Thursday, April 9, 2020
My soul yearns to be back out on the trail. My body craves the rhythm of the trail, hiker hobble and aches and pains and all. Ever since I left camp, I have lacked PURPOSE/MISSION. I remember seeing and being impressed by the purpose signage at the gym when I started there. For months on end, everything was focused on the AT. Pick up an extra shift? $$$ for the AT. Chipotle or Zaxby’s sound good? Nope, save that $$$ for the AT. Pick up a fun new video game? Nope, save that $$$ for the AT. Take a rest day? Nope, go to the gym or read something to prep for the AT. AT all day every day. I found a Georgia state quarter and a Maine state quarter, super glued them together, and used Andy’s nail polish to paint white blazes on both sides. Whenever I was dealing with a difficult person at work, or had a moment where I wasn't terribly enthused by my work, I’d reach into my pocket and hold the quarter as a reminder of what it was all for. I finally had that purpose. And then the pandemic. There’s no end in sight. A pure NOBO as I’ve always envisioned is looking less and less possible for this year. Flip flop and SOBO remain possibilities, but honestly, NOBO just feels like the storybook way to go. If circumstances stay as they were, I won’t be getting the experience I’m looking for. I crave the simplicity and freedom I’ve read about and watched – the only significant choices you need to make are how far you want to walk that day and how many days of food you want to carry. Perfect for the decision fatigue I’ve felt so often recently. Yet within this simplicity is a beautiful freedom. If you want to sleep in a shelter, do it. If you want to tent, do it. If you want to stay at a hostel, do it. If you want to resupply, do it. If you want to catch a shuttle, do it. Even as a solitude seeker, I feel quite limited. Shelters off limits, hostels shut, shuttles closed, whole states’ worth of trails off limits, Smokies and Shenandoahs shut down. I don’t want to be watching the closures 2-3x/day and planning/replanning based off that and off rumors. My heart aches for the purpose which has been ripped away, even more knowing that unless things make a big turnaround very soon, that the experience of simplicity and freedom may not exist again until next year. I fear that I’m going to have a hard time finding ANY better experience when everything in me wants so badly to be on the trail.
One heartbreaking day at a time. I need to focus on finding the silver lining. Met up with Elisa today, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to see an old camp friend had I still been on the trail. Bear and Huxley love that I’m home. I’m in a good financial position, sitting on savings that so many people didn’t have when this hit.
My perspective on hiking the AT and the pandemic...
-Only saw 2 days where people used the shelters – Mar 23 at Muskrat Creek and Mar 24 at Carter Gap. Both days were wet and nasty, with the 24th having inches of heavy rain and lightning. The vast majority of folks tented and avoided congregating in close proximity. I exclusively used my tent.
-I signed the logbook at Springer Mtn, but did not seek out any of the other logbooks. Most people seemed to have skipped the logs this year. It seemed like an unnecessary risk, as it's a potential common touch-point
-I used the privies, seemed like more than 50% of people also decided to use them. In my mind, this is an entirely safe decision if you are someone that practices good hygiene. Hand sanitizer, from all the information we have been given, kills COVID-19. You touch the toilet seat, do your business, handle the “paperwork,” close the toilet seat, and use sanitizer or better yet WASH YOUR HANDS. Norovirus, which commonly spreads every year on the AT, is NOT killed by sanitizer. Coronavirus IS
-Some shied away from picnic tables at shelters like me, others cooked and ate and chatted there. Backcountry ethics dictate you shouldn’t be cooking that close to where you’re sleeping, so adhering to these principles minimized my contact with potentially exposed surfaces and with other people, especially at a time where you’re ingesting food
-The largest crowds I saw were at Mountain Crossing. Whole tables of hikers sitting and eating together. I kept my distance and moved along as soon as I was done packing up my resupply
-Town felt like the most dangerous place as far as potentially picking something up, but soap and water access is also much easier and you can wash your hands frequently
Tuesday, May 12, 2020 7:57 pm
