Ironjen's Appalachian Trials Lists Part 2: What do I want to get out of my thru-hike?

When I successfully thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, I will. . .

Now that we have a pile of gear waiting for us to take to the trail on our test hike in a few weeks, I am back to working on my Appalachian Trials lists.  Next up?  What will I gain from my thru-hike experience?  It's time to dig into the treasure chest of this awesome challenge!

These are the things I will get out of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike:

• An incredible book of night photos
• Images for my outdoor product commercial portfolio
• Outdoor gear company contacts to shoot products
• A deeper bond with Jeff aka Muskrat
• Skills to succeed at this marriage thing
• A fantastic shared adventure
• A second book perhaps (hopefully the first one will be done by then!)
• New perspective
• Clarity
• Direction
• Finally see more of New England
• Time away from technology (for the most part)
• More confidence
• Another great story
• New skills
• New strengths
• Unknown gifts
• New friends

That's what I have for now!  I'm sure that the list will develop and evolve over the next 8 months of planning and preparing!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Required Reading: Appalachian Trials by Zach Davis

Over the years since I discovered the dream of a thru-hike (1989), I have read a good bit about the AT.  There have been books, blogs and journals, and countless articles.  I've met thru-hikers when I have been out on day hikes or on some weekend backpacking trips, and I have dreamed wistfully of the day when I could be the one telling the story of MY thru-hike!

Now, as Muskrat and I have decided to thru-hike, set a projected start date of March 15, 2015 and are delving into the actual preparation for the actual hike, we have been seeking out things to read that are more than a gear list or a step by step account of someone else's thru-hike.  Don't get me wrong, we LOVE Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.  It's inspiring, entertaining, and full of history and ecology lessons that gave me even more respect and reverence for the trail than I already had.  David "AWOL" Miller's AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, as I mentioned in a previous post, was short on introspection and emotion, but still an incredible account of his 5 million step journey from Springer to Katahdin, and we are eagerly awaiting the release of his The AT Guide NOBO 2015.

On one of our many Google searches for AT planning resources, we stumbled upon thru-hiker REQUIRED READING!!  Zach Davis aka "The Good Badger" is a 2011 NOBO thru-hiker who penned the book Appalachian Trials about mental preparation for a 2,181 mile journey on foot.

I can tell you that if this book isn't on your pre-hike reading list, it needs to be.  Muskrat and I have each undertaken our fair share of mentally and physically challenging feats in our lives.  I've successfully completed four Ironman triathlons, and Muskrat has participated in countless randonneuring (self-supported bicycle rides) of distances ranging from 125 to 400 miles, and he was a member of the 2011 four man team that won the non-stop, 860 mile Race Across the West from Oceanside, California to Durango, Colorado.  We both know from experience that even if your body is trained and your gear is perfect, that the mental game can make or break your event.

Davis' book addresses the mental challenges that you'll undoubtedly encounter on the trail, from the low points where you'll wonder why this seemed like a good idea at all, to the end of the honeymoon phase, to the social pressures on and off the trail, the unexpected and potentially catastrophic events (illness, injury, off-trail drama) to the best advice I have heard about pacing, gear choices, nutrition, and reintegration into life after the trail.  In less than 100 pages, Davis manages to spill more universal truth out of his pen than you could learn at a 30 day yoga retreat.

He touches on the benefits of making lists about why you're embarking on your journey, the consequences of quitting and the rewards of staying the course.  He delves into the ways meditation can help you overcome challenges, and offers up some techniques for those unfamiliar with it.  As someone who made a stunning comeback from an incurable and debilitating disease, I can tell you that Davis is SPOT ON when he writes of the strength of character and confidence you gain by persevering through the tough times, and the methods he recommends for doing it.

At the risk of going on and on, and telling you so much that you'll make the mistake of not actually buying and reading this book, I will leave you with this.  It's the best resource I have read so far on preparing for a thru-hike.  There were several times I actually cheered out loud in agreement with something Davis totally nailed.  This book facilitated several discussions between Muskrat and myself about our individual expectations, ideas and goals for this shared trip.  Some of this was stuff we may have neglected to talk about without the benefit of the book, so Appalachian Trials may have saved us some marital trials along the trail, since it's always easier to get on the same page and discuss things when you're sitting on your comfy couch than it is to do so when you're sweaty, hungry, smelly and tired!

Seriously, whether you're NOBO, SOBO, flip-flopping or even facing some non-backpacking related challenge, this is a fantastic resource and the best $11.69 ($8.99 for kindle) you could spend!

