On June 1st, I struggled to sit through the cheapest flight that I had ever purchased. Frontier Airlines wasn’t the name of luxury by any means, but a $45 ticket from Philadelphia to Atlanta in the middle of the summer could not be beat in my eyes. 

That being said, my legs felt as if they were pulled up to my chest, and the seat beneath me was about as comfortable as a foldable metal chair that you’d find yourself perched on in a middle school assembly. Each bump of turbulence traveled every inch of metal on the plane and somehow found its home underneath my weight. “Maybe $45 was too much”, I thought to myself quietly. 

I had danced around with the idea of buying a first class ticket for the first time in my life, telling myself that it would be the last true comfort I experienced for the foreseeable future. Yet, I opted against it in the end. The flight wasn’t long enough to warrant the expense in my eyes, and for a little over an hour I watched in discomfort as the ground stretched out beneath me. I was flying a distance that I knew was going to take me almost two months to walk. What a miracle modern travel is, and what kind of idiot would so purposely regress? 

Early in May of 2022 I had gotten my first chance to breathe after the Spring semester washed over me. Almost as quickly as it seemed to come on, I suddenly found myself in Oregon for Moravian’s Marine Field Ecology course. 

While the workload was not nonexistent, it afforded me the briefest opportunity to not feel completely overwhelmed for the first time in months, maybe years. I was forced to process thoughts and emotions that had been put on the back burner as I pursued a GPA worthy of graduate school. 

Quickly, I realized that I had no plan for the summer, the first time that had occurred since I was seventeen, and I was unsure what to do with myself. All my prospects had fallen through for one reason or another; Covid or flat-out rejection being the two top contenders. 

I could try to pursue another internship, or perhaps a research position, but it was already getting late. I could grab a quick dead-end summer job to pay off my rent, but then my graduate school application wouldn’t look as pertinent and well-rounded as it should. 

Every potential outcome seemed to satiate one aspect of my existence while simultaneously aggravating another. I had no easy answer. 

At this time I had brought a book with me from a guest speaker on campus earlier this year called Walking Towards Peace, and I was reading it meticulously. It’s a collection of curated stories told by veterans through author Cindy Ross, primarily focusing on the Appalachian Trail and its healing effects. 

In reading it I became uncomfortably attuned to the connection between me and many of the subjects of the book, the struggled adjustments to new lives in particular. 

My life after high school was a blur. I turned nineteen in basic training and twenty the next year in Afghanistan. I was sent to a multitude of states, Army schools, and training opportunities and then just two years ago I left the Army in the midst of the mass pandemic. I signed a sheet of paper and quietly crawled from Alaska back to Pennsylvania in my beat-up old Toyota Camry “Humphrey Bogart” just in time for my first semester to start. Since then I have been “constantly doing.” 

“Constantly doing” is one of my biggest faults. I often dive deeply into whatever task, commitment, or goal I create for myself. I become so interlocked in the act of performing that I negate the act of processing. 

Maybe it was my form of coping. But for two years I rushed into college life and thrust myself deeply into academia without allotting myself time to embrace my change. 

As a result, I found myself torn in a way that I had never been before. My identity was stretched thin between two versions of myself, the student and the soldier, and neither felt like me anymore. All of these realizations slammed into me as I read the stories of other people, chunks of them becoming pivotal to my own desires as well.

I thought about myself, and what I wanted for myself. I thought about who I wanted to be, and how I could possibly get there, and all the while I read about other veterans doing the same on the trail. After reading a particularly rough passage I was struck by the line: “Gifting himself the time to walk a long distance trail allowed him the space and time to examine these things about himself, however uncomfortable, even painful.”  

The idea that it was a gift, an offering to oneself, stuck with me. I wanted to gift myself the same opportunity. 

From my laptop I ordered everything I thought I might need and had it sent to my apartment, I bought a plane ticket to Atlanta, and I turned on autopay for everything I could be billed for, shifting my entire savings into my checking account just to be safe. 

The Appalachian Trail is roughly 2,200 miles. Pennsylvania’s border is about half that, and that was my goal. Georgia to Pennsylvania, from June to August. 

When I left Oregon it was cold outside. I had no real time to test my gear when I got home, no way to chuck unneeded equipment, just a will and a way that I gifted to myself. Soon after, I was standing amidst the suffocating southern humidity in Georgia, realizing that I was not acclimatized and my journey would in some ways be a trial by fire. 

