What you carry with you reflects who you are. Many thru-hikers concentrate only on how light they can get their packs. They will hike from highway to highway and stay inside to avoid carrying a sleeping bag and sleeping outside. Other hikers will carry everything but the kitchen sink, and then some. It is a spectrum and we have run into all different shapes, sizes and assortments.
We (Bell more than me) like to pick some kind of physical memento to remember a journey such as this. We connected with the Rugged Outdoorsman through social media sometime in Pennsylvania. He sent us some commemorative coins and stickers to pass out. The coins are incredible. They are the perfect way to carry a totem along a thru-hike and still remain ultra-light.
The Rugged Outdoorsman sent us custom AT coins to pass out to the most rugged people we met on trail.
We met Looseleaf sometime near the beginning of the trail. We would pass him taking a break and then he would pass us taking a break and this went on for some time. Then we started talking and became friends. He started his thru-hike back in 2020 but was COVID stopped him last year. He sure didn’t stop hiking though. He fell in love with the lifestyle and spend nearly every night outside. He says the trail has given him a new life. He has lost over 100 pounds and states that his mental and physical wellbeing has increased since beginning his adventure.
We met Tarzan shortly after entering Vermont. He was hiking the Long Trail, which goes along the Appalachian Trail for about fifty miles. He hiked in crocs and took every opportunity presented to him to jump in a swimming hole. We hiked with him and his partner for the whole time the AT and LT went together. We learned that he successfully completed the AT back in 2018. 2018 was notoriously one of the most difficult years on trail. That is because it was one of the wettest years on record. He told us that out of the 120 days it took him to walk to Maine it rained for over 100 of them. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, he hiked the whole thing in crocs. Apparently after the first fifty days of rain he figured that he hiked in crocs just as well as he can hike in boots and that sealed it for him.
“I live my life backwards and upside down” is what Edge says before dropping into a yoga flow handstand. We meet Edge and her son during our Shenandoah river adventure. She had a heroic moment where she saved my pack from floating down the river. She even magically pulled my headphones out of the water. Edge is a fellow Ohioain who attempted the trail in 2020 and got booted off because of covid. She then came home and saw first hand the effects of quarantine and covid on her 18 year old son G-fuck. She decided that instead of his first year of college being spent staring at a screen she was going to take him on the 2000 plus mile journey of a lifetime. She wanted her son to have the total experience and started the trail over having to re-hike a large portion of the southern section. They completed their thru-hike at the end of this summer with just enough time for g-fuck back to begin his freshmen year of college in person and with a hell of a lot more life experience.
We first met Longterm back on a cold winter night all the way back in Georgia. We started the trail at the unpopular time of winter and so we didn’t see any other thru-hikers, our first bit on trail because nobody else wanted to be outside, well besides us and Longterm, that is. Then on our last night in Georgia before the Appalachian trail crosses over it’s first state line into North Carolina we met the man, the myth, the legend Longterm. Longterm first got his name when he was eight years old on a boy scout camping trip. He was explaining to the hikers how he wants to grow up join the military retire early and comfortably and then thru hike the appalachian trail. “And with the birth of this Longterm plan came forth his trail name. Longterm has been an avid AT hiker his whole life having purposely lived and worked along the trail. Fast forward to 2021 Longterm is thru hiking the Appalachian trail and he has been diagnosed with Parkinson disease. Hiking with Longterm changed our lives forever. I learned about life and how complicated yet beautiful it is. He taught me that you don’t always get to choose what happens but you get to choose how you respond. He shown this to be true by having a smile on his face even on some of his toughest days. We would fill our time hiking with stories and lessons. He is a teacher, a friend, a father figure to us both. He would ask “Did you make time to skip today?” as a reminder to enjoy life. We could all learn a little something from Longterm. Have you taken the time to enjoy life today?
From the otherside,
Pan and Bell
from the other side 