By Becky Booroojian
In a world where most things make me anxious, thru-hiking does not make me anxious. I have to give myself a five-minute pep talk before most phone calls but if you dropped me in the middle of a trail with FarOut and a fully loaded pack, my heart wouldn’t skip a beat. The “I’ll figure it out” approach to life makes me want to curl in the fetal position but on trail it’s the only way I can operate. On trail, my brain explodes if you ask me where I was going to be in a week. This certainly wasn’t always the case. When I set out on my first thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, I desperately wanted to become someone who trusted myself to be fine with whatever life threw at me. By and large, I became that on trail. I had never been so self-assured and confident in my decisions than I was in Maine, and that feeling came back on subsequent trails. Consequently, I gravitated to more trails after my first thru-hike, restructuring my whole life so I could make my way onto one every summer.
In 2019, I hiked most of the PCT. A bad case of giardia got out of hand and I spent some time at my parents regaining weight before I jumped back on trail. The weather window for a PCT SOBO is not super long so my recuperation meant I had to skip ahead to stay ahead of the snow in the Sierra. I made peace with it while I finished the desert. Thru-hiking takes a lot of things, but I realized you also have to get a little lucky, and on the PCT I just wasn’t. I assumed I’d get the rest done in the summer of 2020. To be honest, I was grateful for the excuse to spend another summer hiking and I padded out the rest of summer with shorter trails in my mind.
I knew that building my life around hiking meant I was living without the safety nets other people rely on. I had always been financially fine, but 2020 hit me like a bottle of unfiltered Oregon pond water. I didn’t have a very secure work or housing situation—the appeal had been that I would be free of those commitments come summer. I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that I spent 2020 having the rug pulled out from under me again and again and again. Everything came second to just keeping my head above water. I know I also speak for a lot of people when I say I came out of 2020 with my mental health in shambles. I had been immensely proud of how forward facing I kept my head space the whole year, but when I finally got to a secure place in 2021, I found myself bracing for disaster with every step, despite clearly being on solid ground. I started therapy as soon as I was able and my therapist told me my survivalist skills had served me well so far, but now I had to spend some time looking back and processing all of the things that had happened to me.
So that I was I how spent the first half of 2021. I signed a lease for the first time in four years. I unpacked the boxes I packed in February of 2017. I bought a cake pan and didn’t think about whether it would fit in my car if I had to move tomorrow. I committed to houseplants and a cast-iron pan. I got a job I enjoyed and felt sad it was going to end when the school year did. I went to therapy every week and worked on trusting myself to be fine again. And the world got better. And thru-hikers started hiking again.
Obviously I hadn’t finished the PCT in 2020, but I was also deeply enjoying my newfound security. I felt in my gut that I was ready to be done sacrificing all the non-hiking aspects of my life for the chance to thru-hike every summer. But I HAD to finish the PCT. Knowing it was out there undone drove me crazy. I was also curious—would I still trust myself to be fine when I was dropped in the middle of a trail with a fully loaded pack? I really, really missed that feeling. I applied for a permit for my missing section and got one. In the time since, I’ve grappled with an unending amount of anxiety about the idea of a month-long backpacking trip, more than I anticipated as someone who once ordered pizza to the side of a highway and ate the entire thing right there, zero fucks given.
I’m sure some of it is a fear of change as leaving to hike coincided with the end of the job that finally got me on solid ground work wise. I’ve also spoken to friends who are struggling with committing to other smaller plans—it’s hard to let yourself get excited about anything after a year and a half of crushed hopes. But a lot of it—most of it—is that after a year and a half of being stuck at home, I’ve built myself a home life that I really like. I’ve had one foot out the door for years now, but I finally brought it in when I had no place to go. And it’s nice! I like it here! I have plants and I can bake cakes!
I still really want to finish the PCT, but afterwards I want to be done with life-alteringly long hikes. I’ve grappled with how to balance thru-hiking and regular life for years. It’s probably going to be a lifelong tightrope walk. Backpacking and thru-hiking are parts of my life forever but I’d also like to have a consistent job and the kind of community you can only build when you’re in the same place for awhile. I’m still struggling with the amount of anxiety I’m feeling about hiking again but I’m doing my best to acknowledge the feelings and what they’re telling me – that I’ve built a little life that I care enough about to not want to lose.
Being able to hike again is baller. But I’m guessing I’m not the only one feeling trepidation about reentering the hiking world. There’s a whole host of reasons to feel anxious about it. Given the thru-hiker tendency to bulldoze through unpleasant feelings, I hope hikers are acknowledging those anxieties instead of shoving them down. You can want to hike again and feel terribly anxious about it! Those feelings aren’t mutually exclusive. Carry all that shit along with your pack.
Everyone gets to be an anxious mess if that’s where they’re at. Happy hiking y’all.
Becky Booroojian is an AT thru-hiker, and almost a PCT hiker. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon, and is enjoying some semblance of stability.