New and events of the Philadelphia Bar Asso.
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the philadelphia lawyer Winter 2015 35 As such, hitchhiking becomes an art form for a thru-hiker, and the people of the trail towns along the AT look for hikers to pick up as part of their summertime routine, similar to the way drivers in New England learn to look for frost heaves in the winter. On a quiet stretch of Route 26 in Unicoi, Tenn., a driving instructor, in the middle of a lesson, saw me standing at a road crossing and had her student pull over to give me a ride to the nearest convenience store for resupply. The poor 15-year-old kid with his hands glued at 10 and 2 didn't know what to make of the whole thing. Possibly the oddest trail magic I received was in Dalton, Mass., to which I hiked for 25 miles on a bum foot and in a cold rain in order to get to town and sleep in a dry place, only to find that the one motel in town was booked. Just then, a ponytailed guy in a white van pulled up and asked me if I need a place to stay. I said I did. I was in luck, he explained, because he had a bed in his van. I said OK, which gives you an idea of a thru-hiker's desperation. It turned out that this trail angel also had access to a camper, there were a few beds in it, and my initial fears proved unfounded. There were as many reasons for hiking the trail as there were hikers, but people generally fell into one or more of the following categories – recent retirees; recent college graduates; 30-something professionals either between jobs or taking leaves of absence from their job; endurance athletes/ ultra-hikers; ex-military guys; and people hiking the trail to lose weight. Probably more than 80 percent of the thru-hikers started alone, and fewer than 20 percent of people who start the AT intending to thru-hike actually complete it. Surprisingly, it was the recent college graduates, the demographic physically most suited to long-distance hiking, who had the highest dropout rate (perhaps along with the weight-loss hopefuls). Thus, it became clear early on that this was less a test of physical endurance than of the mind's ability to stay focused on a task for an extended period of time, organize each day efficiently, and stick to your checkpoints. I had the tremendous advantage of having practiced law. I also benefitted from hiking much of the AT with some of the most fascinating people I have ever met. Guy "Astro Guy" Gardner was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, an Air Force test pilot, a NASA space shuttle pilot for two missions, and then program director of the joint U.S.-Russia Mir program. He retired and followed his lifelong dream of becoming a physics teacher. Celeste "Acorn" Beyer was an ex-sponsored snowboarder who went on to counsel and treat drug addicts by spending time with them in the mountains of Vermont. Only toward the end of the hike did I learn I had been hiking with someone famous (by AT standards) for being the "toughest woman on the trail." Most people I would meet in passing, and we would spend the day exchanging stories and appreciating each other's quirks. There were hundreds, including "Rocky," a laid-back dude who arguably managed to pull off both Willie Nelson braids and a kilt, and who always had two cars parked about 15 miles apart. He would hike 15 miles south from Car A to Car B, drove Car B 30 miles north, hiked 15 miles south to Car A, then repeated. I passed him a number of times going the opposite direction – in effect, he hiked south from Georgia to Maine, almost never having to camp outside. Another was "Fig Leaf," an American who spoke Spanish, but only to her dog, which she bought in Nicaragua and which presumably had trouble understanding English. The hike itself took just over four months. In that time, I went through six pairs of socks, five pairs of hiking shoes, four pairs of trekking poles, four hiking shirts, two pairs of hiking shorts and two backpacks. I saw five bears, one moose, one rattlesnake, one copperhead and the eyes, at night, of one wild boar. But the most dangerous animal I saw on the AT was also the smallest: the nymph-stage deer tick, carrier of Lyme disease. I hiked with four people who contracted Lyme disease during their thru-hike. I ate more than 30 pounds of peanut butter, 20 pounds of tuna and 600 tortillas. I covered more distance than the distance, as the crow flies, between New York City and Las Vegas, climbed and descended more than 515,000 feet, and took more than 4 million steps. Was it worth the time, energy, money and gap in my resume? My answer is unequivocally "yes." I do not yet know the full extent of what the trail taught me, but I know I gained the ability to separate complexity from fullness of experience, and to slow myself down to a speed where the compartments of my life could gel. It had become too easy for me to load myself up with work and constantly juggle dozens of tasks, the busier the better. Time pressures still existed on the AT – to pack up and start hiking early, to hike a certain number of miles to meet someone, to get to town on a certain day before I ran out of food – but if I simply kept putting one foot in front of the other, 4 million times, I would get to my goal. Grant E. Nichols (grant.nichols@gmail.com) is currently consulting insureds on coverage and claims issues and volunteers as a coach at the Miami Beach Rowing Club. It took Grant Nichols more than four months to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.