I’m going to keep this one short. Mostly out of desire to be with the group of hikers here at Shaw’s Hostel and enjoy my last night at a hostel in my Triple Crown.
—
I got my owl feather back today.
It’s actually been with me, in an envelope for a couple hundred miles, but I’ve been too scared to strap it to my pack, in fear of losing it. So I just left it in the envelope.
Then, today I opened it, as I want to wear it for the last hundred miles. In it there was a hand written three pages from the gal who found it, brought it back to Texas, mailed it to my friend Hemlock, who then mailed it back to me.
Right now I can’t find the words for how magical it was to open that envelope and see that feather that I carried for over a thousand miles and that’s now been away for just as long.
—
There was a small thought in my head that I’d drop in here to Shaw’s, resupply, and then get back to trail today. But the moment that I saw the place, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. I could almost be convinced to do a zero here if it weren’t for having plans with Boots after the trail and needing to get on my way. It’s time though. I feel good about where things are in my hike.
There were nine miles to cover this morning to get to the road crossing that lead here. If those were like the miles of New Hampshire and Southern Maine then I’d still be hiking in all likelihood, but they’re totally different. These have been some of the most chill miles of the entire trail. It was wonderful. A lot like what I had yesterday.
The hostel is maybe the best that I’ve seen of the whole trail. There are a lot of other hikers here and the energy is good. It feels happy. It doesn’t feel like the end of something. That’s what I’ve been afraid of. My other long trails ended in tragedy, and I guess subconsciously I was expecting that. But now here I am. Here we are. Here it is. At the end of this summer-long experience, and most of us seem ready for it to be done.
I was able to buy resupply for the last one hundred miles of trail and I got a new battery bank. The outdoor store that they have here at the hostel is actually quite impressive. Amongst the best that I’ve seen anywhere on trail. Lots of ultra lite gear to nerd over.
I bought a new battery bank to ensure that I’ll have camera battery for these last one hundred miles and I got a quilt liner to keep me from freezing my ass off like I did two nights ago. Those two things were expensive, and I hate to be adding to my ultra lite gear collection now, but it is what it is. I don’t want to not enjoy this last week of the AT.
On that note, I also splurged on high quality diners for this last week. I got Peak and MountainHouse meals for dinner every night and even a cobbler for breakfast my last morning.
I’m honestly really feeling good about things where I am now. I’m looking forward to this last week.
Tomorrow I enter the One Hundred Mile Wilderness and it’s unlikely that I’ll have cell service during that time. I’ll still be writing, but I may not post again until the end of the trail.
My plan is to summit Katahdin (hey, look at that; I’ve learned how to spell it) on the 26th.
I have to be short tonight, as my battery bank has died and my phone is almost dead. Not sure what happened to the bank, but fortunately I only have a half day tomorrow before I get to a place where I can recharge. It’ll be my last hostel of the trail–Shaw’s.
Last night it was cold. It was extremely cold. I shivered through most of the night, and even tried putting on a second layer of socks to stay warmer. It didn’t help much. That ended up being my excuse for sleeping in this morning though. I had been so cold through the night that I wasn’t about to go out into the open air again until the sun warmed it up a bit. It wasn’t until 9 that I was on trail this morning.
Still, today ended up being my first day over 20 miles in three weeks! The trail grade has been so much more enjoyable and mellow these last two days. It’s trail that makes me remember why I liked thru hiking in the first place. It’s trail that makes me want to be back on the PCT again. The grade of that trail is so much more managable what the New Hampshire and Southern Maine sections of the AT have been.
Met two older dudes up on top of a mountain today. It was Moxie Bald, and the views were spectacular. They were clearly day hikers and both in their late sixties or early seventies. They also presented the most stereotypical Boston character that I’ve ever met in person. It was fun talking with them. I was a bit trippy and philosophical as I met them up at the top of the Bald, and as one of them asked me when I started and said that “it couldn’t have been earlier than we started,” I told them that I started a long time ago. Didn’t feel the need to say anything about starting *today* so late, only that I started my hike probably before theirs.
