Chance Meeting
During a graduate class in the summer of 2005, I met a husband and wife couple who were completing a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail. They shared a link to their Trail Journals account and I followed every move they made as they hiked North toward Maine.
I was familiar with the trail as I had done some short day hikes and I had a great uncle who did a thru-hike when I was younger. I was 29 at the time, no kids and just enjoying the simple married life. My Dad had convinced me to run a half-marathon. I wasn’t very into it. I think I probably did it more to connect with him and try to make him proud then for myself. The worst thing about the training plan my Dad designed for me was the long runs on the weekends, which meant running with a hangover.
Getting woke
I got through that first half-marathon averaging about eight minute miles and felt pretty good about myself. As I was approaching 30, something inside of me woke up again. It wasn’t the drive to run a marathon and triathlon was not yet on my radar, but I decided I was going to do a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail.
To make this happen I needed approval to miss one month of work. This month combined with the 2 months school is closed for the summer left me just over 3 months to travel by foot over the 14 states connecting Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. I also agreed to conduct several educational activities with students from my school during the trip. This meant I would need to write a journal to share these experiences with the students.
A Walk to Remember
The hike was a success and the journal entries received way more views than I would’ve ever expected. I even received a comment from a former English teacher about the improvements she noticed in my writing during my 3 month journey over the rugged 2,176 miles.
So, was I previously a blogger? I don’t know how to answer that but you can go read for yourself and you let me know. Mr. K’s 2006 Appalachian Trail Journal
