No one’s AT journey ends on Katahdin. It doesn’t end when you get down the mountain either. After that comes everyone’s least favorite part: the great beyond. The unknown. Re-assimilation. Post-trail. It was time for the rest of my life to begin.

Macy and I spent the night of September 7th in a lovely B’n’B in Millinocket, ME. We celebrated my accomplishment with dinner in town with lots of other new thru-hikers around, like Ellie and Chuckles. The next day, we took our time on our long drive back home to Boston, spending a beautiful afternoon in Freeport to visit the L.L. Bean headquarters (where I had gotten my first pieces of gear for my thru-hike a year earlier – a full circle moment!) and get some Ben & Jerry’s. Between Freeport and home, the weather was not so beautiful as we passed through a truly horrific thunderstorm. It was easily the worst storm I had seen all year. It was a relief to realize that now that my thru-hike was over, I didn’t have to be outside in storms regularly anymore – although I didn’t relish being behind the wheel of a car in the worst conditions I had ever driven through! Despite that, I marveled at the beauty of the stormy sky and the lightning filling the air above us. I felt the reverence for nature that I had felt so much over the past 6 months. We got home safely, and it was so nice to be reunited with our cats. I had truly done it; I had made it home.

I had wondered a lot about how the post-trail experience would treat me, both throughout my hike and especially in the last couple weeks on the trail. I had read and heard plenty about the various challenges people face in readjusting to life in the “real world.” Would there be post-trail depression? Weight gain? How would it feel being in a big city again? It was time to find out for myself.

Let’s start with what I did NOT experience being back at home. I had absolutely no trouble sleeping in a real bed again, or having regular access to a shower. I didn’t even feel too overwhelmed being around the bustle of Boston again. It felt good and natural to be back in our apartment and out around the city. I think the couple of days I had spent in Boston in August for Varun and Neha’s engagement helped immensely in this regard.

I also did not feel drastically changed by the trail. Many thru-hikers describe their hike as an identity-changing experience. For me, if anything, the trail reaffirmed my sense of identity, and solidified the passions that I left with, from hiking (obviously) to board games, which I was excited to return to more regularly post-trail. There were little changes, to be sure. I generally felt more confident after the trail. I felt like the best version of myself out there, and I was ready to bring that back to the real world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also felt more comfortable in solitude, and I found myself seeking out solitude at larger social gatherings much more than previously.

I also found that I was consciously more food-motivated in the immediate aftermath of coming home, and I loved being back in the kitchen cooking and baking delicious things again. I did not miss trail food! I did not have much trouble readjusting to a normal diet, both in terms of quality or quantity of what I was eating. I pretty quickly returned to normal, non-thru-hiker-sized portions.

My first week back at home felt IMPOSSIBLY long. Tbh, it felt similarly long to my first week on the AT…just the reality of such a transition, I suppose. The trail felt very far away. My thru-hike truly felt like a six-month dream; it was hard to think that I had really lived that lifestyle. After a while, it started feeling like what it was: something I had lived through in the past to celebrate! These feelings, and others, would come and go in cycles for a long time. At times, I felt that “nobody Gets It,” and no one understood what the trail had truly been like or what it was like in my head. A particularly funny example was when a friend asked me, in all earnestness, “do you miss it?” It boggled my mind that this was even a question. Of course I did! Luckily, Macy understood it more than most, and she dealt with my constant thoughts and memories of the trail very graciously. Months later, as the trail receded, my pre-trail and post-trail memories seemed to zip together, as if I had never been gone, while I still vividly remembered the trail as its own thing, separate from the rest of my life.

I couldn’t BELIEVE how much I thought about the trail. In a November 17th video, educator and author Hank Green said, “If you found yourself thinking over the last few months, ‘Boy, Hank sure does talk about his cancer a lot…’ Yeah, just imagine what it’s like inside my head!” Not to co-opt someone’s experience with cancer, but…that’s how I felt about the AT. I would be flooded with random memories from all over the trail, bombarding me from all corners of my brain. It would literally keep me up at night sometimes. But this is a good problem to have. I’m so, so glad for just how vivid all these memories remain, and I’m happy to relive such a wonderful, special experience in my life.