I told them that I started in Georgia, and they had the typical questions. Then one of them started going on about what a hard time they had getting to trail today. He said that they started out from their home at 5am, got stuck in traffic, got lost, couldn’t find the trail for a long time, but finally found it and made it up to where we were meeting.
“But did you find yourself?” I asked. It was a cliche, but still felt right.
“What’s that?” He asked, either because he didn’t hear me or because he didn’t understand what I was asking.
So I repeated. “Did you find yourself?”
The old dude scoffed. “Kid,” he started. “I’m too old for that.”
“Is that to say you already found yourself?” I asked.
He scoffed again and said something about that being a long time ago. I asked him if he had any wisdom to share or any advice on how a “kid like me” could find himself if he’s still looking. He thought about it for a moment, and I could tell he was really thinking. Then he said, “Keep going forward.”
I don’t have a clue what that meant, but maybe I do. I guess it’s the point of what everyone tells me when I ask them if they have wisdom: Just fucking do it. Go forward. Don’t let fear keep you from going after what you want in life. Keep moving forward.
—
It was a nice day on trail today and it was enough to remind me why I get into thru hikes in the first place. The gram and a half of mushrooms helped.
I’m at the verge of tears right now, thinking how close I am to the end. As I write there is a hiker named Haribo in the next tent space over, playing his ukalali. He and I have been crossing paths since Waynesboro, Virginia. Never for long, but here and there. He carries that little Uke, and plays a song at every shelter. I hadn’t heard him play in a long time before tonight. But here I am, with the smell of camp fire in the air, the ambient sound of the river not far off, and the songs of another longing hiker not far off.
—
We’re close to the end now.
Soon this will be something that I’m no longer in but looking back on.
I’m going to fucking miss it out here.
Out here I’ve become more true to who I’m supposed to be. That hasn’t always been what I wanted to be, but it’s been what I needed to be.
I met a southbound hiker yesterday morning whose name was “Five-Oh.”
“Are you a cop?” I asked immediately when he introduced himself.
He laughed and said no, then said that he’s from the 50th state. “Alaska?” I asked, but realized as it was coming off my tongue that I was groggy and not fully awake. The transition from coffee to tea in the morning isn’t always good, you see.
He quickly corrected me and said that Hawaii was the 50th state, then as if to prove that I’m not a moron I said, “Oh, that’s right. Arizona is 48, Alaska is 49, and Hawaii is 50.” I looked over to him for validation and he shrugged and told me he didn’t know about Alaska and Arizona, but that he got the trail name from “Hawaii 5-0.”
“Isn’t that a show about cops?” I asked, not letting the point die.
“Cops and Hawaii,” he said. “I think it had two meanings.”
Anyways, we sat there together for ten or fifteen minutes, looking out over the mountains that I had just climbed and that he would be climbing in the coming days. He’s a southbound hiker and this is his first trail. I couldn’t help but reflect on my early miles from the Arizona trail and what it was like to be starting out into thru hiking. I could tell from talking with him that he was starting to realize just how deep the metaphorical waters can get on a long trail. He was under 200 miles into a 2,200 mile trail. His first long hike…
As we talked, the conversation turned to what we’d do after the trail was done, and he said something that I hear from a lot of thru hikers, especially first timers. He said that he has the whole trail to figure that out. I laughed when I heard him say it, not only because it’s such a common answer, but because it’s something that I used to think to myself too. I wasn’t laughing at his naïveté, but about how much I have changed since I started thru hiking and how different I am from the version of myself 10 years ago who was hiking the PCT.
I pointed off and across the valley floor in front of us, all the way to the ski resort off in the distance. I told FiveOh that he’d be up there in a hundred miles or so, and I traced the ridgeline that he’d be walking with my finger, as if to highlight all the distance between here and there. “Thru hiking isn’t going to bring you to an answer to that, my friend. I used to think that it would, but I was mostly wrong. You see the resort out there?”
