LSD and psilocybin. He also speaks mostly well of pot although he admits to using it too much in his time, as I do too no doubt.

I ordered and devoured my last ice cream of the trail, ate a donut from one of the other hikes, and then packed up to get to trail around 10:30am. The other hikers were mostly still lallygagging at the camp-store when I left, and I would have stayed as well were it not for the forecast of rain.

—

The miles today were easy and beautiful. The trail followed a river for around 10 miles up into Baxter State Park to the Birches Shelter.

Oh–by the way–there was only one hiker this morning who did not make it into the Birches but had wanted to. He arrived at around 8am, and they still got him a campsite two miles from here, which is way closer than the 10 mile option!

—

Expected rain during the hike, and it did start to come down just enough that I popped open my umbrella for the first time since the Long Trail (that’s not true, I used it as a sunbrella at the VT/NH border because it was so insanely hot!) but it only lasted for around a half hour. The rest of the day I felt like it could rain at any moment and so I felt rushed to get to the shelter because I didn’t want to be drenched when I arrived.

That didn’t work out though. I was still soaked through. Not from rain but from sweat. Yes the miles were easy, but it was warm and humid once I got to trail, and it showed on my clothing quickly. When I got to the ranger’s station just before the Birches Shelter to get my permit stamped, I asked if I could sit down while I filled out the form and he said, “How about you don’t, you’re soaking wet.” It struck me as rude, but then again I had asked, and in doing so opened the door for him to answer.

—

Camp has been really nice this afternoon. It’s that same collection of hikers from this morning, and I think that we are all feeling excited to finish. It feels communal and familial amongst us in a way that I haven’t felt before today. It has reminded me what it’s like to be with people again. Since Plinko left to hike on his own I’ve been mostly alone with the trail. There have been some people that I’ve hiked around and even a few that I’ve shared more than one camp with (some of whom are here tonight actually), but there is something here at the Birches Shelter that is different.

One of the other hikers compared it to the feeling before your first day of school. When the summer is about to end. When you’re excited to see your friends again, but you’re sad to see the end of summer and all the freedom that summer brings. I told her that’s the best description of it that I’ve heard.

—

I don’t know if I’ve already written about this in another journal or not, but it’s on my list of things to write about: I’m so fucking excited to not be stubbing my goddam toes on roots and rocks and stumbling down trail like a bafoon again! It happens all day long on this trial. And I’m so fucking tired of it. I’m sorry for the profanity, but I think it’s important. Man… fuck the Appalachain Trail. The number of times that I’ve kicked a root or a rock so hard that I legitimately thought I might have broken my foot has been uncountable! It happens almost daily! And many times per day it’ll hit hard enough that it just hurts and I stumble. But almost daily it’s bad enough that I have to stop and assess if I’m injured. Goddam I’m excited for that to be done.

—

Tomorrow I have about 5 miles to the summit. That’s it. Could have done it today if I’d wanted, but the weather looked rough, and tomorrow’s weather looks awesome. So it’s worth the wait.

The miles will be steep and aggressive. I’ll also be taking the same trail down as I take on the way up.

Then, Boots will pick me up at the ranger station–that same statin where they told me I couldn’t sit down because I was too wet.

Oh my god… it’s almost over.

It’s almost over.

It’s almost over…

Tomorrow it will be done.

Wormwood.

P.S. There are three others camped on this tent pad with me, and it’s pouring rain. One of them just said they need to pee, but they don’t want to go out in the rain. One of the others quickly giggled and said, “I just peed in my vestibule. I don’t even care.”

I’m going to miss this life!

AT Day 136

Miles Today: 30.01

AT Mile: 2183.5

(Abol Pines Campground [tent])

Soon it will be fall again. Leaves are already beginning to fall from the trees. The seasons are starting to change.

It seems early for the process of molting (I know that isn’t the right word for it, but I don’t have internet access and can’t find the name for what it’s called when deciduous leaves turn yellow and shed to the ground). It seems early, but there’s no denying that it’s happening anymore. I did deny it for a bit there, when I saw the first few leaves scattered on the ground. My rationalization was that it must be leaves left over from last fall; there was no way this could be from this season’s growth. I’ve seen it a lot more in the last week though. And the leaves aren’t left over from last season like they were in Georgia at the beginning of the trail.

Soon it will be fall again.

Then it will be winter again.

In some far off future that somehow also feels like it won’t be long at all, there will be a new batch of thru hikers starting in Georgia next spring.

One thing that a long trail teaches is that seasons pass, though sometimes slowly, they pass like everything else. Nothing ever lasts.

—

I woke up early this morning, but snoozed my alarm until 5:30 because I was enjoying the comfort of sleep so thoroughly. It was one of the nights where I was sleeping so well that it felt a waste to end it and get back to trail early.

