Why are you or did you hike the AT?

[Shrek & Fiona]

Hello Everyone,
This is my first post here. My husband and I joined the forum so that we could gain knowledge from seasoned veterans for our 2015 Thru-Hike. We have also started a website & blog for our own journaling and experiences as we train for this / prep for this monumental undertaking. We have our reasons for hiking and know that others do too. We would like to publish (on our website) some reasons given by others. If you would like to participate, I would love to have your input.
www.PeaceLoveHike.com

You can post your response to our FBook page which is linked in our website. It can be thought provoking, humorous, what ever floats your boat. I will be posting the responses on the main website www.PeaceLoveHike.com

Format will be something like this:

"Because I can" ~ Fiona, 41, Murphy, NC Future AT Class of 2015

If you are so inclined to LIKE us on FBook... Thanks.

[terryg49]

I have only finished Ga. Planing on doing NC and Tenn this year. I'm 63 and had triple Bi-pass 3 years ago. I do it not because it's fun. Because it isn't. I don't do it so I can brag to friends. I hate slogging up countless hills and then giving all the work up when going down the other side. I hate being cold and wet. Sleepless nights when someone is snoring . I do it because I spent most of my life doing easy things and it was a time for a change. I do it because it is so damn rewarding.

[weary]

did the trail in 1993, 2 years after I retired from the newspaper business after 35 years. I think the trail was the best thing I ever did -- even better than writing several hundred stories reporting on the 400,000 acres Maine had saved more than a century earlier, and then forgot that it owned. It took a decade before the Maine Supreme Court ruled Maine in fact still owned the long neglected public land. It was a great walk with a lot of great people, including an 11-year-old grandson who met me half way and continued with me through Vermont, when his mother mistakenly thought he should go to school instead.

[Shrek & Fiona]

WOW! Thanks. That was quick. May I quote for my website?

[Teacher & Snacktime]

My grandson and I are section-hiking the AT as part of his homeschool curriculum. Lessons in History, Geography, Biology, Geology, Ecology, Sociology, Time Management, Planning and Self-Reliance can all be found nicely wrapped in a wilderness adventure. It is also my hope that he come to understand that the natural world...the real world...can, at the very least, be as much fun as the virtual one.

For myself, I'd like to enjoy my mid-life crisis years the same way I did my childhood ones: playing in the woods, exploring, searching for frogs and salamanders and furry critters, getting dirty and not caring. The difference now is that there'll be no streetlights turning on at dusk and no voice calling me in to supper. Big kid fun.

[Shrek & Fiona]

Love it! Great reasons. The virtual world has, in many ways, ruined an appreciation for nature.

[q-tip]

Springer to Harpers Ferry (1,000) -dead on an operating room table in 2008-walked in 2010-I HAD to do it....

[The Snowman]

it was there and s was I nothing more to say.

[Slo-go'en]

Snowman beat me too it - Its there and I like to walk/camp in the woods. The occasional vista is nice too