Blog

-35 days to trail

11.83 miles

Grand Canyon National Park

It’s astonishing that I made it here today, after so many forces working in the other direction, but I’m here no less. 

This is the first time I’ve done an overnight hike in more than a year. August of 2023 was the last time… it’s been 18 months… a lot has changed in my life since then. It’s been even longer since I’ve camped alone. It’s been since the CDT in 2019. 

It’s been closer to a decade since I’ve camped alone like this, in Grand Canyon. 

This trip was supposed to be 3 days, and there were going to be 4 of us. But then one member got injured skiing, and when bad weather rolled in, the other two canceled. Bad weather is an understatement. It snowed so heavily that it closed the road that accesses the trail that we were supposed to start on. As such, two of us drove to the canyon yesterday, only to be turned around after the road closed. Then today, it took 6.5 hours to get back to the canyon from Flagstaff due to more road closures from the snow. 

As such, I had to shorten the trip to two days. The important part is being out overnight with my full gear setup. I haven’t used it in a long time and need to be comfortable with it before the AT. 

I’ve been hiking the Grand Canyon almost weekly through the last few months. Since December I’ve been carrying most of my full thru hiking gear in my pack, just to get used to the weight. This is the first trip where just about everything is refined down to what  I’ll carry on the AT though. This is as close to what I expect in my final base weight as I can get right now.

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Hiking today was beautiful and painful. It destroys me to feel so alone out here. It hurts so much that I can literally feel it in my chest, just below my throat. But I’m still walking in spite of it. 

The trail is familiar because I’ve hiked the canyon so much. But setting camp–especially alone tonight is something like a memory from a former life. It’s been so long since I’ve been at camp alone, but then I’ve spent so many nights camped alone before the CDT… hundreds of nights alone. 

So funny then that it would feel so heavy to be here alone again. It should feel familiar. But I spent so much time believing that I’d never be out here alone like this again, that I don’t know how to feel. 

It’s overwhelming. 

I only had half the day to hike today. I started down the Kaibab Trail at around 1:30, and sunset was at 6:30. The top of the canyon was snow and ice, left over from yesterday. But within a mile it was just wet, and too warm for snow to stay. And soon after that, it was desert again, like the canyon almost always is. 

I made it 11.5 miles before finding this plateau to set camp on. I’m on the Tonto trail, headed east to Grandview. The trip was going to be much longer when we originally planned it, but after starting a day and a half later, and only getting to trail in the afternoon, I’ll end up exiting tomorrow. Tomorrow I can either do 18 miles or 32 miles; considering that the main focus of this trip is getting comfortable with camp, I’ll likely take the former. The exit out Grandview Trail is the same that I took last week, but I approached it from the east; this time I’ll be coming up the mesa from the west. 

My heart is broken and my soul is frail anymore. But I’m still trying. And I hope that I can look back on these memories and feel like it all makes sense someday. 

Wormwood. 

-37 days to trail

Next month I’ll begin hiking the Appalachian trail, northbound from Georgia to Maine. And I suppose that if I’m going to tell the story along the way, this is where it should start. 

It would also help to have some context. 

I’ve hiked long trails before. The AZT, PCT, TRT, CT, and CDT respectively. 

But I’ve never been to any of the states along the AT. This trail will all be new to me.

There were readers who followed me on some of those other trails via postings like these. On some trails I’ve been almost obsessive about writing and documenting everything that I could. I don’t know what I’ll do with the AT. But I’ll begin here. 

I’d at least like to write along the way. Smartphones made vlogging so accessible that I’m drawn back to the written word for its comparative rarity in today’s world. Like it’s sort is a dying art. 

—

I left my last long trail, the Continental Divide Trail, on a completely different life trajectory than I had before the trail. 

I started the CDT by myself and walked alone for a long time–around 700 miles. Then I met friends. I met a girl. We fell in love. We started lives together after the trail. 

Years passed. 

Things fell apart. 

I wish I could tell all the stories and explain. There’s no time for it now though. It’ll wait for another time. 

The 18 months since then have been very hard. But the time and miles I’ve spent on trail in the past year have kept me going. In the hardest times, I still found hope and something like fulfillment when I spent a day on trail. 

I have my trail initials and dates tattooed on the back of my ankle. And at least once a month someone will ask the question: “when are you gunna do the AT?” Like it’s implied by my having completed the other two long trails of the Triple Crown.

It wasn’t something I thought I’d do before 6 months ago. But when I went to trail over this last year, it gave me more hope than anything else I could find. 

So after two or three weeks of seriously thinking about it, I made the choice. It was about 6 months ago; 7 months to trail. 

There’s a story to why I chose to start on April 11th, but that’ll wait for later too. 

For now, I’ll share these pieces, in case this is our first time meeting one another:

—

My government name is Brandon, but I go by “Wormwood” on trail. 

It was a trail name I took 800 miles into the Pacific Crest Trail in 2015. There’s a story of course, but it will wait for later. 

I was born in Alaska and spent 20 years there before moving to Arizona for college. I’ve stayed in Northern Arizona since then; almost 20 years now. Proximity to the Grand Canyon has had a lot to do with that. 

I hike the Grand Canyon obsessively and it’s been my training for the last 6 months. I’m there almost weekly. It also keeps me sane. 

I come to the AT in a very different place in life than I was for my other trails. 

Much of why I’ve chosen to go to the AT is to escape from terrible things and to find some space to breathe and be at peace again. My life here has been challenging and it’s come too close to killing me. I’ve tried to stay here and live a normal life like a normal person who does normal things. But it’s clear to me that this isn’t where I’m going to find my answers or my clarity. 

If there were such a place, then I suppose that it would be back on trail. And if I’m going to trail, I may just as well answer the question about the tattoo on the back of my ankle by finish up the Triple Crown this year. 

There are so many stories to tell later on, and maybe that will make sense of why I have to go back out to trail. 

I start walking north on the AT in about a month–April 11. 

I leave Arizona, where I’ve called home on April 5. I’ll spend a week before the trail with family in California. I’m grateful to still have this opportunity to see my grandmother and my mom. It’s been too long. 

From CA to GA. From Atlanta to a hostel near the trailhead. And then north from there. 

The hiking part is nothing new. 

The AT is. 

I don’t know what to expect, but I’m open to believing that there’s something out there worth walking 2,170 miles for. 

Wormwood.