I talked a biiig game to myself about everything I was going to do after the trail as I thought about the post-trail transition throughout the last few weeks on the AT. When I got home, though, I mostly just felt really, really tired. I needed true rest and recovery, and I tried to allow myself to have it.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of a sense of progress. I felt like I was doing a lot throughout the day; I tried to pick up as much slack as I could around the house upon my return, so there were a lot of chores, cooking, laundry, getting groceries…but it felt like I was running in circles. On trail, I still had chores, but I ended each day in somewhere new, and there was always the sense of progress and purpose. Waking up in the same bed every day, doing the same sorts of things in the same place, I missed that feeling of progress. I had never felt that absence before the trail.

One area that I did lean on to feel progress was in practicing trumpet. I was glad to get my chops back under me, and to really feel myself improve as I committed to practicing in my post-trail free time. In a similar vein, I established a regular workout routine at home, with strength training to supplement hiking and running, and hopefully not completely lose the strength I had gained on the trail. This also felt like a positive routine that felt like progress.

Macy and I made the most of our fall together now that I was finally home. Right after I returned, we spent a lovely day in Boston recreating our first date to belatedly celebrate our third anniversary. We went to King Richard’s Faire, a renaissance festival in Massachusetts, where my ridiculous trail hair and beard fit in surprisingly well. We went apple picking, and generally spent a lot of quality time together. I was glad to make up for lost time after spending so long apart.

There were plenty more people to see, too. First, Macy and I hosted a celebratory welcome back party with my friends in Boston. It was wonderful to be reunited with them! Then, in early October, my family came to town, and threw me an elaborate, spectacular “CongrATulATions” party for family and friends throughout New England. We recreated this event for Rochester area family and friends over Thanksgiving. It was so fun to be able to celebrate with people from all walks of my life. In Rochester, I was so, so glad to reunite with Sophie for the first time since our hike ❤️

In October, Macy’s parents came to visit as well. Among other things, we all went up to the Whites and took the Mt. Washington Cog Railway up to the top of Washy. It was a cool experience! Having only hiked there in the past, it was a bizarre feeling to sit down in a train and then get up suddenly at 6,000 feet – especially since we couldn’t see anything in between. The weather was a lot different than the last time I was up there! It was completely socked in, freezing cold and bitterly windy (it is known for it, after all). It was cool to see all the snow and ice up there in mid-October, especially the rime ice on the summit sign. Standing on the Mt. Washington summit was technically my first return to the AT :’)

In December, we saw the musical The Band’s Visit in Boston, which we greatly enjoyed. There is a character who essentially spends the whole show waiting by a telephone for their distant partner to call. Of course, this forcibly reminded me of Macy. Part of me will never forgive myself for what I did to her. I had always known that by leaving home for six months, I was making a choice that would hurt Macy. I knew ahead of time, and throughout my hike, that it was really hard for her, but it was easy for me not to think about it too much while I was actually out there, hiking and living my dream. I thought a lot more about this after the fact. Now that my thru-hike had happened and it was over, I could really reckon with how it had been for those I left behind.

I couldn’t believe how fast it felt like I was burning through money after the trail. Compared to the inexpensive lifestyle of spending most of my time in the woods, the normal expenses of city life added up quickly. Finances began to stress me out relatively quickly, and I soon grew tired of still not having an income. Unfortunately, the motivation for the big things, like finding a job, had been lacking since I came back – and I had been dropped into a tough job market that didn’t help matters.

I also didn’t feel much motivation to work on this blog, which explains why it has taken so long to write these posts after the fact. This post in particular only got more difficult to write the longer I procrastinated it. It has now taken almost a year to finally finish the blog. While I have truly enjoyed writing this blog and found it incredibly valuable, it felt like it was holding over my head after my hike, and it will be a relief to finally be done with it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found the motivation to hike again, though. Only a few weeks after summitting Katahdin, I was back in the mountains, using my still-free time for a quick afternoon jaunt of Mt. Percival and Mt. Morgan in NH’s Lakes Region. In early October, Macy and I returned to the Whites to hike the Willey Range, where we got awesome fall views of the Presi. It felt great to be back out there, and the AT hadn’t dampened my enthusiasm in the slightest – quite the opposite. It did bring other feelings, though. As we drove up to NH, I felt kind of guilty for hiking while I still didn’t have a job or feel like I had my life together after the trail. I was ashamed to go back to hike instead of doing more “important” things. I knew this was an irrational feeling. “How dare I be happy while unemployed, lol,” I wrote. But I did feel a lot of pressure for my life to be a certain way after the trail.

