I never dreamed of hiking, or being a ‘hiker,’ but who really does? It sounded pretty boring to be honest. When you see adventure videos you're bombarded with daredevil rock climbers, kayakers and base jumpers with tattoos and missing teeth doing suicidal-looking things, and somehow that appealed to me. Hiking had zero adrenaline appeal so I dismissed it.
A lot of events in my life had to intersect for me to start hiking. Living in Asheville, NC I was surrounded by outdoorsy possibilities. I thought I would become a kayaker and I started towards that but it didn’t pan out. I wanted to rock climb but I wasn’t in good enough shape. I planned to do many things that never happened.
I woke up one morning after a couple years of fading ambitions and realized I was well on my way to becoming depressed. It was a mild depression but it kept me from going out much and I was forced to seek out non-social alternatives to staying in the house all the time.
I started walking the dog. We wandered up and down the gravel road that wound up the mountain we lived on. I could make it about a quarter mile up the hill before I felt out of breath and tired and turned around. The dog would shoot me a pissed off glance, tug a bit on the leash and then turn back, defeated, and drag me back to the house. I started doing this every day. If I was 15 minutes late starting the daily walk I was reminded by an impatient, whimpering dog with it's leash in it's mouth. Each day I went a bit further and soon I was ready for something bigger.
Luckily, I lived a few miles from the 530-mile Mountain to Sea Trail. One day I put on my boots and loaded up the dog and set off for the visitor center loop trail. I had driven past it many times but never stopped. In a way I was too shy to go out on a trail and fail. I imagined myself slouched over on the side of the trail in a puddle of sweat, breathing heavily while all the sporty types had to jump over me as they jogged by. I hadn't felt ready before, but now I was. That first day I made it 1.5 miles and was very proud of myself. A week later I was making it around the entire 2.3 mile loop. I started timing my laps with a sports-tracker app. I started doing multiple laps and adjacent 6-7 mile sections of the MTS. I found a new appreciation for nature when it surrounded me. I felt more at peace and confident alone in the woods than I had ever felt in a crowd. The introspective places my mind went when I was alone changed along with me as I hiked. My thoughts while on the trail were focused and optimistic. I was challenged, happy and craving more. I was getting back to my normal self again, slowly. The dog was thrilled.
I used the momentum of that wave of confidence to make some changes in my life. I left North Carolina and went back to GA where I started hiking every day, sometimes at Sweetwater Creek State Park and other days at Blanket's Creek where my dad would mountain bike past me as I hiked. I walked every trail I could find. If I ran out of trail I created my own. As you can see from my tracker map, I walked in plenty of circles...
I got lost often but I found a part of myself that I never knew existed. This wasn’t team sports and at my age there was certainly no one watching or expecting me to improve or keep it up. It was a rare, triumphant (and badass) feeling to realize I was doing this purely out of personal drive and ambition, not for a team or a coach or class, and I couldn’t stop. I pushed harder and harder, not even skipping the swampy 95 degree days that are common in Georgia (and in Hell, I imagine).
I hiked so hard and so often it became normal to me. I lost about 30 pounds I had gained in the previous years. I felt light on my feet and strong both physically and emotionally. 6 months after my first walk up that mountain I finally felt like myself again.
In a sense, hiking saved me from my depression and changed the course of my life. I didn't realize at the time how influential this new hobby would be, but I knew I was onto something good. I credit my times in the woods as being the therapeutic push I needed to transition and make confident, positive changes. Jen the Hiker had inadvertently been born and was unstoppable! Well, in this chapter anyway…
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