He followed my finger along the ridgeline and to the far off ski runs on the distant mountain.
“All thru hiking will do is help you to understand who you are as a person. It’ll show you your values. It’ll make those kinds of things clear, for sure. But it won’t tell you what to do with your life.” I had a small amount of mushrooms in me and I was feeling philosophical. “It’s like that ski resort out there. Walking a trail like the AT will tell you what you *want* out of life in the same way that you can see that resort out there. But it won’t bring you to that place. It’ll just make clear the vision, if you know what I mean. But then it’ll be just like you are here and now; you’ll still have to decide if you’re willing to do all that it takes to get all the way over those mountains and to that thing.
“I went into thru hiking thinking that it would set the answer into my hands, but it never did that, and because my expectations were so far off from what I eventually found, it led me into a lot of struggle at the end of my early long trails. I realized that I still had a lot of work to do and a long ways to go if I wanted to put into action the things that I found were important to me on the trail.”
We talked more and about several things, but the most important part was that metaphor there. Whether I’ve managed to get it onto the page as well as I got it out while we were together up there on that rock is another question. But at least I’ve tried.
At the end of our talk I was about to put on my pack, but then something occurred to me. “Do you want a coyote tooth?” I asked. We went through the normal exchange that happens after I ask that, but eventually he said yes and I told him that it had been at least a week or so since I’d gifted one. I wanted to tell him that he had to promise me that he’d carry it all the way to Georgia, and in turn that he’d make it to Georgia on this hike, but it also didn’t feel right putting that kind of pressure on him without knowing him better. So I refrained and instead just gifted the tooth, and went on my way.
—
It rained through much of the afternoon yesterday, and I was shocked that the temperatures dropped so quickly. Just three days ago I had readings in the shade that were breaking 90 degrees! Then yesterday I was in my down jacket with my rain jacket over it while hiking.
When I woke up to piss last night I could see my breath so thick in my headlamp light that it looked like I was breathing smoke. I shivered through much of the night and ended up having to put on more layers to try and keep warm. Even this morning my breath was still a thick fog with each exhale.
—
The miles this morning were incredibly easy! Like, they were seriously the flattest miles that I may have seen on the entire AT! I was able to hold a 3.0mph pace for the first ten miles today, when most of my days have read at 0.0 the last month, on account of the trail being so rough and steep. This is a welcome change.
I’ve started writing this journal at the Stirling Inn where Boots mailed my last resupply box, but I’ll likely wrap up here shortly and head back to trail now that laundry and shower and Ben&Jerrys are all taken care of.
It’ll be about 36 miles to Monson which is my very last resupply town of the trail. I’ll likely get there the day after tomorrow. I’ll plan to stay at Shaw’s Hostel, then into the 100 mile wilderness.
—
I’d been looking forward to the care package for several weeks, ever since Boots told me she wanted to put something together for the ending of my hike. I downplayed how much it meant, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was a subconscious play-it-cool type thing. Or more likely, at this point I’m so caught up into the trail that it’s become my entire existence and anything outside of it even by extension is hard for me to keep my focus on.
Regardless, the point is that I’d been looking forward to receiving her package, and so you can imagine the disappointment I felt when I looked behind the counter at the Stirling Inn and didn’t see anything that fit the description. Then the owner checked the names on all the packages, and although my shipment of a new bag of coyote teeth had arrived (Boots also helped me in the process of procuring those), the care package box she’d sent from Tennessee wasn’t there.
Called Boots.
She checked tracking number.
Bad news.
Still in route.
After a little more investigation, it looks like the box had somehow become lost in transit near its destination due to a consolidation of mail delivery stations in Maine, and that at best guess it wasn’t going to arrive for another two days.
We were both really disappointed by it, especially considering that she’d sent it more than a week ago and it was supposed to arrive three days ago.
But some things are out of our control, and so I tried to make peace with those kinds of things.
