What's your reason?

[spencerb]

So, we are all planning to thruhike this trail next year. Sinking money into gear, planning logistics, getting into shape.

I've been thinking a lot about why I want to do this hike and what will be my reasons I tell myself when it is pouring rain, I haven't been dry for four days, and I want to quit.

So I am just curious, if people are willing to share, what is your reason for wanting to do this hike?

[SurferNerd]

I have several reasons behind mine:
1. Self Accomplishment
2. Strengthen walk with God
3. To enjoy nature and God's creation
4. To live without worries, bills, trials, problems, and drama

[bikerscars]

testing physical as well as mental stamina while marveling at the beauty all around...
life is too short not to go big...
feeling of accomplishment...
or something

[fiddlehead]

For years, for me it was: there is no place I'd rather be.
However my prioirites have changed and now it's with my family and 3 year old boy here in The "Land of Smiles" (Thailand)

I am finding that when i have a problem to deal with or just want to get away from the rat race or traffic or sun here, I take to the jungle and go for a hike up in the mountains here. It is still my favorite place to be myself and make important decisions. Silence is Golden!

[bigboots]

I dido what everyone else has said thus far, especially:
The challenge, feeling of accomplishment, being outdoors, no worries, time to relax, and most importantly to enjoy life!

[Roughin' It]

Speaking in terms of being a male, i believe every man needs adventure in life, and that desire was created in us. For me, I have regrets in previous years, especially in terms of not following my passions, and sitting on the sidelines watching the world go by.

My goal of thru-hiking the AT is a big deal for me, in so many reasons that take too long to explain. I enjoy the natural world and sort of getting back to man's roots; without traffic, plastic people with fake ambitions and motives, neon signs, shopping malls, interstates, dollar menus, stock markets, television, crime, and general petty worries.

I haven't done much long distance hiking, but the hiking i have done just brings back a sense of purity to life that seems to vanish if you let the worries of this world take over.

so thats my $0.02

[spencerb]

Speaking in gender neutral terms, I think every person needs adventure!!!! Why keep the every one else out of it?

My biggest reason is is that the Appalachian Trail has shown me everything that I like about myself. In thruhiking, I hope to find a me I like outside the trail as well.

Also, it has been an obsession for long enough. I want to just get it out of my system and get that hike out of me! Because the trail is there, I want to see it, hike it, love/hate every inch of it.

I am currently stalled at a huge crossroads in my life. But I am not going to figure out which fork to take yet, I'm going to take the access road to Springer.

[Monkeywrench]

This is a hard one to articulate. Of course, there's not just one reason. I think maybe different reasons become prominent at different times.

One of the biggest attractions of self-powered travel -- for me either bicycle touring or hiking -- is the simplicity of it. I am not saying it is easy, as it often is anything but. But it is simple. You wake up in the morning and your goal is simply to move yourself from here to there and provide for your basic needs of food, water, and shelter. Isn't that what we evolved to do?

As to why hiking, and why the AT, and why a thru-hike? I'm not sure. I've wanted to do it since I was a kid and started hiking with the Boy Scouts and read Ed Garvey's book. It is on my mental life-list of things to do.

And why now? For one thing, I can afford it now. I no longer have a mortgage or car payments to make. My daughter is off on her own and doesn't require day-to-day hands-on parenting. My wife earns a decent living and is willing to pick up the slack while I am unemployed. And -- this is a big one -- I am growing increasingly dissatisfied with my job. Not just my particular current employer, but with what I do to make a living, and I hope to use the time of my thru-hike to think about just what it is I want to do for the rest of my working life.

There's more too. People I know that are my age are dying. It pushes home the fact that every year the chance of something happening that will make it impossible for me to pursue this particular dream increases. It lends urgency to the idea of doing it now, while I still can.

Oh, and I think the part of me that is trying to prove to myself that I am not getting old has a say in this too. I am more fit now than I have been at any time in my life, and this thru-hike attempt is anchored at least a bit in that little bit of chronological denial.

Damn, this is all too deep for a Monday morning. (Yes, I know it's Tuesday, but I took a 4-day weekend and we went to Maine to climb Katahdin, so it's a virtual Monday for me.) I want to do a thru-hike because it's a hell of a lot more fun that sitting in a cubicle in downtown Boston helping to make selling homeowner's insurance over the Internet more efficient and therefore profitable for all the big shots that sit upstairs!

[muppet]

good way to put it - what would i tell myself in the rain - honestly?

