“Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you’re standing outside the fire.” – Garth Brooks & Jenny Yates
After my wife died in 2021, I had to deal with that whole “mortality” thing and I did not like what I was seeing. I had not done any exercise since I stopped playing soccer about 6 years prior and I got winded walking up one flight of stairs. I also looked back on the past 30 years and realized that I had a lot of regrets. I was a workaholic, which caused me to miss a lot of weddings, funerals, graduations, birthday parties, etc. Add to all that the trauma of loosing my partner of 35 years and general depression around trying to figure out what the hell do I do with my life, and I decided that I needed to make some major changes.
I retired on January 3, 2022 at 53 years old and started working on Life Part II. A major part of that included my desire to become much more healthy as well as to NOT putter around the house in my retirement. I wanted to get to a physical and mental place where I could truly enjoy life, try new things, and challenge myself. I have never enjoyed exercise for the sake of exercise (i.e. going to the gym). I decided to embrace hiking for the health/exercise benefits plus the “Spiritual” side of things.
I started off with 1.5 miles being difficult. Fast forward two and a half years…I have lost 25 lbs, I hike 30-45 miles a week with a 28lb pack on moderate-to-difficult terrain, and I eat better than I have in years (not a health food nut, just generally better eating habits). I have hiked/explored lots of new areas up and down the mid-Atlantic, and I am enjoying life. At some point along the way I realized that I had become a hiking addict. I love finding ever more challenging terrain as well as that “endorphin high” that comes from pushing my body.
I decided that I wanted to really challenge myself physically and mentally. Long-distance hiking looked like a good way to approach that, and a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail (AT) became my initial goal (obsession?). I spent the second half of 2022 researching an AT thru-hike and doing ever more challenging day hikes to get in shape.
Unfortunately I tore my metatarsel plate on the decent of McAfee Knob in July 2022 and stupidly hiked on it for 3 more months before seeing a doctor. After 3 months of doctored-ordered no hiking, I finally had surgery to repair the tear. That led to three more months of recovery and no hiking. By April of 2023, I was able to start hiking again. Recovery was very frustrating. Going from hiking 10 miles on difficult terrain to struggling to do 4 flat miles on the C&O Canal Towpath sucked! I started to think that there was no way I would be able to ever do the AT.
With the encouragement of my friends (thank you Dana!) and my orthopedist, I stuck with it. I eventually got back to hiking at least 4 days a week and struggled through several 2 day backpacking trips in the summer of 2023. Side note…dropping 25 pounds of body weight sure makes those miles easier on the feet! I capped out the year with a week-long backpacking trip from Pen Mar MD to Duncannon PA in 90 degree heat with 70-80% humidity and the worst drought we had in the mid-Atlantic in a long time (very very little water on the trail). I figure if I could survive that trip, then I was ready to attempt a thru-hike of the AT.
As my wonderful sister-in-law Vicki has told me many times (usually as we decide to do something questionable on a black diamond ski slope), that which does not kill us makes us stronger!
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