National Parks and Recreation

Twenty-six days ago my roommates dropped me off at the Canadian border in Northern Vermont. I said my goodbyes and set off with a 34 pound pack strapped to my back to hike my way back to Massachusetts where they would pick me up in a few weeks. All that stood between me and our reunion at the state line was 272 mountainous miles through the entire state of Vermont. I was going to solo thru-hike the Long Trail. Well, I made it back to Massachusetts. I’m sitting in my Boston apartment right now typing this. But I didn’t joyfully stumble across the state line with my trusty pack on my back, 272 miles under my belt. Instead, I was riding in my car down I-93, my pack stashed in the trunk. My roommates didn’t pick me up in North Adams, MA with a celebratory beer. They picked me up at a friend’s apartment in Burlington, VT where I had been relaxing and tending to my feet for the last several days.

I didn’t make it.

I didn’t hike all 272 miles of the Long Trail. In fact, I only hiked 130 miles, a little less than half. And that’s really disappointing. Especially for someone as stubborn and—let’s say strong-willed—as I am. I didn’t expect to be here in my room writing about this failure. Right this second I was supposed to be on my penultimate day of hiking, closing in on single digit miles away from the Massachusetts border. I wasn’t supposed to be posting this essay explaining how I gave up halfway through. I was supposed to be posting some triumphant picture of me crossing the state line, my hands in the air, screaming “I did it!”

But I didn’t. 

***

My feelings about the decision to step off the trail flip-flop a lot, which I’m sure you’ll notice as you keep reading. But I just keep pulling myself back to the feeling I had standing on top of Camel’s Hump, towering 4,000 feet over the rest of Vermont, watching the sun set behind the Adirondack Mountains in the distance. I felt relieved. I had just had my favorite day of hiking of the entire trip, but all the same I had decided on the way up that this was going to be my last few days on the trail. I wasn’t going to finish. That’s it. Decision made. In the middle of the most beautiful hike. After a full day of rest, when my feet and knees weren’t hurting for the first time in days. I had made my decision and I felt good about it. Especially because of the circumstances around me. If I’m deciding this right now, I thought, when everything is absolutely perfect, then this must be 100% the right decision. Right?

Right?

So you’re probably asking yourself, ‘why then?’ Why did I make this decision on that beautiful evening atop a mountain? That’s a really good question. And I had the answer so readily available at the time. In fact, I wrote this entire essay in my head as I climbed that last mile up to the top. And I’ll give it a shot now, because it’s actually a pretty easy answer if I let it be. I simply realized that I had accomplished what I went out there to do. So you would naturally follow up with, ‘and that was…?’ Well, I’ll have to back up a little bit for that answer.

***

A lot of things didn’t work out as I anticipated they would this year. My mom was going to be in remission by now. I was going to be moving to Los Angeles this fall to start pursuing a career I was actually passionate about. The Bruins were going to win the Stanley Cup, for god’s sake! (Okay, admittedly, that last one wasn’t as disappointing as the rest, but I had to throw it in there.) But things didn’t work out that way. Instead, I was stuck in a tiny apartment with nowhere to go and nothing to do. And I know I’m not alone in this. Millions of people’s lives have been upended by this pandemic with consequences far worse than what I’ve experienced. I know that. But there I was. 

And then I lost my job. A job I had done 60 hours a week—on call 24/7—for the last seven years. Since before I turned 21 years old. That job was my identity and now it was gone. I had to learn who I was without that job. And I had to do it without my therapist because, you know, I lost my health insurance. Isn’t it a fun little country we live in? I digress. 

That was four months ago. What did I do in those four months? If you ask any of my friends or people I regularly talk to they’ll tell you I was so busy. Because that’s what I told everyone. I’m so busy. Doing what? Well, I take my mom back and forth to appointments. We’ve been driving back and forth to New York in between treatments. I’ve been camping with my best friend a lot. I’ve started doing yoga! (Okay, that one only lasted 12 days). I was just so busy. But then one day I looked back and thought, ‘what have I been doing?’ I hadn’t applied for any jobs because I was going to move to California. And I hadn’t started the process of moving to California because of the pandemic. So what was I doing? That’s not a rhetorical question. I look back on the time between losing my job and setting off on the trail and I honestly cannot find three months worth of days, worth of actions, to fill that time. Her appointments were generally only once a week. We only went home a handful of times. We went camping twice.

What was I doing? It’s rhetorical again.

This is the question that was flowing through my brain as I drove west on I-90 during one of those few trips back home. We drove under the Appalachian Trail bridge that crosses the interstate and I thought—as I do every time I drive under that overpass—about how I’ve always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail. Ever since I was a little girl. And then a lightbulb went off in my head. I have no job. I have all the free time in the world. When is this situation ever going to present itself to me again? Sadly, it was too late in the season to start the AT, but there were shorter thru-hikes. Hell, I’d done a ton of hikes that intersected or followed along with the Long Trail before. And I love Vermont. My best friend lives there. It was about to be peak foliage season. And boom. Done. Decision made. Just as quickly as I would make the decision to quit halfway through, I had made the decision to do it in the first place.

Of course there were a lot of logistics to work out. A lot of food to purchase. A good amount of gear to acquire. A way to work up the courage to tell my mother that I was doing this (which ended up being totally fine, by the way). And I did it all. I was ready. Of course, I had never backpacked before. But I camp all the time! Never by myself… But I’d done it in all sorts of weather conditions! With my car always a few feet away if I needed it… But no matter. I could do this! How hard could it be? 

