The Appalachian Trail Helped Me Unmask

The Appalachian Trail Helped Me Unmask

BY MARY BETH SKYLIS

I ugly-cried while I watched my best friend drive away from the Appalachian Trailhead in Georgia. The trees stood tall all around me, ominous and foreboding. Suddenly, it was just me and a 40-pound pack against the world. 

I felt like I’d made a terrible mistake. 

I’d spent the last month convincing everyone around me that I was capable of surviving in the wilderness for months. But as self-assured as I sounded, I was terrified. What was I thinking? Who was I to believe that I could hike 2,200 miles through the Appalachian Mountains?

I spent much of my life feeling out of place, adapting my behaviors to those around me to avoid the jolt that came from social rejection. I simultaneously craved social interactions and feared them. I knew it was just a matter of time before those around me would realize I was different — a reality that was only made worse by a bad middle school haircut and many years of homeschooling. I practiced being like everyone else, which was what brought me to a job I hated in my early 20s. Despite achieving financial and reputational success at a young age, misery followed me everywhere. 

Then I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man, in which she writes a short passage about the Appalachian Trail. It was the first time I’d ever heard of the winding trek that traveled from Georgia to Maine. I knew instantly that I wanted to see every foot of it for myself. 

The idea of it began to consume me. After being strapped to a desk for a year, I wanted the opposite experience — to be wild and free, traipsing along the trail instead of rotting behind a desk. I wanted autonomy, and the ability to live my life according to my own agenda. Despite exhibiting little athletic talent and no knowledge whatsoever about sleeping in the woods, I knew I needed to hike the trail. I was going to walk to Maine if it was the last thing that I did.

After 2 years of slogging through an endless chain of e-mails, I put in my 2-week notice, packed up my gear, made plans for my best friend to drive me to Georgia, and told my parents I’d be back in a few months. 

My friend and I made the slow drive from Michigan to Georgia over a few days, stopping at distilleries in Tennessee and Kentucky, as bourbon lovers do. When the mountains finally came into sight, I nearly screamed. There was the promise of change amidst the Appalachian peaks, and I was determined to find it. 

It was early spring when I started walking north. I worried that my sleeping bag wouldn’t be warm enough for the sub-freezing temperatures and that I’d turn into a block of ice before I made it to the 100-mile marker. 

Despite my fears, it only took a few days to calm down and get into a rhythm: wake up, pack my gear, eat a snack, and start hiking north. My mind was noisy at first, filled with self-doubt and anxiety. 

As my journey continued, I relaxed. I began noticing the birds, flitting from tree to tree. The whippoorwills called to each other from a distance. My sense of smell grew sharp and sensitive, alerting me to the smell of rain before it erupted. My ears noticed even a slight shift in the weeds, warning me when a critter was nearby. I could detect even the smallest details of my environment as I walked. 

In the early days, I hiked 10-15 miles per day, collapsing in a shelter from sheer exhaustion before the sun sank below the horizon. Then I’d eat, filter water, and fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, entirely forgetting about the job titles and my former life in a cubicle. 

Without all of the background noise of everyday city life, my days became strangely simple. I no longer listened to the clunking sound of cars outside of my bedroom window. Instead, I fell asleep to the breeze rushing through the trees.  

As the days grew on, my mind grew quiet and unencumbered by the expectations of society. I started laughing without restraint, no longer caring about other people’s judgments or how odd my laugh sounded. I began singing and talking to myself in the woods, not worrying whether or not the birds would hear. I cried on hard days instead of holding it in to quell the concerns of strangers. My ruminations grew quiet. 

Then the magic began. 

With each mountain I climbed, the distance between the person I’d been and the person I was becoming narrowed.

I navigated boulders, roots, rocks, and steep mountain faces as I moved forward, building confidence with each step. I spent every day building belief until it no longer mattered whether or not the world at large accepted me. The trail did.

By the time I reached the northern terminus on the Appalachian Trail, my skin was rough from the endless slog through the mountains. My leg muscles bulged while my eyes twinkled at the possibilities of what life could be like. I was no longer afraid of the difficulties that life might hand me. Nor was I willing to mask the way I experienced the world. 

I was finally unapologetically myself. 

BIO: Mary Beth Skylis is a freelance writer who specializes in personal narratives. She currently works as a columnist for Backpacker Magazine, and Parkinson's News Today. Her by-lines appear in Outside Magazine, REI, Business Insider, Travel + Leisure, Blue Ridge Outdoors, and Cascade Designs Blogs. Follow her on Instagram @h1kertrash.