View Full Version : What did you do after you finished your thru-hike?
tmeinberg
12-31-2006, 20:42
just curious to know what people did after the thru-hiked the AT? did you go back to your old job, find a new calling, move next the the AT, etc...
Footslogger
12-31-2006, 22:23
Absolutely NOTHING ...at leat for 3 months. Then it dawned on me that I had some bill to pay.
'Slogger
I'll let ya know when I finish it. Hehehe.
Lone Wolf
12-31-2006, 23:22
i got tossed in the clink for disorderly. oct of 86. got out and saved $ then hit the trail again the following march. been doin' it ever since.:cool:
Spirit Walker
12-31-2006, 23:44
My first thruhike I vegged for a few months, went back to my old job for a month (to clean up the mess left by my successor) then moved to San Francisco. Four years later I was on the AT again. After my second hike I immediately returned to my job in San Francisco for a couple of months, then moved east to join my partner in PA. Six years later we hiked the CDT. After the CDT hike we immediately began planning for the PCT since we weren't ready to return to normal life. We decided that since all our stuff was in storage, we might as well go on another hike rather than move, get jobs, and then have to put it all back in storage again a couple of years later. We knew we wanted to keep hiking. After that hike we decided we needed to save some money, so we got jobs and found a temporary place to live. (It took me four months before I was ready to be serious about looking for work - but Jim was employed by the end of October.) Six years later we sold the house and began our second CDT hike. Since our return we have done almost nothing. We've worked on the website, done work on Jim's daughter's house, gone for daily walks - and that's about it. We haven't started planning for the future yet. I'm still very caught up in this past year. Not ready to let go yet. Once the journal is up (i.e. tomorrow) I'll have to start thinking of moving on. It will be hard though.
After I completed the Trail the first time in 1979, I moved to Vermont from Connecticut, about two years later along came my favorite son Kyle, then 12 years in the world of Banking, then a Masters degree in Elementary Education, 8 years of a home based business, 2 more rehikes of the AT, several shorter Trails, now full time volunteer and part time "winter" employee to keep my wild woman account funded.
I cut my teeth on the AT. Hiking this Trail shaped the woman I am today, almost 30 years of AT influence. It has never left my soul.
MrsGorp
Pokey2006
01-01-2007, 04:18
I had cashed in my vaca time and quit my job to hike the trail -- everyone thought I was nuts, literally walking away from my career, yada yada yada. I did like my job, but was burnt out and had to leave.
I had absolutely no plans for after the trail. Moved in with Mom and Dad (at the age of 34, mind you), with, like, $100 in the bank and no job prospects. Then the company I had been working for before tracked me down and offered me the same job, but in a much bigger office -- our flagship office, actually, and one of the top places to be in our region in my line of work.
Essentially, I quit my job to live in the woods for six months, and in return was given a real sweet promotion and a pretty decent pay raise. So, it can be done!
Didn't have money to do the whole thing (One week plan time for about 3 months in the woods), but I was able to hike Springer to Damascus and Katahdin to the Maine Junction on the Long Trail. That was this summer and I got home and joined the Army National Guard. I have just been sitting around bored with not having to think about survival and cant wait to go to basic in February. At least there I can get nasty and always be tired again.
Started planning/saving for the PCT
I spent several hundred hours at the Mt. Peter Hawk Watch in the fall of '00. Went back to work in December. Finished up my college degree and quit the corporate world in early '03.
After hiking the AT in 2004 I spent a few months in Ireland then came back to the U.S. and started saving for my 2006 PCT thru-hike. Now I'm saving for a 2007 CDT thru-hike.
Haiku.
I hiked in 1993 two years after having retired from my paying job, so I wasn't faced with the prospect of earning a living. But I've managed to keep busy. During the summer of 94 I took the photographs and designed the brochures for the first major acquisition by our town land trust, which I had helped found 20 years earlier.
It wasn't a planned effort. 253 acres in the center of town and bordering on a pretty pond had been listed with a real estate agent. A few of us negotiated a price and gambled we could raise the money. Somewhat to our surprise we did.
Since then I've wandered through the hills of Maine and New Hampshire, built trails, became an overseer for 60 miles of the AT in Maine, helped with the ATC conference in Maine in 1997, tried in vain it looks to keep industrial wind development off Redington, helped create the Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust, which promptly purchased 2,400 acres -- the summit of Abraham. and some of the slopes of Saddleback, helped our town land trust and the town buy a thousand feet of sand beach facing the open ocean, as well as the shore of a wild pond .....
Let me say that I strongly recommend these activities. It's a great feeling as one ages to realize that you have helped preserve lands that people can enjoy long after you leave this earthly realm. If I'm still conscious at the end, my last thoughts, I'm sure, will be about Mt. Abraham on the trail, and the Center Pond, Sprague Pond, and Totman Cove Preserves in Phippsburg. To be honest I'll probably also regret all the possible trails I've left unbuilt.
Weary
The AT was a watershed moment in my life. Prior to doing the AT, would not even had considered a life different from what my family had done previously and still does: All live within 10 minutes of each other, get a "good job", meet a "nice girl" and be married and have three kids by the time I am 28.
Nothing wrong with that per se, but would not have seen any other options. And not having options is not good.