***

It was hard.

Being the oldest long distance trail in the country meant that it was created before anyone knew about switchbacks or gradual ascents. The Long Trail essentially goes straight up and then straight back down every single mountain in its path and it can be brutal. And my feet and knees soon began to feel it. I was already taking more rest days than I had anticipated. I was calling my boyfriend at 11am, soaking wet and freezing cold, crying that I couldn’t do it anymore. But I still did. I just kept walking. One foot in front of the other. Even when my knees and ankles were in such bad shape that it took me two hours to make a one mile straight downhill hike to camp. I kept going. For 15 days, I just kept hiking. I got comfortable with the uncomfortable. With the pain and the wet and the cold and the dirt. (I am not a person who likes to be dirty.) But also with the loneliness. It was just me. For hours and hours—sometimes entire days—on end. Almost everyone I stayed with at shelters was heading the opposite direction as me. So I’d have pleasant chats over dinner, but the next day I was on my own once more. And it was hard. But at the end of every day I would open up Google Maps and I would scroll out and look at that flashing blue dot showing me just how far I had come since the Canadian border and I would feel accomplished. But it kept getting harder. My legs needed more than the easy days or intermittent days off I was giving them. And I was missing my boyfriend and my mom and my friends. And my life. And I started to realize that that flashing blue dot wasn’t moving fast enough toward the Massachusetts border. And it was getting slower and slower every day.

So then came that night on Camel’s Hump. I climbed down to the shelter with the setting sun, got into my sleeping bag, and pulled out my journal. I flipped to the front page where I had written down my goals two weeks prior and I noticed something. Nowhere in my goals did it say, “Hike 272 miles.” Or “Finish the Long Trail.” Instead, it said this: 

• challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone
• stay off social media
• clear my head
• figure out what I want to do next in life
• start moving forward 
• do the damn thing!

There it was. “Do the damn thing!” Not finish, do. And I did, didn’t I? I set out to stop standing still and to start moving forward. And I did that. I was anxious to get home. Anxious to start actually applying for jobs. Anxious to figure out how I could safely and sensibly get myself out to California. Anxious to start writing again. Anxious to start moving forward. So how ironic was it then that—even though I was quite literally hiking miles and miles every day—my life was still standing perfectly still? I was just wandering around aimlessly in the woods while my mind was ready to move forward with my life. And for what? So I could get that Instagram post? You know, the one with my hands in the air as I cross into Massachusetts. What was the point? 

So there it was. Goals accomplished. Decision made. And if you really think about it, I accomplished my goals in half the time. What I thought would take me 272 miles to do only took 130. That’s how good I am. I’m amazing! Am I doing a better job convincing you of this than I am myself? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But it sounded so good in my head at the time, as I was making that climb up Camel’s Hump. I was convinced. So then why did I stop buying it? I guess it’s easier to feel inferior and unaccomplished when you’re sitting in bed typing on a laptop and not five miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain into a hike. 

And I know I accomplished a lot. I hiked 130 miles through the most difficult terrain in Vermont. I started at the more difficult end because I wanted to get the hard part out of the way first. I stepped off the trail at Lincoln Gap which, ironically, was the exact place that every Northbounder I passed told me I had to make it before it got so much easier. I was there! All the hard stuff was behind me. All that stood between me and completing the Long Trail was 142 easy miles. But I didn’t hike those 142 easy miles. Instead, I got in my best friend’s car and let her take me away to a warm apartment, a hot shower, and a real bed. 

***

I woke up this morning and checked the weather in central Vermont. Why do I keep doing that? It’s going to be beautiful this weekend, in case you were wondering. Back in the upper 60s. Bright sunshine. Perfect hiking weather. I’m not actually going to go back up now. Although I do have a bunch of food left over. And my feet only hurt when I first get out of bed now. My knees still buckle a little when I climb those eight steps up to my apartment, but maybe… I’m kidding. I’m not going back this year. But it’s been a long process of convincing myself that this was still the right decision. I know I’m only a week out, and I guess only time will truly tell. I think it all depends on whether or not I actually take the lessons I learned out on the trail and apply them. Whether or not I take that energy and anxiousness I had to get a job and actually push myself forward into the life I want to create for myself. And when I do that it won’t matter that I was just 142 mostly flat miles away from hiking the entire Long Trail that one time back in my 20s.

***

I guess I don’t really know why I felt compelled to write this. I think I just had a lot of thoughts in my head and physically writing them out was the only way for me to make sense of them. Or maybe it was just because I wanted to tell everyone that I had done this really cool thing. Guys! I hiked 130 miles of the Long Trail. The really hard Northern section of the Long Trail. I climbed 23 mountains, totaling over 29,000 feet in elevation gain. That’s the equivalent of hiking Everest! That’s a lot to be proud of. And I am. But I know myself too well to know that’s not why I’m actually writing this. I’m writing this to put as many excuses as possible between, “Hey, I set off to hike the Long Trail last month” and “but I quit about halfway through.” Is it working on you? I think it might actually be working on me.

Because I know that I’ll finish it someday. Maybe next spring. Maybe a couple of years down the road. Or maybe I’ll be one of those badass 60-year-old women I encountered many times on the trail encouraging the 27-year-old to just keep going. 

“If I can do it, you can do it,” they’d say.

And they were right.