“May we find the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.”
Then, after I got out from a shower and switched my laundry into onto a drying line, a text came through that said it had arrived. What kind of back door black magic had to happen to make that go through, I’m not sure, but it really made my afternoon all the better.
The Stirling Inn also has Pizza and Ice Cream, so when all was said and done, it ended up being a pretty damn good afternoon. One of the section hikers even offered me a beer, which I used to would have taken up in a heart beat, but I declined his offer. Actually, I told him, “Although you can be assured that there was a day that I’d already be up and running to an offer like that, that’s also the reason that I needed to start declining offers like that when they come up.”
I haven’t talked about alcohol in a long time in these journals. I wonder if there’s anyone out there who has noted. I wonder if they’ve asked if it’s because I broke my trail sobriety.
That’s been on my chest for several hundred miles now. I’ve had it on my list of things that I wanted to write about, but it’s never fit into the daily narrative or I’ve never felt comfortable talking about it. Even tonight it feels forced and awkward.
But here it is.
I went into this trail with the intention of not drinking any alcohol and I had profoundly positive results from it. I held to it without exception all the way to Harpers Ferry, at about the half way point of the AT. That’s where I spent the weekend with Boots–our second weekend together, but our first real time together as a potential couple. And I want to make it quite clear that *she’s* not the reason that I drank. She’s just the excuse that I allowed myself.
Mind you, I have the blessing of terrible hangovers, so drinking for me at this age never can get particularly out of hand. But while she was with me at Harpers, we not only had a heart-opening medicine one night, but we also had a bottle of wine over the course of the weekend.
Then, over the next 500 miles, I probably had the equivalent of a beer every 100 miles or so. It wasn’t like I was pacing myself out to that or anything of the like. I was just allowing myself to have a drink when it became available, be it at trail magic or when I was at a bar and wanting a beer.
But it never did me any good. Although I enjoyed a drink or two as much as anyone does, it was impossible to ignore how terrible I was sleeping and performing in the days after even a single beer. And so I made the decision once again, to cut it the fuck out.
It was while I was in Rutland, Vermont for the second time. I was with my friend Geoff from New York, it was the day that I’d finished the Long Trail and the day before my anniversary with my ex-fiance.
I had two beers.
I slept terrible.
I felt like garbage the next day.
And that was the last time I drank.
The first day of my not drinking was July 25th. Two years after the day we were supposed to get married. I didn’t intend it that way, but that’s how it fell.
Later on I’ve reflected that it feels like an opportunity, if I wanted to call myself done with drinking for good, an opportunity to rebrand July 25th not as the day that I didn’t get married, but the day that I became sober.
It’s high minded, but it’s food for thought. And lest we forget, “sober” is a relative term. We are made of “drugs.” But I digress…
I’ve hiked another five or six miles from the Stirling Inn after the owner, Sue, drove me back to trail. Met a guy there who I crossed paths with on the Colorado Trail in 2018 although we had not met personally. We knew a bunch of the same people from the trail though. Thru hiking is a small world sometimes.
Tomorrow I start into the last 200 miles of the Appalachian Trail. It’s impossible for me to write that out without feeling a rolling of my stomach and a turning of my heart. I feel so many things about the trail coming to an end.
In my heart of hearts I think that I’m ready for it to be done. I’m ready to be done hiking for a bit. I want to spend some time trail running, at least a few months. I want to focus on some other things. I do worry heavily about Post Trail Depression, as that’s affected me profoundly before, but I also am trying to stay hopeful. I’ll be returning to Arizona after spending some time with Boots in Maine, specifically focusing on writing and running and refocusing my head and my souls. And in Arizona I have work, housing opportunities, my friends, my business. I have a lot of hard things there too, many ghosts and demons, but now that I’ve had space away from them by being on the AT, I think that I’m ready to go back and see how things feel.
Anyways… I feel like I’m just rambling at this point. I need to get to sleep.
Appalachian Trail Journal 2025 