AT Wrap-up

This is a much-delayed post-script to my AT journey, but I figure later is better than never. If you've got 15 minutes to spend, we put together a little slide show of some of the better photos from the trail. The first song in the slide show is called "Welcome Home, Son", by a band called Radical Face. I thought of this song often as I hiked. By the time we'd started hiking, I'd already been back from Afghanistan 6 months, and I'd only been deployed for 7. Still, hiking the trail felt to me like a re-introduction to the US, especially parts of the country that I'd forgotten existed. It would be easy to think of the route that the AT follows as traveling a very slow road from Boston to New York, then Washington, and finally on to Atlanta. In some respects this is true, and I think that one of the great features of the trail is that someone can be a hiker and, within an hour or two, also be a tourist in some of the biggest and most unique cities in America. At the same time, I was constantly astonished by the small farms and towns we encountered, not just in rural states like Maine and Vermont, but along the entire trail. More than that, I am still amazed to reflect on the kindness and generosity shown us by total strangers; people giving of their cars, homes, food, and time, often for no better reason than because it seemed like the right thing to do. I suppose that was the re-introduction that took me most by surprise; not to the greatness of America's natural beauty, but to the greatness of its people.