The Long Walk I Continue

An officer read me my rights while a nurse stitched my right hand back together with a needle and thread. My left hand was handcuffed to the hospital bed. The shame and humiliation coursing through my body were more painful than the needle being woven through my flesh.

“Do you understand your rights,” the officer asked, irritated by the hospital detour and eager to take me to central booking.

I nodded solemnly. There was little else I understood at that moment. I didn’t recognize the destructive person I had become.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” I whimpered like a child trying to escape punishment.

“Maybe you should have considered that before you punched your hand through your girlfriend’s window,” he retorted, rightfully.

Hours earlier, I had stood on the sidewalk outside my girlfriend’s first floor apartment full of pent up rage and too much liquor, a lethal combination when mixed with my crippling insecurity. I didn’t even feel my fist go through the window, I just heard the sound of broken glass. There was a commotion as friends arrived to intervene and defuse the situation and the sound of sirens grew louder and louder.

“Are those for me?” I remember thinking as two squad cars pulled up and the officers bolted towards me, ready to serve and protect my innocent girlfriend and the rest of society from the menace I had become.

This scene, and others like it, would repeat in my mind years later when I hiked the Appalachian Trail, serving as a harsh reminder of why I’d chosen to take it on in the first place. Spoiler alert: I didn’t end up in prison, but I did end up in mental purgatory and it was the closest I’d come to ending my life.

I can’t quite remember the first time thoughts of suicide crossed my mind. There is no one particular event that sparked them. Rather, they accumulated over time as my mental health gradually waned and my bouts of insecurity and anger went from sporadic to status quo. Depression finally had me in its gut-wrenching vice-grip. Too often, I’d find myself alone with my head down, face in my hands, tears dripping through my fingers repeating over and over again through gritted teeth, “Why am I like this?”

The desire to hike the AT wasn’t some spiritual epiphany that arose from deep within my psyche. It wasn’t some crazy idea I came up with just to spice things up. It wasn't my life dream to become a wilderness explorer. I found my way to the Appalachian Trail because I was struggling with my mental health and needed help. I needed guidance, I needed to feel that life was worth living. Because at that point, I had lost the will to live.

I was never much of a believer in the whole, the universe provides thing. I didn’t subscribe to any belief systems or have any spirituality at that time, but just when I was on the brink of giving up, hope appeared in the unexpected form of–guess who!–Robert Redford.

Years earlier, a friend had given me the Bill Bryson novel A Walk In the Woods to read, and it had made an impression on me. In 2014, Robert Redford announced he would be making this moving tale about hiking the Appalachian Trail into a motion picture, and something in me felt called to give it another read.

After a few chapters, it dawned on me: I needed to go for a walk. A long walk. I needed to reckon with my inner turmoil away from the urban bar scene in which it had been fomented. I needed to reprogram the voices that were spinning such dark tales.

It was that walk that saved my life.

I had never even camped overnight before setting foot on the 2,200 mile trail for the first time. I knew nothing about tent set-ups, base weights, or the cook vs. cold debate. I was a strictly urban SOB who knew how to sling drinks, not skip stones. But given that I was already contemplating suicide, I figured I had nothing to lose.

It wasn’t in my nature, at the time, to hurdle over life’s peaks and valleys; it was my nature to bury my head under rocks and let myself down. I was either drinking or looking forward to the end of my shift so I could start drinking. Friends and coworkers were always readily available to join in on the charades and a “shift drink” always led to a shift bender.

I wasn’t always destined for bar life. In fact, I was a competitive runner in high school and received a full scholarship to college. I won multiple state titles, yet for all my victories it was the failures that stayed with me and destroyed my confidence. My gnawing insecurities led me to self sabotage. Just six months into college, I flunked out and found myself on a greyhound back to Cambridge, MA.

I became a massage therapist and later a track coach, but my self-loathing caught up with me, and eventually the only place I felt I belonged was behind the bar. I could not control my liquor nor my thoughts, and my sense of worthlessness overpowered me. I was like that guy from Bruce Springsteen's song Glory Days, still wearing my high school letterman jacket (but unable to zip it closed around my gut), dribbling on about who I once had been.

So, when I hauled my heavy paunch onto one of the longest and most challenging trails in America, it was a big jiggly reminder of just how far I’d let myself go in mind, spirit, and especially body. I felt like I was hiking with a spare tire around my waist. But Mother Nature beats Jane Fonda any day, and I was due for a workout.

