“Ending Anxiety”

AT Day 128

Miles Today: 14.60

AT Mile: 2018.1

(Bigalo Col Campsite)

The trail this morning was the kind of thing that I’m tempted to call “nice,” but I use that word with such a level of hesitance that it can’t possibly be the word that I’m looking for. No matter the right word, it certainly felt different than what I’ve been hiking the last couple of weeks. In reflection, I haven’t seen comfortable trail for any extended period of time since departing the AT to hike the Long Trail. That was almost a month ago now. It’s been a month since I’ve seen decent trail… that actually blows me away as I lay in my tent writing this tonight.

No wonder that I find myself getting a bit angry or frustrated more easily as of late.

There may be some end-of-trail anxiety mixed in there too. In fact, I know that there is. I’ve found myself thinking these last couple of days about how I might have expected the end of the Appalachian Trail to feel, and now that I’m basically in “the end” of the trail, I can start to compare expectation to reality. Initial findings: not a whole lot of overlap.

I feel better about the end of this trail than I did the other two long trails before this one. So there is that to consider. Strange though, because the CDT ended terribly but then I went into a pretty good “landing” of work and relationship and belonging right after reaching the end of the trail.

For all the miles and time I’m spent thinking about and planning for the end of the AT, much of it has not panned out the way that I had planned. I should be fortunate that some of it does look like it’ll work out, but much of it has played out differently than I expected.

Namely, I expected to be done with the trial a lot sooner than I will be. Almost half of that delay is from having hiked the Long Trail, but another two weeks has been injury, unexpected zeros, and temperature related slow-downs. At the end I will have spent about 30 more days on the AT than I went into the hike expecting.

—

The timeline of everything landed on me this morning and left me tremendously frusterated. Boots has already rescheduled her vacation from the 19th to the 25th, but I did the math this morning, and in order to finish by that date, I’ll need to do 21+ mile days every day moving forward. And I haven’t broken a 20 mile day since the Whites!

In other words, it was basically out of the question. I reached out to let her know that, but it felt like I was letting her down. It affected me in a heavier way than it should have. But I think that I somehow felt like I was fucking things up by not hiking fast enough, not performing well enough, or not being good enough to be able to predict an end date and stick to it. It’s hard to explain, but that’s human emotion for you.

Ultimately Boots was able to push off the date of the place we’re staying after the trail by 3 days, and this will allow me to have a day or two after the trail to hang out at a hiker hostel with others from the AT before leaving it to focus on writing and spending time with Boots up north of the trail.

—

Emily was set up at the road crossing for whatever road led to Stratton, and I was able to get a ride in with her without any trouble. It was like having a personal taxi service. She rode me in, let me resupply and charge my electronics off of her truck’s power block, and then rode me back to trail.

It’s 36 miles from there to Caratonk (sp), which is my next resupply. I’m actually getting somewhat spoiled with that one, as Boots sent a care package there, so most of that will be my resupply.

I’m about 30 miles from there, and I need to get to the river crossing between 9am-2pm, because you have to take a canoe across, and they only operate during those hours. So I’m hoping I can get a bit bigger miles tomorrow with less aggressive climbs, but it’ll also depend on the weather. Rain is in the forecast.

Wormwood.