Coming home: A Thru-Hiker's Journey to Loudoun

This blog comes to us from our Executive Director Caroline Murray. Our festival and nonprofit only exist because of people who care deeply about the A.T. and all our green spaces. We asked Caroline to tell us a little about her journey to the Loudoun Appalachian Trail Festival.

It’s no exaggeration to say that I do not know where I would be without the Appalachian Trail. When we started our thru-hike, my then-boyfriend Chris and I were joyfully under-employed adventure bums working at REI. When we finished our hike, we were joyfully under-employed adventure bums who had lucked our way into a live-in caretaker position at the Blackburn Trail Center, located outside of Round Hill in Loudoun County. And, though we try to pose as functional adults these days, most days I still feel like just an adventure bum in disguise. (I won’t speak for Chris.)

Chris and I didn’t plan a thru-hike like most people. One snowy February day we had to walk the five or so miles to work. (Unplowed roads aren’t going to stop REI customers!) As we walked, we were riding high on those winter wonderland vibes, and we both had the same thought: If we like walking together this much, why don’t we go for a really long walk? 

I knew Chris had always wanted to thru-hike, and I had always believed that thru-hikers had a few screws loose. But working at REI, we were suddenly in a world where our coworker and friend circle included several of those crazy thru-hikers. Thru-hiking still seemed crazy, but a good kind of crazy.

Most people take more than six weeks to plan their thru-hikes, but we were young with no real obligations. There was no mortgage, no kids in school—and, heck, we didn’t even have internet to cancel. Working at REI for a couple years had given us the chance to amass most of the gear we needed, and what we didn’t have we could wrangle on good employee discounts. Chris’s aunt and uncle even lived in Dahlonega, the trail town nearest to the A.T.’s southern terminus. (Not many folks can boast of a homecooked last meal before hitting the trail!)

There’s no way to do a thru-hike justice in one blog post. We had good days and we learned some hard lessons. We met other hikers and formed deep, immediate friendships. We suffered through persistent rains, when my shoes stayed wet for so long that I got trench foot. I ate pints of ice cream while sitting on the curbs outside innumerable grocery stores. The Trail forced me up mountains in howling thunderstorms. It made me hitchhike for rides with strangers on a regular basis. It gave me the most memorable sunrises of my life. Generous trail angels appeared and gave us sodas, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners and pies. I discovered my limit for time between showers (which I would never publicly divulge). Chris and I discovered we still really liked these stinky, feral versions of each other.

We got stronger every day through hiking and we got very, very tired. We shuffled around camp with our friends in the morning, feet contorted with plantar fasciitis. When I look at my pictures from New Hampshire and Maine, I can now see I lost so much weight that my face was sunken. I simply couldn’t carry enough food to keep up with the effort. Most people don’t end a thru-hike in the best shape of their lives; they end it creaky and starving. 

Standing at the northern terminus on Mt. Katahdin, surrounded by mountains in all directions, the idea that you have to stop here is absurd. Why not walk on to that peak, or the next or the next? But the whole endeavor is pretty ridiculous to start with, and we didn’t make the rules. So, after lingering at the summit as long as possible, we headed back down the mountain as official thru-hikers.

Trail memoirs will tell you what it’s like to hike the trail, but few talk about what comes after. Thru-hikers think they’ll "find themselves," or discover some new direction in life. Or healing, or a clean break. The Trail seems unfathomably long—surely, we’ll have time to figure everything out before the end! But, even if you take a few steps toward finding yourself on the trail, there will come one unremarkable day when you find you’ve run out of miles to hike. The unfathomably long trail ends. 

We took the plunge back into society with a four-hour flight home, across a distance that took us five months to hike. It was surreal to watch the spine of the Appalachians out of the window as we flew from Bangor, Maine, back to Chris’s family in Greenville, South Carolina, knowing that we had walked the terrain that spread out below us.

After the adventure of a lifetime we quickly found ourselves back where we started, working at REI again and readjusting to the oddities of “normal life.” A thousand things seemed bizarre. It took a while to get used to traveling in a car again—they’re alarmingly faster than the two-m.p.h. pace we’d been keeping on foot. I even remember an odd feeling of frustration, like a toddler, when I would have to wait to find a bathroom to pee. (You never have to hold it long when the whole woods are your bathroom.)

After a thru-hike, everything changes and nothing changes. There’s a Zen proverb I still think about every day: “Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.” Or as Jack Kornfield put it, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” The real challenge in having a profound, life-changing experience is finding a way to hold onto that experience and allow its impact to trickle into your daily life.

I think every thru-hiker hopes that the trail experience realigns something inside of them. I didn’t know it at the time, but now, fourteen years after my thru-hike, I can see the ways in which my Appalachian Trail journey continued after my hike ended at Katahdin. Working for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club brought me to this corner of Loudoun County, and I haven’t left since. This is where my kids are growing up, and the Trail is now shaping their childhoods. I’m blessed to live less than ten minutes from a trail crossing and a quarter of a mile from the biggest trail festival in the area, which some beautiful people have somehow let me direct this year!

I’m forever indebted to the Trail for my life today. On its 100th anniversary this year, it’s awe-inspiring to think of the thousands of people whose lives have been touched by the trail.  Happy birthday, Appalachian Trail! Many happy returns. 

—Caroline Murray

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