*to self*
1. this is the most positive thing you have ever done for yourself. you've made a lot of mistakes, but this isn't one of them.
2. the "comforts of home" - all they ever were for you were problems.
3. you need to prove you can finish what you start.
4. you are at a time of transition in your life, this is the LAST time you will probably ever be able to get away with doing this. so you have to just go ahead and do it.
5. you've already told an azzload of people and if you quit now you'll look like an idiot.

[Jim Adams]

It will change your life in more ways than you can imagine.

geek

[beerandpizza]

Why? Because living on someone else's schedule makes me want to puke. I want to wake up every morning and decide what I am going to do with my day. Not some corporate machine that keeps track of their "pod" earning them money. Because, when I go into town for something, I am there for 2 seconds before the lines, people cutting you off, selfishness and of other people and their quest for all things material start getting to me. Let them live their life in order to acquire stuff. Not this boy (and wife). My favorite quote: "The stuff you own ends up owning you". Climb that corporate ladder, live in that cubicle, live for the job, do what's right for the company at personal sacrifice and most of all, achieve that synergy (puke).

well enough cynicism for today. WHO'S READY TO GO NOW!!!??!! WE'LL KICK THAT TRAIL'S A$$!!

[Grumpy]

First off I want to say thank you to SpencerB for getting us to share our own personal reasons. I have enjoyed reading the various sources of inspiration from those I hope to share the trail with early next spring.

Like most I am doing this for many reasons. The first is because it is on my list of five things I want to do while on this earth. Something intangible deep inside me...

Like others I am at a transition point in my life. I have had a great military career which I have choose to end at 20 years and 2 days. Despite many offers to stay in or at least in the career field I want to start a whole new chapter. I have decided law school (also on the list)... which won't start until next Fall. Things are falling into place perfectly. I suppose this was always my plan just never thought I would spend 20 years serving but I did because of the great guys I served with.

Time to reflect on what is truly important or needed in my life. As some eluded to above, many get caught up and lose the ability to differeniate between needs and wants. I want to get a good grasp as I move on with life.

Another reason is all of you... while the physical challenge is there it is the interaction with people not from my daily world who I hope will help me view the world in a new light. So until our paths cross I wish you all the best in preparation.

Grumpy

[Monkeywrench]

WE'LL KICK THAT TRAIL'S A$$!!

I'm not going to kick any trail's a$$, nor am I going to conquer any summits. Hopefully I will be able to hike the trail, and climb the summits.

For me, it's not about conquering anything in the physical world. There's way too much of that in the built world. I simply want to experience it, and let it mold and shape me as I go along. Hopefully I can be pliable enough not to break, and will be fortunate enough to make the entire journey.

Oh, and enjoy plenty of beer & pizza!

[turtle fast]

Coming from someone who was just on the trail...I would have to say that the sense of adventure and your sheer desire to push on. Its your internal fortitude that propells you ....it sucks, sometimes you don't want to go but you do as its the only way to finnish. The hike is 10% physical and 90% mental.....its true!

[sheeptoast]

I just want to take a 6 month break from life.

[Grumpy]

I have no idea what would cause a 19 year old to feel the need for a break from life but I hope you get it... more aptly I hope you find it a discover of life vs. a break.

See you out there...

[superman]

Most folks that I met hiking the AT were at a point of change in their lives, graduation, retirement, divorce etc. Wanting to hug a tree, be one with the flaura and fauna is fine but if you need more juice to get up some mountain just think about that person that pisses you off the most.

[slowandlow]

Because hiking is fun, and a whole lot of hiking is a whole lot of fun.

[Bare Bear]

"People come out to the Appalachian Trail to find their limits, and when they get here they find they don't have any." Bare Bear 06

[Penn-J]

thats a great question spencerb! for me, hiking and backpacking means freedom. i think people in this country forget their free to live pretty much any way they want. i'll take a bad day thru-hiking the A.T. to a good day at work any time. i agree with beerandpizza that the more stuff you own the more it owns you. when you go on a long backpacking trip, for the first couple of days, you mind is still humming from all the noise, people, politics, work, the evil advertisements telling you to be a good consumer. (of products that will end up in a landfill). but pretty soon all that crap starts to filter out (like the wind blows and carries it off) and you become more intune with your surroundings.
i guess it comes down to the fact that you have to really love backpacking.
enjoy waking up in a different place everyday
the campfire
the wildlife
the solitude
the rivers and streams
climbing mountains
the exercise
the sense of adventure
and i just love giving society the finger
life is just too short to spend most of your time working to buy things that don't give you any real fulfillment, for the benefit of a strangers bottom line.