Anyone else having a hard time adjusting after getting home and being off the trail for a while? I'm having a hell of a hard time right now.
Anyone else having a hard time adjusting after getting home and being off the trail for a while? I'm having a hell of a hard time right now.
It will pass. Get yourself into a routine now that you are home. You will find that you ill begin to assimilate back into society. However there may be a constant calling to return to the trail. My calling to return happened 1 year after i finished my thru. Now i am trying to figure out how to shake it. Weekend hikes just are not cutting it.
I only did a 6 week section this summer and it is hard sometimes.
I'm having difficulty. I returned to work and haven't seen sunlight in three weeks. I started eating lunch outside... it helped. I find people annoying, but did before I left for the thru too.
With time things will be better... Every day is easier. Find another project, something to fill your time. That's been helping to.
It's been 14 years since my last thru hike and I am still not adjusted. Reckon I never will be, and there is not a day that passes I do think of my long distance hiking adventures. As a matter of fact I even have vivid reoccurring dreams of trail under my foot. I look at it as a blessing because the walking made me the person I am today. Not many people see the world the way long distance hikers do.
Under my feet I mean.
Yeah, I'm keeping pretty on the regular, still having a hard time. Imagine I generally will, just hoping it won't be so hard for too long.
I still can't adjust. Finding a job is impossible it seems, temp jobs are the worst. I bought a sailboat in Nov and this spring I hope it will quench my dreams of getting out and away. I'm sure there are other hikers that come back, can't adjust and do something rash. Where are those stories.
I hiked the PCT in '11 and I'm still recovering. While I don't have a rash story, my life did make quite a change (for the better) after my hike. I am 47 and mid way through what many would say is a successful career. But a funny thing happened after my hike. I almost became obsessed with saving money to allow myself to retire ASAP so I can hike again. I switched jobs, moved to PA and became focus on that objective. But many days as I'm walking to work I will find my mind wondering back to the trail. I get some of it out of my system by getting into trail running and training for a rim to rim to rim trail run of the Grand Canyon this spring. And I've hiked over a thousand miles on the AT this year on the weekends.
So a couple of suggestions. First figure out your next adventure. For me it was the R2R2R run. A thru hike for me was all consuming, it needed something to replace the mission. Next, what is your long term plan? You have had the commitment to accomplish what most people fail to do, complete a thru hike. So what's the end game? Apply the same level of commitment to that goal and I suspect you will be surprised at the results.
You'll NEVER be the same person after a long distance hike that you were before the hike! It changes you for life. Just read a few trail journals from those that have done a long distance hike and it's obvious. Having a hard tiime re-adjusting may partly be a result of a diffrent value system you now have after your hike. Some of the things that were SO IMPORTANT to you before the hike are no longer that important to you after the hike. Things you may have never considered like simplicity, frugality, self-reliance, non-materialism, personal responsibility, mainly walking to get where you need to go, having a consistent connection to the outside mostly unspoiled natural environment, health, clarity of mind, minimizing the physical and mental input, etc may now have greater importance. Your thinking changes after a long distance hike! You gotta realize the way you are probably now thinking and what you just acheived is LARGELY counter-culture! AND you are now emmersed in all that so called culture and civilization! Another thing you might be realizing is what Steve Howe, the Editor of Backpacking magazine said after his Sierra High Route thru-hike, "ever notice how unhealthy civilization can be?"
Non-hikers or even some non-long distance hikers may not get it when I honestly tell them I thru-hike not to run away from "stuff" but with the primary intent to move towards something that I think positively influences my life. It's a vehicle for being all that I wish to be. I maintain that "on trail" connection with my career which includes being a Landscape Architect/Horticulturalist which allows me to spend time in some truely spectacular gardens, planning for my next long distance hike, getting outdoors into nature as often as possible, which includes doing trail work and walking on the deserted golf course in the rain as I did last night at 1 a.m, introducing others(especially children) to the outdoors through volunteer work, and conversing with all the rest of the hiking weirdos, like here on WB. You're part of a "tribe", a community, now. Don't forget it.
If I die and come back over and over I want to be a long distance hiker over and over! I've been infected by the "hiking Vampiress."
So a couple of suggestions. First figure out your next adventure.... A thru hike for me was all consuming, it needed something to replace the mission. Next, what is your long term plan? You have had the commitment to accomplish what most people fail to do, complete a thru hike. So what's the end game? Apply the same level of commitment to that goal and I suspect you will be surprised at the results.
To the OP, do you realize people are paying good money to attend self-improvement seminars to hear this kind of advice? Do you realize the success you've had on the AT and the character that entails can be duplicated elsewhere in your life?
Completing the AT is not an end. It can be a new beginning!
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened! - Dr Suess
It has been 2 months since i finished my thru hike this year. I am still in the readjustment phase. I still have the appetite i had on the trail, and am still trying to adjust to sleeping indoors. As well as looking for employment, and getting used to all things that were normal before the trail. It is getting easier, but i still have a ways to go to be fully adjusted. It will come, but after 6 months in the woods basically away from society, it is definitely a shock to the system.
" Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today"-James Dean
I was out for almost eight months, just finished my thruhike on Dec 9th, 2012 and am not adjusting well at all! Unless you count sitting inside editing pictures of my hike so I can put them up on facebook, I don't feel like I've done anything productive since I've been back. All the outdoor jobs I want to do now take me away for days at a time, so because I have pets I can't really do them, and it makes me feel so frustrated! I know what appeals to me, I want to work outdoors, but I just can't at this point. So I still don't have a job, my car is not registered, I don't have money. Living with a friend and my pets and trying to figure out what to do next.
I knew I didnt want to go back to a "normal life" after my hike from the beginning. I started doing a bunch of trail work in the winter and saving money and got a short crew leader job during the summer and volunteered for the rest of the season along with a bunch of other things. This winter I am saving again and doing a short 500+ mile hike before the trail crew season then doing it all over again I am doing what I want to be doing (except the winters ) and hopefully next winter I will even be able to have some other crazy adventures to do.
My son completed his NOBO back in September. He was quite you, celebrating his 18th birthday halfway through the trail. He's had a bit of difficulty adjusting back to life under a roof, but my wife and I have really let him slowly decompress. Having done more military deployments than I care to recount, it almost seems similar to returning back to the real world from a six month tour overseas (without the combat part of course). Time will help as will understanding family. In the end, every life experience changes you. It can be for the better or not. It's what you make of it. I know in Sam's (my son) case, I think he's changed his direction in life for the better.
"There's a "Thru hiker's anonymous " that meets once a month in most major cities near the trail.....