I will be returning to the Appalachian Trail on Saturday, May 16. This pandemic has been really hard on me both mentally and emotionally. Physically, I am not in the peak condition I started in on March 16/17. Working overnights at the gym forced me to be on my feet for 10 hours a day, 4 days a week, and not working OR working out at the gym means I've lost much of what I had going into my initial start. During the pandemic, mom and I have walked the dogs all but 1 days – Flat Rock, Cooper Creek, or Pine Mountain. Cooper Creek had an incredible flood, but otherwise remained accessible. Flat Rock locked the front gates but remained accessible via the bike trail. I have been incredibly frustrated with the response to the pandemic. The parks were the most crowded that I’ve ever seen them. Instead of spreading out choke points and accepting that the parks would be heavily used regardless, they limited access and forced everyone to enter via the same access point - from a logic standpoint, probably not the best decision if you're looking to stop the spread. Grocery stores limited hours, put up one way signs for the aisles, put up splash guards between cashiers and customers, but customers were filtered through less lines than normal, no thought was put into cleaning the point that EVERYONE used (the credit card terminals), and many people simply ignored the one way signs - again, probably not the best decisions for stopping the spread. I went grocery shopping for the family a total of 3x during my time off trail – otherwise, aside from our daily walks, we stayed in. We’ve done our part to limit the spread. I put my dreams on hold to limit the spread. So far, there have been 80,000 deaths and 1.4 million confirmed cases. And sadly, restaurants, malls, and salons are reopening here locally DESPITE the fact numbers are still on the rise. The country should probably NOT be opening back up, yet it is. And sadly, will likely close again when cases skyrocket. With all this in mind, I have decided to return to the woods. Were I to stay here at home, going to the grocery store will become riskier than ever with things reopening and people relaxing their use of personal protective equipment. I again feel safer in the woods. I know that the experience is going to remain different – less social, more solo, less freedom to stay anywhere, more nights in my tent. My timeline will become MUCH smaller as I can only count on Katahdin staying open until October 15 at the latest, which will give me 5 months minus a day to finish from mile 109.4 onwards. Given my earlier pace, it remains doable. I may need to skip sections that remain or become closed. I may need to flip. I may need to call a spade a spade and call this year a wash. But as of today, I plan on giving it my all. Katahdin, here I come! While it’s been great to spend time especially with my mom and the pups, I know for a fact I haven’t been at all pleasant to be around since pausing my hike. More than I miss the trail, I miss the version of myself living fully, striving greatly, staring off into the horizon and then walking to it. Following my passion, dreaming big, loving myself and others fully. I’ve been carrying around a lot of emotional baggage. If only that emotional weight would’ve done a better job getting me physically ready for the trail! I’ve tried to use my pandemic time productively. I’ve been doing daily Tai Chi workouts with my parents which has been really fun. I enjoy watching my dad make daily progress and try to celebrate when I see him showing more mobility than he did two weeks prior. I’ve also been the Dungeon Master for Yinzers and Dragons, a post-pandemic Dungeons and Dragons world set in Pittsburgh, with some good old friends from camp – Erick, Julia, Jess, Matt, Collin, and Michael. Writing the stories and planning the adventures for that has been really fun. I edited my videos for the first 100 miles of the trail and put them up on Youtube. I watched Die Hard for the first time ever. And then Die Hard 2. And then Die Hard 3 with Samuel L Jackson which was AMAZING! I’ve used my time productively, but maybe I just struggle with feeling cooped up, despite my gratitude for the safety, love, and hospitality I came back home to. I hope I haven’t been too incredibly awful to live with.
Some people (dogs) were quite happy about everyone staying home
Post Trail Analysis
The Tai Chi workouts did an incredibly job of correcting some of the knee pain issues I was having on trail – that issue never really came back the rest of the trail. I got off trail out of respect for the ATC's requests. I trusted the science. I took the pandemic seriously, and limited my exposure to the extreme. Far and wide, that wasn’t the case, and this thing spread out of control. As of today, the US alone has seen almost 42 million cases of COVID, and 671,000 deaths. Although a vaccine is widely available, breakthrough cases are happening and variants are popping up as lots of people remain unvaccinated. I don’t think we should have reopened until vaccination rates were where they needed to be, but that’s not what happened. The world went on turning, and I went with my gut and chose to get back on with my dream. I went about it safely, and I was considerate of the public health of those I was around, and of that of the communities I wandered through. The reality is that I would have been in contact with far more people on a daily basis here at home than I ever was on the trail, with the exception being Bear Mountain, NY. I didn’t hike the trail the way people do in a “normal” year. I had a much different experience than any other class of hikers have ever had, and I hold my head high knowing that I hiked every mile the right way, and I did so in a matter that respected public health mandates. Whether or not the ATC ever chooses to acknowledge our miles or the Trek decides to tell the stories of the class of 2020, hikers hiked, and I’m proud to be a 2020 outlaw.
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