From right to left that is Hardback, Torch, Mousebait, and the guy on the end who looks a bit like a Chia Pet is me. Two months ago, each of us started hiking the Appalachian Trail alone, but within a couple weeks we had formed a pretty tight group. For the past 600 miles, we've rarely spent a full day apart.
There's nothing I'd like more than to walk with them all the way to Maine, but unfortunately, real life obligations are slowly pulling some of us off the trail. We aren't going to make it. We just don't have enough time.
And so, plans have changed. Will we walk another 250 miles together and then, with about half of the Appalachian Trail completed, we’ve all decided to step off the trail. Mousebait will return home and the three remaining members of the group will get in a pick-up truck and start driving west for a few weeks. We are not exactly sure where this road trip will take us, but feel confident that it will be a fitting end to our journey.
And while this decision to leave the trail was not an easy one for me, rest assured that while my friends may be hindered by real world commitments, I am not. At the conclusion of our trip out west, I plan to return to the Appalachian Trail and finish the second half of what I started.
I’m not done with this trail yet.
I shall return.
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." --Winston Churchill
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