Also check out his website, which is also chock full of resources for all things AT!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Pre-Trail Reading and Reflection

This morning, as Muskrat recovers from some surgery he had yesterday, we finished David "AWOL" Miller's AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, his account of his 2003 thru-hike. I had always heard really great things about the book, and I loved it, though I was surprised at how clinical of an account it is. Maybe it was my projection of my own storytelling style that had me expecting to hear a more introspective and emotional story. Despite the book not meeting that expectation, I found myself drawn into the story of footsteps through the green tunnel. It was almost meditative, as I anticipate some of the hike will be. Two of the passages in the book that stuck out most for me were these:

"The payoff, though difficult to quantify, is much greater than I expected. I have no regrets about having gone; it was the right thing to do. I think about it every day. Sometimes I can hardly believe that it happened. I just quit, and I was on a monumental trip. I didn't suffer financial ruin, my wife didn't leave me, the world didn't stop spinning. I do think of how regrettable it would have been had I ignored the pull that I felt to hike the trail. A wealth of memories could have been lost before they had even occurred if I had dismissed, as a whim, my inkling to hike. It is disturbing how tenuous our potential is due to our fervent defense of the comfortable norm." -David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

"Hiking the AT is 'pointless.' What life is not 'pointless?' Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary." - David Miller AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

"I want to make my life less ordinary." I have a feeling that this is one of the things people have judged me for the most in my life, yet it is one of the things that I am most proud of, and also one of the things that I wish I had done better when I was younger.

There was a time in my life, that due to the influences of parents, teachers, peers, religion, etcetera, that I thought that there was a checklist to happiness, a roadmap to fulfillment that I saw modeled all around me. My heart had always been drawn towards the outdoors, adventure, mountains, unconventional living, but the evidence of my actions clearly demonstrated that I felt far safer with "the conventional norm."

I mentioned how I felt shamed by my classmate's reaction to the one and only time I voiced my desire to go to the woods in lieu of going to college. Somehow that moment of honesty, and the shame that I felt from it, spurred me to a gorgeous engraved piece of paper that hangs of a wall matted and framed in walnut. It has an embossed seal, some foil lettering, a bunch of signatures, and at one time it gave me a sense of worth and value, and it made me feel as though I had done what I was supposed to do on the way to being happy and fulfilled. After suffering a less than exciting year in an office, an incurable and debilitating bout of illness, an ill-advised marriage and the subsequent divorce, I see it as a symbol of dreams deferred, and as a learning experience far more valuable than anything I ever did in the classrooms where I earned that degree.

I don't regret it, and it certainly didn't ruin my life, as life is pretty grand! I just wish that I could tell my younger self to quit looking at the people around me, many of whom I later learned weren't as happy and satisfied as they led me to believe, as examples of how to succeed. I'd tell myself to take the time to get to know who I am and what I really want, and to always follow that deliciously tense tugging that I feel in my chest when something ignites my passion. I lived by the checklist, and I almost died by the checklist in my mid-20s. Experience has taught me that there is much more risk in living "the comfortable norm" than there is in living a life "less ordinary." My 30s have been about living from my heart, and they haven't disappointed me yet.

My heart says it's never too late to hike.


©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Ironjen's Inspiration for a Thru-hike

When I was twelve years old, the son of one of my dad’s high school friends thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.  My mom mentioned it to me, and though the conversation couldn’t have lasted more than 5 minutes, it has stayed in my mind for 25 years.

Long before that list of life goals and dreams was called a “bucket list,” such a list was forming in my mind.  What an adventure it would be to hike over 2000 miles of mountains!

I’m someone who has always felt a deep desire to live unconventionally.  I used to tell my high school boyfriend that I wanted to live somewhere that “smelled far away.”  My favorite days were the ones where a spontaneous road trip took me to a meadow, a mountain, a place where there was space, and I could breathe.  My favorite vacations were in the mountains, and they involved communing with trees and rocks and dirt and icy streams.

As a senior in high school, a classmate asked me what I would be studying in college the following year, and I really didn’t know.  I answered that I really didn’t even want to go to college.  I wanted to go to the woods.  She looked at me like I was crazy, and some part of me felt wrong for what I wanted.

So, I went to college.  I finished a semester early with a solid GPA and a degree tailor made for my Washington, DC upbringing, Government and Politics.  That was 1999; 10 years after the idea of a thru-hike had entered my mind.

I rushed into a job, a marriage, and homeownership, and I woke up one day in the midst of my life wondering how I would ever do my thru-hike with all of these responsibilities.  I felt like I made a series of huge mistakes.

I'm not one to dwell on things I "should have" done, so I just aimed to live life a little differently a little bit at a time, and over the last 15 years, have managed to get my life much closer to how I want it to look and feel.  It took a divorce, an eight-year career in law enforcement, a five-year battle with debilitating and "incurable" dermatomyositis, a forced retirement, four Ironman triathlon finishes, and marrying Jeff/Muskrat to get me here, but I am FINALLY ready to take on the adventure that has been on my mind for 25 years!

To the trail!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.