I realized that on some level, I was trying to “get back to normal,” like it had been pre-trail, whether consciously or not. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that my life would never be “back to normal” – and that was ok! First of all, this was unsurprising – when was my life, or anyone’s, truly the same from one year to the next? Never. For better or for worse, I had thought of the trail as being a 6-month, separable experience in my life, and everything after would simply be “post-trail,” and I could move on. I now realize that I would certainly not move on right away, and maybe never completely. The AT had not just been my lifestyle for 6 months. Instead, it has dominated my life for the past two years now, and will continue to have an impact forever.

Not to co-opt another Green brother’s experience, buuut… On November 21st, author and activist John Green posted a video discussing his recent bout of severe depression. He introduced me to a Susan Sontag quote: “Depression is melancholy minus its charms.” Of the charms of melancholy, he gave the example of driving down a road alone at night: it can be a bit sad, maybe spooky, but there is something beautiful in it as well. As soon as I heard this, something absolutely clicked for me! Throughout all of this, I had been paying close attention to my own mental state, and was particularly curious if I was experiencing post-trail depression. At several points, I thought that it might have been starting to kick in; the feeling had come and gone. Hearing this, though, I instantly knew I hadn’t had post-trail depression. But I had definitely had post-trail melancholy – with all its charms 🙂 I had all my trail memories. Comparing them to the post-trail, “real world” lifestyle, I missed the trail; it was a bit sad, but it was a good kind of sadness. I had all my trail friends, who I could reminisce with, and who could relate to what we were all going through, just as we had all faced the same challenges on the AT. There was an undeniable beauty to have gone through this singular experience and feel these emotions on the other side. This quote hit me hard and it felt like a really positive release to come to this realization. Thanks John!

I was very pleased to see several trail friends in the “real world” after our hikes – many of whom I hadn’t seen in months, since the early sections of the AT! Malka, Sticky, and Pickles came to my welcome back party in Boston. I met up with Legs and Wings in the city, and in fact saw Wings a few times. I saw Gravity perform with her band! It wasn’t just Boston meetups, either. Over Thanksgiving, Scoops met up with me and Macy in our shared hometown, and we got ice cream – we got scoops with Scoops! We were able to see Victory and her husband Nick in Rochester, too, when they stayed with us over the total eclipse in April. I was able to meet up with Mystery Man a couple times, hike with him in the Whites, and even stay at his lovely home in New Hampshire. Yes, I absolutely still call them by their trail names.

I’m so thankful to have been able to get together with so many people. It’s always such a treat to see someone from the trail, and I treasure the friendships that I’ve been able to maintain on the other side of the AT. Being with trail friends always makes it feel more real; we did that, and it wasn’t just a dream.

That feeling didn’t just come from people I already knew from the trail, either. Once in October, Macy and I went to a pumpkin-carving party at my cousin Cable’s. Naturally, I carved my pumpkin with the AT symbol. Lo and behold, somebody recognized it – a fellow thru-hiker in the wild!! That’s how I met Tric, AT class of 2015. It was so serendipitous to meet another thru-hiker in the city, and have the trail (and Cable, I suppose) bring two complete strangers together. It was another reminder that yeah, we exist(!), and the trail will never leave us.

In late October, I beat the not-earning-an-income allegations when I went back to my old job at REI Boston, where I had previously worked during the summer of 2021. My hope was that this would be a good way to ease back into the workforce, doing familiar work in a familiar environment around people with a shared passion, while I could continue my search for jobs in my field. I felt all this for sure; it was great to come back to such an awesome community at the store, with both familiar faces and lots of wonderful new friends. I felt infinitely more connected to my coworkers this time around, and it only validated it as a good place to come back to. However, I also got more than I bargained for. In the years since I had worked there, REI Boston had unionized, and to my great surprise, this had been highly controversial. It was incredibly disappointing to see the hardline stance REI had taken against its workers and our union, and the myriad unionbusting tactics they continue to employ. Check out @reiunion to learn more. While I was certainly not expecting to come into the middle of such a bitter situation, I was proud of what my coworkers had accomplished and how they continued to fight for a fair first contract and our collective rights. Joining the union efforts gave me a sense of purpose for the first time since coming off the AT.

I enjoyed working at REI and am so glad for the friends I made there, but the realities of retail work began to weigh on me pretty soon. I felt like it was standing in my way of cultivating the kind of life I wanted to have post-trail. This was a common theme in my thinking during this time; as the calendar flipped to 2024, I felt as though I was limping into the new year and my life was not where I hoped it would be. I had expected to find a full-time job in my field sooner, and I wanted the stability to hike when I wanted, have game nights, and be able to do all the travel I had planned for the year (the Weddings are beginning…).