Because of the AT, I had the courage to leave the safety-net of a large and close knit family. I moved to Colorado exactly one year to day I climbed the Big K. Started a new life for myself.
Moving to Colorado was an adventure. But the wanderlust was still there. Planned and saved. I finally did the PCT in 2002.
After the trail, had a major readjustment period, formed another community that I love like family and then was ready to do the CDT this past year.
Two months after I have done the CDT? I don't know. Been working for old company on a temp basis. But need to find something permanent.
One thing I am doing because of the CDT is developing my writing and photography more. I was able to write newspaper articles for a local paper and received favorable comments. My photos have always rec'd some nice words, too.
It is my plan to write a photographic eassy type book this coming year. May be self published. I may only make .02 if I am lucky...but it will be something I want to do..for myself. Much like the thru-hikes I have done.
And for my next adventure? Who knows. Life presents many options. And many of those options are because of a little walk I took nine years ago.
My life "Post-Hike" was very different from the one that I left.
Proir to the hike, I had an apartment, a good job serving drinks at a concert venue in Philadelphia, and a very long term boyfriend.
Right before the hike, I split up with the boyfriend
Came home after traildays and got rid of the apartment and just about all of my belonging.
***Public Service Announcement***
It is not wise to try and simplify your life after living out of a backpack for 3 months. You will decided to throw out EVERYTHING!!!!! You will regret this decision months later when you really with that you still had that Bed or Blender or something
But final answer, after the hike....I moved in with my mother, crashed on her office floor, found a job I could get to with out a car, realized that people in town just don't "get it" and started planing for this year!!!!
Jim Adams
01-01-2007, 19:25
Weary,
What a great effort! Kudos.
geek
I thru hiked the AT this past year and finished on Katahdin the last day of September 2006.
I have more or less taken it easy since. Three months and no job. I am just starting to get a little direction. Some people think I should either not have quit my old job in the first place or gotten a job asap after hike.
It is comforting to know that others who have thru hiked took some time to get themselves orientated.
Financially, it would be better to have a paycheck sooner than later but it isn't an immediate need for me.
Why is it so many people in the outside world (including my extended family all of whom are not hikers) can't seem to understand that after 6 months on the trail I don't want to head right back into society and "any ol job?" Heck many of them can't understand how I could stay on the trail for 6 months. Society seems more materialistic to me now than it ever did before.
David
Jim Adams
01-01-2007, 23:22
DavidNH,
They never will understand until they hike. Take the break until you're ready.
geek
Society seems more materialistic to me now than it ever did before.
That's why more folks need to hike!!!! :D
fiddlehead
01-02-2007, 00:10
Worked, saved money, hiked again, worked, saved money, travelled around the world, worked, saved money, hiked again, worked, saved...............get it?
Pokey2006
01-02-2007, 07:59
DavidNH, hang in there. It does take longer then you'd think to recuperate, mentally, physically and emotionally. I think a lot of people make the mistake of not allowing themselves time after the hike to recover. Take the time.
However, you WILL start to feel better once you have a job, a new apartment, or whatever you need to do to get back in the swing of things and not be dependent on family members who don't understand what you're going through. You'll be depressed at first, thinking your life should have changed more profoundly than this, but soon you'll get into the swing of things.
I think it's the routine that makes us feel better. Being at loose ends -- and broke, to boot -- is what gets us down in the dumps.
So my advice is: A) give yourself time to recover, but B) as soon as you can, get back into some kind of healthy routine, which includes a job and some type of regular physical activity.
Frolicking Dinosaurs
01-02-2007, 09:02
Not a thru-hiker, but had to drop in to give kudos to Weary for his contribution to this thread.
It took me one full year before I had a single day where I didn't think about my hike. Funny thing is, I realized that about two days after the 1 year annivesary of summiting Katadin - that I hadn't thought about my hike for about 3 days. That was actually a good feeling.
I also had the opportunity to cancel my leave of absence and return to work early, but I signed up for one college class, and used that as my excuse not to go back to work until December 13. I summitted on August 21. So I can relate to what you write Snickers.
superman
01-05-2007, 23:34
When I returned home after the AT I found that the woman I'd trusted to handle my finances while I hiked had helped her self to $15,000. Plus she was yard saling my stuff the whole time I was hiking to Katahdin. It turned out to be an expensive hike. Needless to say my life took a turn that I hadn't anticipated. Now I do everything on line myself so that won't happen again.
Jan LiteShoe
01-05-2007, 23:43
Why is it so many people in the outside world (including my extended family all of whom are not hikers) can't seem to understand that after 6 months on the trail I don't want to head right back into society and "any ol job?" Heck many of them can't understand how I could stay on the trail for 6 months. Society seems more materialistic to me now than it ever did before.
David
Society wants you to be a good worker bee, and fall back in line.
hopefulhiker
01-05-2007, 23:46
So far, I have just gotten fat sitting around talking and posting about my 05 hike.... and doing what I was doing before the hike....
The Solemates
01-05-2007, 23:54
after our thru, we moved to a different state and i started back to school within a month of summitting katahdin. now, it has been nearly 3 years since our hike, and there is still not a day that goes by that i do not think about it (but i could probably blame that on my WB addiction) :)