Guest Post by John Adriance
Thru-hiking is, in itself, a cathartic act. The natural world sweeps you up with its beauty on some days. It invites you to look closer at its details. You revel in the colors of a sunset from an open ridge. On other days you struggle to scrub pine sap off your tent. A goal is laid out for you every day, providing you with the chance to give it all you’ve got. And you might even surpass your expectations and preconceived notions about yourself during your journey. Thru-hiking requires you to surrender your frustrations, hurt, fears, and doubts.
Encountering the Hiking Community
Because of your shared goals, you quickly form close friendships with strangers. Each day, you are a new version of yourself. And depending on how many people you share a pace with, you have the privilege of introducing them to that version while simultaneously being introduced to theirs.
You form friendships where intentions, passions, and struggles are mirrored and reflected outward like light. You’re understood at your most genuine, vulnerable, and dirtiest. Your hidden struggles fade away, and you are essentially cleansed. The greatest thing about thru-hiking is definitely the community; It serves as an outstanding model for how life should be lived.
Coming Home After Hiking
But a challenge even greater than the trail awaits each thru-hiker when their journey is complete. The profoundness of their experience compels them to carry a soul formed by dirt, sweat, and literal tears wherever they go in life. They quickly find that it can’t be easily understood by most people who haven’t surrendered themselves to thousands of miles of trail. Thus memories, accomplishments, and lessons are kept locked up in the brain, rarely seeing the light of day. Is there any way to integrate that experience?
After seeing what brought me true happiness after the trail, I can conclude that surrendering with someone to another passion, frustration, or goal is able to fulfill that. By all means though, look through those pictures, text that trail family, keep that raggedy and sticky tent that sheltered you through so many storms. But commit yourself to being a model of life, to spread the sense of awe and surrender still stuck to you from the trail to those who will listen.
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