“Even if you’re just out for a week or longer, the trail offers an opportunity to be very real,” said Hopeful, who completed her first thru-hike with her husband Red Wing (his second) in 2005 and who said she has rarely met a thru-hiker not in the midst of some sort of transition in their lives. “You cut through the normal things that separate us—what you do, what you look like,” she said. “So you develop friendships that would never have been possible [off-trail], because you’re working or because of geography.”
This is the essence of the AT’s appeal—the reason, according to most who have hiked it and many who have studied it, that so many who spend time on the trail emerge from it changed in some way.
Day 5 brought a palpable impatience to finish. As we emerged from the woods onto a precipice overlooking the sweeping panorama of the Shenandoah River joining the Potomac, the Harpers Ferry church steeple in the distance, I broke into a gallop. Later, over burgers, beers and vegetables—a novelty—it was hard not to think about when we might tackle our next stretch. Mt. Rogers, anyone? Maybe Sawbriar’s available.
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