Worth noting, if I haven’t already said something about this–I’ve been without the melatonin now for about a month, and my dreams have been far more subdued than they had been before.

I needed to get to trail though. Sleeping in wasn’t an option if I was going to get to where I needed to get to tonight. So I rolled out of bed, made coffee, walked down to the lake shore to drink it, and then got back to trail just a little after six.

The elevation profile was relitively tame today, but the trail itself was often extremely rooted and rocky, making it impossible to gain stable footing sometimes, and thereby impossible to maintain momentum in the hike. With all the roots and the bit of climbing, the day turned out to be quite exhaustive. I found myself completely drenched through in all my clothes once again. Let it be known, I have *never* grown used to or comfortable with being drenched in sweat as I’ve been on this trail. I still f*cking hate it as much as ever. It’s terrible in all the ways that things can be terrible to be soaked through and be climbing up a mountain with a thousand feet and a mile to go. It sucks. And it’s continued for almost all of the AT since Virginia.

I want to say clearly and sternly, that I’ll be forever grateful for the experience that I’ve gained by hiking the AT. But I don’t want for that to be confused with my having any good feelings for the trail. At my heart, I’ve mostly hated this trail from start to finish. There have been good things within the experience of the hike, but the AT itself is a terrible trail. I know that there are readers who don’t want to hear that, and there was a part of me that wanted to fall in love with the hiking out here, but it just hasn’t happened. This trail f*cking sucks, and I can’t shake myself of that feeling. I actually feel uncomfortable with how I react when I learn that someone likes this trail or that they want to hike the AT. I can’t help but think less of them. That they’re either ill informed, unintelligent for not hiking somewhere more enjoyable, or just out to prove to someone that they can withstand a tremendous volume of suffering and torment with extremely little reward.

And so what does that make me, as someone who’s walked it? Well… mostly a jackass honestly. I had a suspicion that I’d finish this trail and have the same animosity for the AT that I had always held before coming out here–the same biases and the same discontent, only difference being that I’d have personal experience in how much it sucked rather than just speaking from second hand information. I didn’t want for that to happen. I wanted for the end of the trail to feel like ending a relationship with a close friend as we are forced to move away. I wanted to have longing for the trail that would make me want to stay. But no no no no no. I’m f*cking done with this trail. Sorry for all the profanity, but I guess it’s coming out tonight. Edit it out in the printed draft, I suppose.

—

With the changing of seasons, my relationship to the trail and the hike are changing too. At the beginning of a thru hike I always say that you can’t think about the ending, lest you’ll never make it. You’ll be driven mad if you let yourself think about the ending and how far you are to go still in the early miles. So you get through by not thinking about it and just taking things day by day. But I can’t “not think about it” anymore. It’s here now. This is the end of the trail. I am literally 17 miles away from the end. Barely more than half what I hiked today alone.

As I’ve allowed myself to think about the end, it’s made the miles feel longer. I still get that feeling that the ending is retreating off into the distance; like I’m chasing it but it keeps getting farther away. But it’s so close now that maybe only tonight do I feel like I’m about to catch up. I am about to catch up. I will catch up in two days from today.

—

Hiked 30 miles today.

Tomorrow I’ll hike around 12.

The following day I’ll hike around 5 to reach the summit.

From there I’ll hike about 10 miles down to meet Boots who is already driving up from Tennissee as I write this tonight.

—

I caught up with a hiker I met in Virginia today. His name is Boardwalk, and we had similar experiences with meeting girlfriends at Trail Days way back when. He asked me tonight, “What ever came with that girl you met who lives in Tennessee?” And I told him that I’ll be seeing her in two days.

It’s amazing how some of the stories have played out.

—

I need to be up early tomorrow to hike 1 mile from where I’m camped tonight. That’s the ranger station where they give out permits for Katahdin and The Birches campsites. I’m trying to camp at Birches tomorrow, making it a very short day, then summit the following day. But the process is first come first serve. So although the ranger office doesn’t open until 7:30, I want to arrive at 6:30 to get my place in line. I’ll sip coffee while I wait.

Then I’ll hike back to the camp store, which is basically where I’m camped tonight, to get breakfast and a few more supplies for my last day and half of the AT.

Details that are probably boring to you, but are much of what I’ve been thinking about much of today.

—

Here’s a wild ending: As I got to camp tonight I met another hiker whom I’ve met two other times on trail (I’ll withhold his name for privacy). Anyways, he ends up telling me that two days ago he was on 150 mics of LSD, and I’m like, “Are you fucking kidding me?! That was the same day that I was on 150 mics of LSD!”

Strange the ways the stories play out sometimes.

—

It’s growing late and I’m growing tired. Excited to rummage that store for breakfast junk food tomorrow. It’ll be some of the last junk food I get to indulge before finishing the trail and cleaning my diet up again.

—

Will hopefully have time to write more extensively tomorrow after I get to camp.

Wormwood.