My Appalachian Trail Journal: 2001 & 2002

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I always knew I wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.

There was a lot about it that called to me – the chance to test myself, to travel, to live a more distilled life for six months. And so much more.

The reality of it was all I expected, and then some. The AT still influences my life, decades later.

I was just 20 years old when I started walking north from Georgia in 2001 – my first extended adventure away from home.

It became a crash course in long-distance backpacking. My old-fashioned stubborn sensibilities were slow to embrace ultralight methods, but I pressed on. I met people in small-town Appalachia, and from around the world. I saw what was possible in life.

I’d made it as far as Vermont, still headed for Maine, when September 11, 2001 changed everything. I left the trail then, and took stock of the status of the world.

In 2002 I returned to Vermont and finished the walk to Maine.

It was a different time.

The Appalachian Trail was different then, some 25 years before writing this introduction in 2026. Smartphones didn’t exist yet, and text messaging was still uncommon. Cellular service for phone calls was very, very limited.

I carried a full paper guidebook (Wingfoot) and the paper maps from the ATC that I strategically had mailed to post offices along the way. I carried a pre-paid calling card that I used at pay phones – dialing a 1-800 number to call my mom about once a week, letting her know my whereabouts and that I was alive and well. Contact with the outside world was limited, save for the occasional dial-up internet connection in town. I even sent and received a few handwritten letters in the mail.

Nobody had GPS trackers. Instead we relied on our best guess, based on time and pace, to know how far we’d come – or more importantly, how much farther to the next landmark. I remember dogged evenings peering through the trees looking for the roof of a shelter, or a trail junction sign. I didn’t have much faith in the elevation profiles shown on the maps, but they were often the bane of a thru-hiker’s existence.

I used Kodak disposable film cameras for the entirety of the trip, sometimes carrying two cameras at a time. I’d send them home when the rolls were spent, so I never got to see my pictures until the end of the trip. I didn’t have the freedom to take a ton of photos either, trying to preserve film.

And the journal below was first written with Bic pens in a paper notebook, often by the light of my headlamp in a tent or shelter.

These are just a few ways that my experience was different than what thru-hikers find today. Dive into my journal below for the full story!

My Appalachian Trail Journal

“Remote for detachment
narrow for chosen company
winding for leisure
lonely for contemplation
it leads not merely north and south
but upward
to the body, mind and soul of man”

~ Harold Allen

It was a different time.

My Appalachian Trail Journal

Prep Hikes (2000)

Prep Entries (2001)

Northbound from Georgia (2001)

Vermont to Katahdin (2002)