The trail threw everything it had at me from the start. I began the journey in March, as freezing rain fell viciously from the sky. At night, my tent did little to insulate me when the temperature dropped below freezing. The straight climbs made my back and knees scream with agony, and I quickly learned to appreciate the ergonomics of a switchback. I passed through the Green

Tunnel in Virginia, 500 miles of deep wilderness whose monotony made me feel like I was living in Groundhog Day.

“You’ll hate Pennsylvania,” they said, and soon into the rocky keystone state, I understood why. My feet were so swollen at the end of the day I had to peel my sneakers off.

When summer came, I traded in snow drifts for simmering heat, blood sucking mosquitos, and wildlife that looked cute in children’s books but were best avoided in the wilderness–especially those black bears. Certainly there were good days of hiking as well, stunning landscapes and breathtaking vistas, but more often than not, the days were fraught with physical pain and internal turmoil.

Early on, I asked myself why the hell I was putting myself through this. How was this miserable trek going to strengthen my desire to live? I felt like the trail was doing its best to make me quit. “What are you trying to tell me?” I’d scream into the wilderness. “That I’m not cut out for this?”

But I had been a quitter most of my life, and I was tired of crying myself to sleep at night because of the deep sinking sensation that I had given up on myself. I swore that any future tears would mark the triumph of breakthroughs instead of the shame of self-pity.

Over time, my waistline slimmed and my spirits brightened. I can’t recall exactly when things shifted on trail, but I can certainly recall what the shift felt like. I began to understand that it wasn’t supposed to be easy. What would I ever learn, how would I ever grow, if every day I faced a smooth, even trail with 70 degree weather and scattered clouds? The trail would cut me some slack when I earned it, not when I asked for it.

Every challenge I overcame deepened my resolve, my will to live. Mother Nature was showing me that I could actually survive, that I possessed and could cultivate inner strength and determination and I was grateful for the challenge to prove myself again and again.

I finally stopped screaming in defiance and started asking, triumphantly, “What else you got?” The more difficult the journey became, the more I wanted thrown at me. After being a quitter most of my life, I knew I would see this journey through, and with each step, I believed in myself a little deeper.

As I tapped into hidden reserves of mental and physical fortitude, I gradually became reacquainted with the champion runner I used to be. My mind would wander on the trail to my favorite memories as a runner: keeping pace with my brother on a long Sunday morning run, one that began with a mutual head nod that said “go.” No race, no spectators, no possibility of letting anyone down, just the two of us discovering new trails and gaining speed to feel fully alive. This walk was similar.

It was a few weeks into the hike that the words “Hike the Good Hike” fell from my lips. I understood that as difficult as this hike we call life can be, there's always some good to glean, and we always have the agency to transform ourselves. I recited these words like a mantra, no matter how rocky the journey on the trail, and in my head, became at times.

Hiking through the wilderness saved me. It didn't cure me. It didn’t erase the dark thoughts that had been taunting me. Rather, it empowered me to honestly confront them and showed me that I had something to live for, that I was part of something bigger than myself. Hiking gave me a sense of purpose, along with a deep reverence for Mother Nature, and demanded that I do my very best to serve her.

There are many hiker stories out there, this one is mine. I came out of this hike with a better understanding of myself. My tone changed from one of sorrow to one of hope. Aligning with my purpose and improving my mental health is an ongoing journey. There are certainly still bad days, but I accept those days as opportunities to better understand myself. I no longer lash out from insecurity to protect myself from love. I listen and do my best to respond to the actual voices in my life, not the ones in my head. I have healed my narcissism with compassion and learned to the extent to which love is founded on mutual (and self) respect.

Six years later, I haven’t stopped walking. Sometimes I hike simply for the love of nature. Sometimes I hike because I need to have a deep conversation with myself. Sometimes I just need to walk some shit out.

I’m 46 years old now, and I feel like I’m just getting started. I traded in my home and my car for a 93 camper van to live nomadically and am devoting my life to turning my mantra “Hike the Good Hike” into a nonprofit that uses wilderness exploration to promote mental health. I’m determined to help others find their good hike and inspire others with my story.

The wilderness gave me a spirituality I’d never before possessed. It’s a powerful resource available to ground and guide us all. I hope my story ignites a flame in even just one person to venture out, take a chance, take a big breath of fresh air, and follow Mother Nature’s lead. She won’t make it easy, but that’s not the point.

Laundry Day

London Calling