This did not lessen the blow when, in mid-March, I suddenly lost my job at REI in an alleged act of union retaliation. I had not really intended to stay at REI that long in the first place, but I was blindsided by it, and feeling like I couldn’t even keep that job was a terrible feeling. This led to by far my worst depressive episode since I had returned from the trail, and indeed worst in years. This was melancholy minus its charms. I searched for jobs with new urgency. At one point in these doldrums, I had another terrible, truly irrational thought: what if I had ruined my life by hiking the AT? It felt like all of the problems I was experiencing would not have been happening if I hadn’t upended my life to thru-hike a year prior. I knew this was ridiculous, but even if it weren’t, the trail would have still been worth it 🙂

It was around this time that I passed, in quick succession, one year since Sophie and I started out from Springer, and six months since I had summitted Katahdin. I thought about the trail more than ever. Those 6 months since the trail had sped by impossibly fast. It was hard to reckon with the fact that I had now been back for longer than I’d been gone to begin with.

Fittingly, it was also around then that I finally made my true return to the AT. I had managed to squeeze in several more hikes throughout the winter; winter hiking is always a really nice change of pace, and I was glad to do more winter hikes than usual this year after spending so much time on the trail last summer. In mid-March (still very much winter in the Whites!), while Daniel/Scrappy was visiting, we hiked Mts. Jackson and Pierce in the Southern Presidentials on a cold, windy day. It was a real treat to introduce Daniel to the Presi and some of my favorite mountains anywhere. And it was also a treat to retread those miles between the peaks, the first miles I had hiked on the AT since Katahdin. I saw where Nom Nom and I had carefully crossed the deepest mud pit ever – a lot less scary when it was frozen over and covered in snow. I stopped by Mizpah Spring Hut where we had had our most excellent Hut Day 🙂 I even got stunning views from Mt. Pierce this time around! I found a white blaze in the camouflage of the snow :’) It was so special to return to the trail. It was a reminder that my AT journey need not – and did not – end on Katahdin.

Finally, in May, I started a new job as a linguist in tech. I am working full-time again, on a predictable schedule, with the stability to pursue other things. Especially after the stress of the last couple months, it was a huge relief to have that again. It’s an important step in cultivating the post-trail life that I’d like to lead.

Even before I started the trail, I knew I wanted to get an AT tattoo once I had done it. My commitment to the idea waxed and waned over time, both during and after my hike. Yeah, it was the only tattoo I’d ever consider getting, but did I really need it? Did I really want it? I waffled after coming home, even with friends and family offering a lot of encouragement. I had other things at the front of my mind. But as time went on and the AT felt more distant, the urge to finally do this for myself grew. It was time for me to carve the AT symbol somewhere that wasn’t a pumpkin.

I finally went for it in Colorado over Christmas. I was definitely a little nervous; I didn’t have any qualms per se, mentally or physically, but it was hard to believe I was doing this! 15-year-old me would be quaking in his sneakers. I didn’t make an appointment, but decided to try my luck as a walk-in at a tattoo studio in Estes Park. The instant – the INSTANT – we met the tattoo artist, Cammie, and I showed her the AT symbol I wanted, she was absolutely ecstatic. It turned out, she was a prolific hiker herself, and had thru-hiked the Colorado Trail! She said that it was an honor to finally get to do a trail tattoo for someone. I was really glad to have that connection. Right from that moment, Cammie made it a positive and comfortable experience.

I was really curious about the whole process, and intrigued by certain parts I didn’t expect, like creating and editing the digital design, having my wrist shaved, and the ‘stencil’ stuck on. Then there was the actual pokey part. It certainly hurt, but it wasn’t awful. Experienced tattoo canvas Macy described it well as sort of like a long, deep scratch.

At one point halfway through, I suddenly felt quite light-headed and thought I might pass out. We took a break, and I had some fluids and sweets. Cammie was really helpful and understanding, and had great “bedside manner,” as she put it. Macy was also with me every step of the way, and I so appreciated her moral support. I got through the rest no problem. The whole process was pretty short – door-to-door in an hour. And just like that, I was done, and I’ll forever have a physical manifestation of the AT with me, just as the trail will always feel with me.

I was in such a good mood afterwards, almost giddy with excitement. I was so glad to have Macy by my side, as always. Now I always have a constant reminder of the important, wonderful experience I had on my 2023 thru-hike. I’m so happy to have stepped out of my comfort zone, committed, and done this thing I really wanted! It felt kind of surreal – just like the AT!

Happy trails, and remember: adventure is Out There!!