Originally Posted by
Another Kevin
Because thru-hiking and a dead-end cubicle job aren't the only choices?
I could have thru-hiked at twenty. I was a college dropout, I'd blundered into a job on Wall Street with a bunch of crooks, and I was pretty sick of the world. Instead, I begged and pleaded with school administrators to let me back in to help shield me from the consequences of whistleblowing. It worked. I was, as far as the Dean was able to determine, the only student in the history of the school to be expelled and graduate with his class. A dubious distinction, but it certainly made memories!
I could have thru-hiked at thirty. My job had obviously come to a dead end - it was respectable, and paid pretty well, but my heart was not in it, especially after they went and made me the manager of my unit. Instead, I quit, and went back to grad school - because I could see the job I wanted to be doing, and it took a PhD. Doing a PhD in early middle age is an even bigger commitment and adventure than a thru hike, let me tell you!
I could have thru-hiked at forty (except that I was deathly ill for most of that year, but that's another story). But by then I had a wife, and a toddler daughter, and I had commitments to keep. And seeing my daughter grow has been a great wonder and joy, and I'd surely not trade it for a thru-hike, however transformative that experience might be. It also had me working on designing the transmission network for a big-name TV network. I care but little for television, but it had everyone around me saying, "what a cool job!" and it's certainly satisfying that my work is still in use twenty years later.
I could have thru-hiked at fifty. But by then, my daughter was coming hiking with me. She had many other interests, which I encouraged her to pursue, so it would not have worked to pull her out of school for part of a year in order for her to follow me. So I stayed close to home, and supported her, and still have a memory of her grin the first time she stood beside me on the summit of a Northeast 4k in winter, the first time that we found the summit canister of a trailless peak with her in the lead, and even when she came home after the first time she took a group of her buddies out without me. And in the meantime, I was working on good stuff - doing embedded software research for microscopes and X-ray machines and MR scanners - helping doctors help patients better.
Now, I'm sixty. I suppose I could still pack it all in and head for the trail. But I still like hanging around to watch the lovely young woman that my daughter has grown to, taking care of my wife, and still work on X-rays and microscopes and robots - only now for making power plants just that little bit more efficient and less polluting, and jet engines just that little bit safer. It's still good work, and I like doing it. I'm not ready to retire just yet. One of these days they'll push me out the door, and I'll shed no tears. As an engineer, I've buit some things I can be proud of. I've made stuff that people don't see very often, but that they live better lives because of. I can say for certain that there are patients who lived that would have died without the work I did. For all I know, I prevented a plane crash.
You say with confidence that anyone who passes up an opportunity to thru-hike will regret it all their days. On the contrary, I have few regrets. I love the trail, but I've never wanted to be married to it. I've heard wonderful things about the camaraderie of the trail family, but I'll take my real family any day. Mother Nature can wait for me to visit her on weekends and vacations. I have other things to do with the rest of my time, and those things aren't soul-crushing.
That's why I'll always, on this site, have the contrary perspective of, "are you sure that thru-hiking is the relationship you want with the Trail? That isn't all there is - and thru-hiking wasn't even what the trail was originally supposed to have been about." The other approaches aren't consolation prizes.
Says the clueless weekender.
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Terrapin Station. Garcia/Hunter.
