a question for career or frequent thru-hikers

[foodbag]

For those of you who thru-hike the A.T. on a regular basis, multiple times, or who have made a lifestyle of long distance hiking I would like to know how you went about adjusting your life to accommodate hiking and what do you do to raise/save money in the "off-season".

[Hammock Hanger]

I stay married to a man who is wiling to work 12 months a year so I can play!! My adjustment is to be a very good girl, attentive and loving, the months I am home. Then around late winter I get the puppy dog eyes going and start mentioning trails, hiking. Then books start arriving in the mail, I leave them lying around... By Spring I'm openly stating where I'll be hiking this summer. When I hear or feel resistance I just ignore it... it will pass!

Colorado here I come! Hammock Hanger

[chris]

I'm trying to make a transition to this sort of life style and am finding it difficult. If you get a job in non-research academia, then you'll get most of the summer and part of the winter off, which is a fair amount of time. A masters degree is all you need to get a job at a community college. Getting such a degree can be fairly easy if you find a subject you like and find a program that does not require a thesis, only coursework. In math, you can be done in a year, a summer, and a semester if you have a reasonable background.

You do not need a large income to do stuff like this. Weathercarrot has an article on hiking the AT for less than $1000. So, if you can spend,say, 5 months a year living on something like $2000 without expenses back home, you don't need to earn that much in the off season. Of course, when you think about it there really isn't an off season to the outdoors, just different weather. Some people work temporary park and forest service jobs in the summer, ski jobs in the winter, and spend the spring and fall out doing what they really like. Remember, though, that this means that you won't be on health insurance most of the time and won't be saving for retirement. Ponder these before making the jump.

[Rain Man]

I stay married to a man who is wiling to work 12 months a year so I can play!! ....

Where do I find a man like that?!!! LOL

Rain Man

.

[DebW]

Where did this concept of working until you're too old to do anything else come from? How about reverse retirement - have fun when you're young and pay back the debts when you're old. Or intermittent retirement - work 4 years and take the 5th off. Or midlife retirement - work til 50, enjoy 5 years of retirement, then work for another 15-20 years. I might try the midlife option pretty soon.

[okpik]

I had this friend that was my sisters roomy in college.
We ended up friends and then dating over a couple of years and then/now married 23 years. Come to find out after I got married, she's from money.
Never was obvious and she don't flaunt it but I teach and work when I need to for self worth and when the time is there to hike/fish/camp, As long as I take my son and teach him non city stuff, I'm golden.

Only drawback is she has a VERY larg family and when they say we are getting together, I must drop all. It hasn't killed too many weekends in 23 years. Oh yea, she makes me go on business trips with her once in a blue moon so I suffer in places like Miami, Nawlins', LA, DC....
I'm a kept man.

[Hammock Hanger]

Or intermittent retirement - work 4 years and take the 5th off. Or midlife retirement - work til 50, enjoy 5 years of retirement, then work for another 15-20 years. I might try the midlife option pretty soon.

With the girls raised and our feeling burned out in our jobs the intermiitent retirement was sort of what we did. Of course we worked along the way... at a friends restaurant in Aspen and at another friends youth camp in the Adirondacks. Both jobs were fun and seasonal, leaving us time in the Spring and Fall to travel and play. We had to count pennies and utilize campgrounds but it all worked out. Like I said earlier, we had a wonderful time. We homeschooled the last kid as he was only 15. The plan had been toi wait until he graduated, but we just couldn't wait. I think it was a wonderful learning experience for him.

My husband has been back at work now for 4 years, he plans to quit again in about 6 years. I can't wait.

Sue/HH

[Bonehead]

I'm a kept man.

Does that mean she gets on top and makes you go down to the bottom?

