Thru Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Brooke D. McCarley
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- Brooke McCarley’s Appalachian Trail journey
The beginning of the Appalachian Trail is about a 4-hour drive from Birmingham to North Georgia. It then uncurls for 2181 miles through woods, mountains and mental-breaking points until it reaches Maine. Hiking the A.T. or parts of it was one of my vague goals until my friend suggested we do a section hike for our yearly vacation. Then the idea of being stranded in the woods with only my backpack became a sharp reality.
A few years before, we went to Vieques, a tropical beach near Puerto Rico. The last time we traveled together we spent some nights in New Orleans with a borrowed tent that smelled like buffalo dung surrounded by retired people in RV’s. We downgraded. Therefore hiking the A.T. seemed like a natural progression for us. Our luxurious hotel would be a two-person tent that we would roll up and stuff in our backpacks every morning. Our bathroom regimen also included a burial service for our waste, while our dogs bowed their heads in silence.
Our boyfriends didn’t think we could do it, and my parents begged me not to try it. If omens and maybe God exist then they, too, were telling us to go back home due to the thunderstorms that floated above us on our drive to the North Georgia mountains.
We were going to hike roughly 35 miles in five days and park one of our cars at our beginning spot and the other car at our final destination, Hogs Pen Gap. The first night we parked our cars at Hogs Pen and decided to sleep in her Yaris since it was already past midnight. It was too dark and lonely on the top of the mountain to set up a brand new tent. We were four hours behind schedule due to the storms and also needing one last good meal of tacos and beers before we lived on trail mix for days. However, sleeping the first night in her car left me optimistic for the rest of the trip. If my 6-foot-1-inch frame could curl up in a Yaris and sleep with a belly full of tacos and beers then I could do this hike.
We can do this hike as long as we can find the trail.
