A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can't stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.
Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn't think I could do that.
I've been doing long-distance backpacking since 2002 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. You start to calm down and relax and get into the slower rhythm of nature.
I've tried to eat little shrubs before. We were on an unsupported 20-plus day traverse, following the migration of endangered antelope across the Chang Tang Plateau. We were like, 'Oh, this is what they ate; we should try it.'
There are very few things I've done just twice in my life, 40 years apart, and one is to backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail across the California/Oregon border.
Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost
To do this walk, I believe it's around 2,000 feet, to go from the U.S. to Canada. I would train walking a wire almost 8,000 feet, to overtrain for this.
I've had fantasies in the past of walking across America or some great distance, but it's such a commitment of time that it's stopped me.