[smokymtnsteve]

another good job is to get a class A commercial drivers license.

after just a little experience you can get jobs at will...work a few months and then take time off...winters are good for trucking jobs that are in 'bad weather"
frieght that is going across the nothern section of the country and westen canada and "just in time" deliveries like I used to do in the NE...just like Jerry garcia said 'chicago ,detroit, new york and there all on the same street"

ah, PA in the winter....interstate 80 won't give me no sleep just a winking and blinking with a stinking load of sheep.

you don't rent or keep a home (or rent/lease the one you own now) and live in the truck. take your backpacking stove with you and fix most of your foods and coffee and such to save bucks...no car needed and or car insurance along with no utility bills ....you can truck hard for 4-6 months out
of the year and actually do ok.

there is a lot of summertime work in AK for class A bus drivers, along with working white water in season, (bus shuttle drivers)

[Moose2001]

Nothing like 23 years in the military to make retirement seem worthwhile. I'm going to draw their pension until I'm at least 100!! And hike every chance I get!

[flyfisher]

Nothing like 23 years in the military to make retirement seem worthwhile. I'm going to draw their pension until I'm at least 100!! And hike every chance I get!

Dittos. I reach 20 January 30, 2005.

I start the AT 1 March 2005.

[Miss Janet]

" how you went about adjusting your life to accommodate hiking and what do you do to raise/save money in the "off-season".

I started adjusting my life to accomodate "Hiking Season" about 7 years ago... and I am not even a hiker! The first year I saved all of my vacation time and then some leave time to be able to help hikers out when they came through Erwin. The experience was life changing to say the least. I had already learned that THE CAREER that I had thought I wanted was getting in the way of raising my 3 girls. Then I learned that I was happiest around goal oriented people that were LOVING what they were doing = Thruhikers!! I found a way to help people, spend more time with my children and make a living doing it... well, at least part of the year. I take a JOB to make it through the rest of the year. We have learned to do without some of the extras that a salary and benefits might afford us but what we get back from the hostel business makes us far richer!

[Nightwalker]

All I had to do was blow a gasket in my brain, then the government paid me a small amount per month to keep me away from normal people.

Now, I can hike cheap and have fun, set home, make maps from my data--that I gathered while hiking--and have fun (forgetting that I'm broke) or set home, be broke, watch the news, and be bored.

The first two are what I usually prefer.

Frank

[peter_pan]

I'm with Hammock Hanger. Find the love of your life. Make it work first and foremost. Love like heck and play hard. Some times together. Sometimes as individuals. Bert and I are married 35 + (yea, some call me Ernie). Retired after 28 year in the Army. Now enjoying the life of a kept man. Did I mention that my wife, Bert, is a MARY KAY senior director?

My true montra is, "Happy Wife...Happy Life".

Last year I spent 121 days on vacation; AT,AT, AT, motorcycling, visiting friends and family, enjoying the beauty, pagentry,and comradie of Mary Kay Seminar in Dallas, and Career Conference in Atlantic City ( 8,000 women 800 men. It is almost as great as the seemingly endless vistas of the AT).

Life is good...Praise God!

[Spirit Walker]

I do the "intermittent retirement" thing. I hiked the AT in 1988, hiked it again in 1992, then the CDT in 1999 and the PCT in 2000 and we're planning to go out again in 2006. I work as a secretary, a job that is very easy to quit (the hard part is staying until it is time to go.) I'm very good at saving money. We have a house and a little retirement savings, but still manage to get out and go hiking every few years. You can have both worlds.

[Lilred]

I stay married to a man who is wiling to work 12 months a year so I can play!! My adjustment is to be a very good girl, attentive and loving, the months I am home. Then around late winter I get the puppy dog eyes going and start mentioning trails, hiking. Then books start arriving in the mail, I leave them lying around... By Spring I'm openly stating where I'll be hiking this summer. When I hear or feel resistance I just ignore it... it will pass!

Colorado here I come! Hammock Hanger

LOL You use much the same strategies as I do. I am a new convert to the hiking world but with a husband willing to let me go and a job that offers a paycheck while I'm off in the summers, it just works out well.

[chief]

there's a reason that habitual hikers look like homeless people. they're practicing up for their future lives.

[smokymtnsteve]

what is the difference between a hiker and a homeless person??


gore-tex

[chief]

choice usually, but not necessarily.

[steve hiker]

what is the difference between a hiker and a homeless person??

A homeless person smells better.