Somewhere amidst the honking and swerving line of cars building up at the Atlanta airport was my friend Brian, whom I worked with for a time in the Army. He offered to pick me up and cart me over an hour to the start of the trail at Mount Springer with no hesitation at all. I hadn’t seen him in years, but we picked up where we left off, an ability that all military buddies seem to share. But our hour flew by, even when we stopped at REI and to get food, and before I knew it, I was alone on the trail. 

It is odd to me how rare it is for me to be alone, maybe for all of us to be alone. I don’t think it’s something we are very aware of at most times. Living with roommates, going to college, and generally living in suburbia has robbed me of occasional solitude. Even long car rides “alone” occur in the presence of other drivers on the road. 

But, I was now in the woods on a trail with no one in sight, and my first day of walking presented no others. I walked in silence, set my tent up in silence, ate in silence, and slept to the gentle sounds of the forest. It was the first and the last day that I was alone on the trail. 

The next day I met “Lucky Charm” or “Lucky” for short. He was a prospective hiker from Florida, and I spent the next two months at his side. We just so happened to be going to the same place to spend the night, and when we got there we were greeted by a slew of other hikers. 

I began to understand what people meant when they talked about the bonds formed on the trail. They were almost always instantaneous. Conversation flew easily between our mouths and ears, and I began to stack up friends on the trail almost every day. That same night I met “Judge” and “Kettle,” two younger men from a different part of Florida, only hoping to get to Clingmans Dome in North Carolina. 

Georgia was difficult. It went up and down in steep and long increments, and it was easy to see why so many people dropped off the trail early on. My feet became blistered, my joints ached, and no amount of food seemed to satiate my constant desire for calories. But I pushed on. 

Every morning I would wake up and go off on my own. Every night I would meet up with Lucky, Judge, and Kettle in a predetermined stopping point that we decided on the night before. This went on until we left Georgia. Then there was a period where it rained for almost 48 hours straight. Lucky and I pushed forward 18 miles in the rain, and we never saw Judge and Kettle again. 

Through North Carolina and Tennessee, we marched, keeping our same routine. We journeyed off the trail briefly for supplies and the occasional “zero day,” where we took a rest and let our legs catch up. Food never tasted so good and a cold drink never felt so earned. 

For most of this time my phone was off, I had no service anyway, and I forced myself to engage in targeted introspection. I spent more time exploring myself than I had in the entirety of my life. I rose early with the sun and walked through the quiet of the forests, feeling my connection to the land around me deepen. I slept when the sun set, finding no reason to stay up past due. 

Somehow, on a blowup mat stuffed inside a sleeping bag, I slept better than I ever have in a comfortable bed. I felt truly at peace.

I continued north in this same manner, clearing three states (Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee) and finding myself in Virginia before too long. During this time I made countless friends and earned my own trail name, “Rattlesnake”, after a near-death experience with a diamondback. 

I deepened my understanding of myself and my own actions, began to tackle what I perceived as my own shortcomings, and accomplished the most rapid growth I ever have, almost by necessity in the environment I now found myself. I could feel my own roots beginning to elongate and take shape like the trees around me. 

The rawest and most visceral kindness I have ever experienced was on that trail. I witnessed people sharing deep and meaningful stories, hikers sharing supplies, and strangers offering stay, food, or rides. All of it was done without seeking return.

By the time I found myself crossing from Maryland into Pennsylvania it was nearly August. I was down twenty pounds and the treads were worn off of my hiking boots, which remarkably were still held together somehow. I had finalized my desired pack weight, figured out how much I really needed to carry, and walked the last state alone, the way I started. 

Hilary, a friend from home picked me up just on the other side of the border. I clouded her car with what I assumed was a rather abysmal smell, though I did change into my town clothes ahead of time to negate the effect. As quickly as it began it was over and I was standing in my own room with access to everything I had missed so dearly. 

In just two months I felt as if I lived another lifetime. I became accustomed to a lifestyle that was foreign to me, so much so that regular life felt foreign now. I still do not take showers or hot food for granted. Nor do I miss any opportunity to wash my clothes and change my socks. 

What started as a backup plan for what I perceived to be my own failure in not securing a summer position became the best summer of my life, and one that will reside permanently in my memory and my actions. Had I the time I would’ve continued my trek to Maine and finished the trail, come hell or high water. Someday I know I will return to complete it in its entirety.

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