Two men came into the restaurant while we were eating dinner in Norwich, New Hampshire. They resembled hippies with their long hair and beards, but my husband said they probably were hiking on the nearby Appalachian Trail. Opened to the public in 1937, the AT, as it’s called, is a 2,180-mile walking trail from Georgia to Maine, and thousands of people make the pilgrimage every year.
We struck up a conversation with the men as my husband has hiked portions of the trail. Sure enough, they’re what’s known as “through hikers,” people who start either at Mt. Katahdin in Maine or Springer Mountain in Georgia and finish the entire odyssey in one trek.
The trail takes walkers through gorgeous territory, from mountains to forests, and weaves through Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Both said they’d retired from their careers in their mid-50s, picked up their hiking boots and gear and headed out to complete a long-held dream of hiking the entire AT.
Most hikers adopt a trail name, and the gentlemen we were talking with had done the same. “Tripod,” a soft-spoken man, said he hailed from Georgia and “Tin Man,” a tall, slim man with an easy smile, had retired from a second career as a firefighter.
Tripod said he felt guilty about leaving his wife for a few months to hike the trail, so he came up with an idea that fit his spiritual nature. For every mile he walks, people donate money to help build water wells in Nicaragua. So far, he’s raised over $10,000, and Tripod said he felt he could help a ministry that mimicked his life on the trail where water sources are often scarce.
“We’re out here fighting for water every day, so I can’t imagine what people have to go through to fight for water every day of their lives,” he said.
He did have a plan for ending his trek in grand fashion. When Tripod came off the trail, he was heading to a dealership, purchasing a motorcycle and riding that bike all the way home to Georgia.
“Tin Man’s” life path was as rocky as some of the places on the AT. He watched firefighters help his father during his numerous heart attacks until his father passed away when he was 3 years old. Those early memories stayed with him when it came time to choose a career.
He didn’t want to put his widowed mother in financial difficulty for his college education, so he joined the armed services, enrolled in classes and discovered he was pretty smart. Smart enough to use the G.I. bill to earn a degree in nuclear engineering and enjoy a career in that field before heading over to his real passion, firefighting.
The two met on the trail and said walking all those miles allowed them to realize they’d lived good lives so far. As they talked about their journey, there was a calmness surrounding both of them, and I felt myself relaxing the more they talked about the peacefulness that came to be part of their daily life.
Each bend on the trail, each fork in the path took them to places they’d never been, and they got through over 2,000 miles by simply putting one foot in front of the other. They kept going, and that’s probably the best advice anybody can follow when it comes to accomplishing a goal.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a bearded and dusty hiker in the middle of the forest in Virginia, a tired and cranky commuter on the freeway in Houston or an unemployed college student, hungry for an adventure before responsibility comes bearing down.
It really doesn’t matter if you hike on the AT, through a state park or around the block in your neighborhood.
Adventure starts with taking that first step into the unknown and believing the answers will become clearer with each mile you travel through the unknown.
You might not ever step foot on the AT, but you don’t have to go that far to find answers. They’re as close as the next step you take.
To donate to Tripod’s mission of helping drill a water well in Nicaragua, email him at jacarr242@gmail.com. This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.