I have long intended to write about my experiences on the Appalachian Trail. But every time I do, I am stumped. Where to begin? Can five months’ experience, undoubtedly the most revelatory and intense of my life, be reduced into a few hundred words? Of course not.

But nor would I want to. I recently read someone saying – it could have been Bourdain – that once things are written down, the original memory loses vividness. There is truth to this. When words are attached to reminisced phenomena, the ethereal and personal facet of memory is diluted. It is rationalised, compartmentalised, reframed as something else.

What I want to avoid is trying to attach meaning – an overarching message or truth discerned – to what instead was just experience, unfiltered and unframed. But so defining, so transformative and so special were these experiences, that I feel compelled to share them in some way.

The Appalachian Trail, for those unaware, is a 2,200-mile long footpath, extending up through the Appalachian Mountains. Running from Georgia in the north, through fourteen states, to Maine in the north, it is a hiking trail famed for its history, culture, community, and grandeur.

In February 2023, I arrived at Spring Mountain, GA, and thru-hiked the entire trail, eventually reaching its terminus when summiting Mount Katahdin, in Maine. Camping in temperatures ranging from -12°C to 30°C, scaling the equivalent elevation gain of sixteen Mount Everest’s, and befriending so many of the most fantastical characters I’ve ever encountered, these months were, quite simply, phenomenal.

I hereby welcome you to a new series… “An Appalachian Tale“. A quiet smile beneath rain-soaked pines, or companions found and lost along the way. The blessed mercies of trail magic, or the enveloping indifference of uncountable mountain ridges. Each feature will explore some facet of my experience on the AT.

These transmissions may wander a bit— perhaps more disjointed, whimsical, and less structured than my usual writing. They’ll likely be more visual too. But each will, I hope, remain faithful to my lived experience of those 5 million steps along this extraordinary trail.