The Why

As I have previously posted, the question of "why do you want to the hike the AT?" is ridiculous to me. I mean, really? why would I not want to do something awesome?

I picked up a good book a few months ago. It's called "Appalachian trials" by Zach Davis and it's all about the mental challenges to hiking the Appalachian trail. There is a lot of material out there about gear planning, and physical conditioning but little about mental preparation. I hear that discouragement is one of the most cited reasons for quitting and i don't want to quit so I snatched up this book about 10 minutes after seeing it advertised on whiteblaze.net.

Zach encourages the would-be thru-hiker to make three lists before starting the trail:

• I am thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail because
• If I give up on the Appalachian Trail I will
• When I successfully thru-hike the Appalachian Trail I will

He suggests reviewing these lists during the hike and definitely before deciding to quit. Now to some perhaps this whole mental preparation thing seems silly and useless - but this is a big challenge and I intend to make any preparation I can for this. You may view some these things as too harsh or exaggerated but remember I'm trying to psych myself up.

So here are my lists

I am thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail because

• I love hiking and I love the woods
• It has been a dream of mine for years
• I haven't taken any significant time off since high school
• For clarity and time to think
• I enjoy a challenge
• Adventure!
• I want to grow as a person

If I give up on the Appalachian Trail I will

• Be ashamed
• Feel like a failure
• Have to explain to everyone I know why I gave up the trail
• Have wasted a lot of time, money, opportunities
• Have to deal with endless flak from my friends

When I successfully thru-hike the Appalachian Trail I will

• Have confidence to take on future challenges
• Be a real bad-a.......I mean....rough customer
• Have awesome stories to bore my friends with over and over
• Have some new skills
• Be better at adapting to new situations
• Be better at talking with new people

steady-state