5/3: Throwback to Unaka Mountain in Tennessee. Traversing Tennessee was one of the most pivotal times during my thruhike, in which I was alone before Brett came into my life; whether not I wanted to embrace an exponential amount of personal growth, I was able to truly spend this time of loneliness facing everything in my “real life” back home and within myself that I needed to: my faults, ideas of friendships, letting go of anyone and anything that was toxic, what I wanted for my future, and acknowledging the genuine independence that comes along with asserting that I would no longer make myself a doormat to myself or anyone else. I remember waking up the morning of when this photograph was taken to the sound of torrential rain beating on my tent. I ate three breakfast protein bars as I was lamenting over the idea of emerging from my tent, knowing I would get soaked and continue to stay soaked as it would rain on and off all day. “Embrace the suck” and “no rain, no pain, no Maine” are the thruhike mantras, so I took a deep breath, threw my backpack out in the mud, got out in the rain, began collapsing my tent poles, and it began to rain harder. I picked my tent up to dump out the pools of water that collected in its folds, quickly rolled it up, and began walking. I hiked 17 miles in rain, and even stopped on top of this mountain to sit in the rain and appreciate my first sights of what almost all of New England would look like once I would get there months later. For this reason, I think Unaka Mountain is such a unique gem in the south because it’s one of the few dense spruce summits in that particular region in which a hiker will traverse along the AT. Just as I was about to get up and continue walking in the rain, it completely subsided and fog rolled in, giving me the opportunity to take this photo. I felt like I was in a fairytale in this precise moment.
#at2016 #appalachiantrail2016 #appalachiantrail #appalachiantrials #thruhike #thruhiker #tbt (at Unaka Mountain)