You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. ~ Gandhi

Why I need to hike the Appalachian Trail again

So as I’ve mentioned here on the blog, I’m planning in late March or early April to start my second Appalachian Trail thru-hike attempt. My first attempt went for a thousand miles, seven-hundred and fifty before I destroyed my knee and then the rest in rehab and during my post rehab. In total I spent one hundred nights on the trail and it was an incredibly difficult and amazing experience.

The surprise for this introverted, misanthropic near hermit was how much I enjoyed the people on the hike. It was a surprise and honestly it shouldn’t have been had I thought a bit more deeply about thru-hikers, or as we affectionately refer to ourselves, hiker trash.

The people who have decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail are people who are risk takers, nature lovers and generally also are not all that thrilled with the default world. They are taking a risk in the sense that they are willing to put their entire default life on hold for six months and take on one of the hardest hiking trails in the world. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy estimates about twenty-five percent of thru-hikers actually complete the full trail in a single attempt. So each of us starting out is far more likely than not, to fail to complete the trail in a single shot. The people on the trail are nature lovers, you have to be to go out and basically live in the forest for six months. But you see it on the trail, often hikers are sitting on a ridge taking in the view, or hiking extra miles to get to a vantage point and at other times you’ll find a hiker just sitting in the forest enjoying the experience of being there.

One of my favorite days on the trail happened when I hiked into a depression on the side of a mountain and the air was kind of trapped there with no breeze. The air was also completely saturated with the smell of all of the flowers blooming in that little area. I sat down and just let it encompass me for a half of an hour. What I also noticed were that a lot of thru-hikers were not your average person. They were sometimes extraordinary, they were often people for whom day to day society really didn’t work that well for them. Many were retirees, finally free of the day to day grind of work and life. Many were recently out of high school or college, who really weren’t sure that the day to day grind of life they were expected to enter was really for them. People at the margins of society have always been my people.

So spending a lot of time with these type of people makes me happy and really enhanced the experience of being on the trail. And while enhancing my happiness while adventuring is a great reason all by itself to be on the trail, that’s not the reason I need the Appalachian Trail right now. While I find myself at a nexus point in my life, with many decisions to make, I have a greater concern. First though, one of the beautiful things about long-distance hiking is the massive amounts of time that you get to just think. While I’ll certainly have some ideas about what’s next after the trail, I’ll be free for the first time in a long time in my life, to basically go in any direction I want. So all of those hours, day after to day, out in nature and in my head, will help me make the best decision possible.

The concern I really have right now is my absolutely lack of faith in humanity at any level. I think you can probably understand this, we watch every day as people act fully entitled and selfish in so many of their actions. People walk, drive and act like they are the only person alive with no consideration for how their actions impact others. I watch people in my job, a job that is supposed to be about helping students, act completely in their own self-interest at the cost of students and others. I have people daily lie to me, not do what they say they will do and then blame everything that goes wrong on everyone else.

At the larger level, we live in a country going through the most insane election of my life. I watch on social media daily as people are absolutely horrible to each other for no reason at all. Our politics have become the politics of hate and I think many of us fear for the future of our country. Add to that the global issues, the horrors in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Ukraine. Finally, watching the predictions of global warning coming to fruition on a weekly basis, it’s not hard to lose faith in humanity right now. And I’m by nature a fairly cynical guy to start with, so it’s especially hard on me.

So time to head for the trail.

In the meantime I do the things we regularly talk about on this blog. I try to extend gratitude for what I have, I try to stay physically active, eat well, get enough sleep. I try and focus on the positive aspects of things whenever possible. I look for joy in life and try and keep my internal messaging positive. I listen to and take to heart and prioritize the positive comments that are sent my way and try and de-prioritize the negativity I experience every day. Basically, I make sure to take care of myself, prioritize my well-being while also trying to help others. All of this helps me be happier but it doesn’t do much to restore my faith in humanity.

Trail Angels

So let me tell you about something I learned about and encountered while on the Appalachian Trail, they are called Trail Angels. Trail Angels are people who for no obvious self-serving reason, other than self-satisfaction help out hikers on the trail. This comes in so many forms. It can be as small as someone giving you a ride in the back of their pickup truck as you walk into town. It’s often in the form of food, a cooler on the trail with snacks and drinks, or even a group making hot food in a parking lot. On the trail I got hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches and all manner of snacks and baked goods. On cold days there will often be people serving coffee, tea and hot chocolate, one really wonderful cold day someone was actually serving really good chili. Sometimes these angels are church groups, scouting troops, other times just a family or a kind individual.

Trail Angels often go further than just some food. There is one group that creates a Trail Angel camp every year, for a week they have snacks, drinks, hot food, beer, hammocks and picnic tables. Not only can you stop for a rest and some food, they’ll let you camp there for a couple of days. There are Trail Angels that will give rides and sometimes significant distances to town or back to the trail. The absolute most amazing thing I saw was people who offered up their homes to hikers. Sometimes it’s come camp in my yard, other times is take our spare bedroom for the night. Please understand, as a thru-hiker, we look like serial killers and often smell really bad. Even more amazing Norovirus, a highly contagious and nasty little disease often spreads on the trail. When you get noro, you spend a couple of days really sick with vomiting and diarrhea. You’re weak and not really functional, so taking care of a noro-infected hiker is often a 2-3 day commitment. And honestly not a pleasant one.

So the actions of Trail Angels start to build my faith in humanity. When I saw them taking in sick hikers it blew my mind. These were people taking in complete, scary looking and extremely sick and contagious hikers, strangers, into their homes and expecting nothing in return. That is the type of goodness that makes me believe that maybe there is some hope for humanity. It’s been ten years since my last thru-hike attempt, I’m back to having no faith left in humanity. I need to go hike the trail to get some faith in humanity back for my own mental well-being and future outlook.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane