Why I’ll Thru-Hike The AT in 2019
The outdoors have been calling me from the beginning of my life. There has always been a part of me that just wanted to strip away as much of the grating man-made world as I could and just live. This call moderately subsided when my family went on day hikes at our local state park, Fort Yargo, and when my aunt would take me to the North Georgia Mountains. These hikes began happening when I was around the age of thirteen and also right after my parents divorced. I believe that they were an attempt by my mother to let nature heal the wounds left by her recent separation, and by my aunt to help me get through the divorce. Our hikes soon came to an end when my mom decided to move in with her boyfriend. As you could probably guess, my now stepfather and I didn’t have such a great relationship. He is a very old fashioned kind of man in contrast to my somewhat hippy of a father.
Three years later, in September of 2017, my father passed away. It had been at least three months since our last visit due to the fact that he had retired to the Philippines. Instead of feeling a wave of sadness like I was expecting, I received a new view of life. Why waste life worrying about what others think of me? Why is it that I’m told the only path for happiness is to graduate high school popular, go to college for four years, get a steady and reliable job, then retire at sixtyfive. Why should I spend my life doing what society tells me to do? I then decided that I would find happiness my own way, even if that meant that I would be living job to job and more than likely out of my car. I was tired of my home life, social life in school, and the unreasonably high standard that society wants me to live to. The way I was living was leaving me physically and emotionally exhausted. I came to the conclusion that if I continue living my life to others standards, that the only way to go would be down. At this moment I began to feel the call of the outdoors. The freedom was beckoning. I needed to get out of the chaotic and judgmental world. I decided that I would thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
