I was on the phone wishing a friend Happy Birthday when I saw him go down ahead of me. An older gentleman in a bright yellow shirt with a backpack and wearing Chaco sandals had totally eaten it in front of me, and though I was worried about him breaking a hip or something, he just started laughing.
His shirt faded from the previous 1,500 miles of walking and freshly stained with mud, he looked up, I looked down, and we introduced ourselves in between laughter. That was Rowdy. I wouldn't find out until much later that his wife would have no idea who this man was.
The trail does that to people.
Making dinner in what would turn into a pond early the next morning.
It started years before 2014. I was working in Bishop, CA with YWAM, photographing an outdoor school, when two students got a package in the mail on an off day. They opened it and inside was a DVD, a photo and video montage of thru-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail from the previous year. I laid down on my stomach, head in my hands, completely enamored. This couple I knew had walked from Mexico to Canada on their honeymoon. Six months. The whole thing.
I was sold before it was over.
At that moment, my friend said that if I ever decided to do something like that, the PCT, AT, any of it, he would buy my first backpack just to make sure it happened. I filed that away and didn't think much of it. When was I going to find time to hike a long trail? A few years later, Chris, the director of YWAM River City, called my mentor Jeff with an idea for an outreach along the Appalachian Trail. Jeff was excited before Chris finished the sentence. We started planning almost immediately.
I called my friend to share the news and he remembered the promise before I did. A link to a backpack showed up in my inbox that afternoon.
In 2013 we put boots on the ground at Springer Mountain in Georgia just to see. To test the waters. Three hundred miles to understand what we were dealing with logistically, physically, mentally, and financially. We came back to Chris and told him the truth: this would be hard. The trail is relentless, the logistics are a puzzle, and pulling off a meaningful outreach over 2,000 miles of wilderness would require the right people and a very specific kind of stubbornness.
We prayed about it. Then we decided the people on trail were worth whatever it cost us to be out there.
In April 2014 we went back to Springer with a handful of students, and this time we were going to finish. No questions asked.
The team came together the way good teams do, one person at a time. Jeff and Sue, who had been doing this kind of thing, and crazier adventures, longer than most. Matt, who can engineer a solution to any problem on trail with only a few minutes and whatever is in arm's reach. Addy, who could treat a blister, read a person, and start a real conversation before most people figured out what her name was. Jordan, Becca, and a handful of others from the Virginia campus who showed up ready.
We ran two vehicles leap-frogging each other the length of the eastern seaboard. Trail magic at road crossings, Oreos, cold drinks, warm soup, a dry place to sit in the rain. Rides into town when someone's feet had taken enough beating for the day. Every week we would hike a hundred miles or so, hit a road crossing, get into town, shower first, then find somewhere to serve the community. A family's roof, chopping wood, a church project, and a meal for whoever showed up. Then back on trail Monday morning to do it all over again with the same 250 people walking north.
You get to know people out there. Not the version they show at dinner parties, the real one. Dirtbags and doctors. College kids and retirees. People running toward something and people running away. About 65% of the hikers I met on trail, without knowing I was a missionary, told me unprompted that they were on a spiritual journey.
The trail was already doing its thing. We were just there for the conversations.
The full original team.
Somewhere in New Jersey I fell in with a hiker named Bismarck. Jolly, competent, generous with his time. We hiked together for about ten days. We shared shelters, filtered water from the same streams, ate lunch on the same rocks. He loved the Oreos. Every time he spotted our truck at a trailhead he lit up, and we always made sure he knew he could take as many as he wanted. There's something about telling a person they don't have to hold back, that there's enough. It changes the interaction entirely.
When we hiked we talked about all sorts of things, but one kept coming back. Integrity. It came up over and over, unprompted, almost like he was working something out.
We went our separate ways somewhere north of there, the way you do on a long trail. The following year I saw a headline from the FBI: "Fugitive Spent Years Hiding on the Appalachian Trail." It was Bismarck. All he wanted to talk about was integrity, and I got to be there for a few moments of it. I still only have good things to say about him, but I learned the trail is full of people carrying things you can't see.
We finished the 2,189.9 miles on a foggy day at the top of Katahdin. The 100 Mile Wilderness was behind us and Maine was done. There was nothing left to walk, or was there?
But we heard Rowdy was close.
Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail
So we had the pleasure of waiting. When he caught up we hiked all the way back up that mountain just to be standing there when he tagged the summit sign. He was loud and laughing and completely himself, the version of him his wife said she didn't recognize, the one the trail had pulled out of him somewhere south of the terminus.
We cheered until it echoed.
The people are worth it.
Rowdy tagging the terminus.