8/18 It's Not "Goodbye." It's Just "See You Later."

This is a difficult post for me to write. This is my announcement that I am leaving the trail for the 2015 season. I have wrestled with this for a very long time, and while I know it is the right choice for me, it has not been an easy decision to make. There was no one clear, concise reason for why I’ve decided to call it a year. It was just a lot of little reasons that led me to the conclusion that it was the right time. Honestly, and as strange as it sounds, I believe that the trail told me it was time for me to go. And I listened, because I wanted to leave the trail while I still loved it. I wanted to leave the trail with all the extraordinary, beautiful, happy memories I have of this summer intact. I wanted to leave knowing that I will return.

Let me first say that I really truly do love my life on the trail. If I didn’t love it, I would have left a long time ago. I even loved it when it was hard, when it broke me down. The trail was everything I had hoped it would be, and so, so much more. The trail has a simple beauty to it, and it challenges you to grow as a person with every step. It makes you appreciate the little things, and allows you to live on a different frequency, experiencing intense emotions and events almost as if you were moving through them in slow motion. It is life in its most potent form.

Second, I would like to emphasize that I am NOT “quitting”. Quitting implies failure, and I do not believe that I failed. I hiked 1,500 miles. I saw beautiful places that few have ever seen, places that it takes days to walk to. I made new friends and met wonderful people every day. I experienced the kindness of strangers, and learned to trust that things always work out for the best if you believe they will. I came out to this trail to try my hand at this life, and I succeeded.

Third, I would like to speak to future aspiring thru-hikers, reading this as research for their own hike. My advice to you all? Leave your expectations at home. Seriously. Leave them behind. All of them. Your expectations for the trail, for the people, and most importantly, for yourself. I had expected that I would hike the whole trail this year. Abandoning that expectation was harder than any other challenge the trail placed on me this summer.

And finally, I want to say thank you. Thank you to my mom, for handling the stress of my wilderness excursion like a champ and letting me cry on the phone to her when the trail was mean to me. Thanks to my dad for not lecturing me too much for being a bum-hippie for 4 months. Thanks to my brothers for supporting me and secretly thinking I’m cool, even though you had to pretend like I was embarrassing and weird. Thank you to the friends that I called every town to tell all my crazy trail stories to and who gave me great advice from thousands of miles away. Thank you to my friends and neighbors who sent me letters and encouraged me every step of the way. Thank you to everyone who told me they were proud of me and they believed in me. Thank you to the friends I made along the way, for a summer of amazing memories and for inspiring me every day out there. Thank you to the trail angels who helped me out and showed me kindness when I needed it most. Thank you to the trail, our Eywah, for providing the most incredible setting for this life-changing experience (and to the PCTA for taking good care of it).

A very wise friend of mine said something to me the day I left for my hike, before I’d walked even a mile of this beautiful trail. “It doesn’t matter how far you walk, how many miles you do, how long you’re out there. The minute you put your feet on that trail, you’ve won. You got yourself here. You knew you wanted something so badly, even though you didn’t know what it would be like. You wanted this, and you made it happen.”

People ask me all the time why I decided to do the trail, and I have never had a good answer for that question. All I know is that some voice deep inside me said that I needed to be there, on that trail this summer. That same voice was what told me it was time to go home. When that voice speaks, it’s hard to ignore. So I’m home now, starting my next exciting adventure. Put a pin in it, PCT. We’ll meet again one day.