In 2013 I was driving home from another brain melting 12 hour day at my all consuming corporate job. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I mindlessly stared at the graffiti on the cement bridges, watching the trash blowing up and over the cracked structures and get sucked into the plumes of steel smoke billowing out of the factories. At work they had told me I was in the top of my leadership development program, that I was doing really impactful work for the company and that the executives were impressed with my results. I could network with the best of them, knew the comings and goings and gossip about all the top execs and had been groomed (read:brainwashed) to climb to the top of the corporate ladder no matter what the cost. The end of me moving every six months to another factory in the middle of nowhere was coming to an end and I had recruiting calls for jobs all around the US at my company. I was on a promising road to becoming a corporate executive.
As the horns blared and I slowly inched my car forward through the gray on gray, I mused on the past few years. I had given up a great group of friends, cycled through a series of disappointing relationships, developed a somewhat destructive drinking habit to deal with the stress of work like most of my colleagues, had gained weight due to said drinking habit and had given up on unpacking the boxes of my possessions due to moving so frequently for work. So this was the cost of success, huh?
My self pity party was put on pause as a song I had never heard before cut through the sounds of traffic. “Feeling my way through the darkness / Guided by a beating heart / I can’t tell where the journey will end / But I know where to start / They tell me I’m too young to understand / They say I’m caught up in a dream / Well life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes / Well that’s fine by me.”
I was immediately transported to a conversation I had just had with an engineer who had spent the past 35 years of his life working 60-80 hours a week at my company so he could pay for his American dream: a house in the suburbs, a nice car, his overbearing wife’s spending habits, his 2.5 children, his dream of retiring in 10 years when he could then do his passions he had put off for his job and family. This triggered another memory of a similar conversation with another engineer and then another memory of the same conversation with an executive a year ago at a networking event and then another conversation with a factory worker years before that… I suddenly had the clearest vision of myself in 30 years talking to a new hire about all of the things I wish I had done but that I had put off for retirement because of my familial and work obligations.
I started screaming.
This couldn’t be it. I wasn’t made to live in a cubicle farm, that wasn’t my higher purpose in life, it couldn’t be! But that’s exactly the path I was heading down, a day to day listless coming and going, a complacent existence accepting the “American dream” and the price of corporate success.
At that moment, I made up my mind that I was no longer going to accept the status quo, the cutthroat corporate ladder or the complacent modern day lifestyle of my peers. I was going to dream. But most importantly, I was going to act on my dream to make it a reality.
As soon as I got home to my apartment I started researching the Appalachian Trail, a pipe dream of a long distance hike that I had heard about from a friend of a friend of a friend. I played the Avicii song that I had heard on my evening commute and listened to the lyrics over and over. “So wake me up when it’s all over / When I’m wiser and I’m older / All this time I was finding myself / And I didn’t know I was lost.” As cheesy as it was, the words really spoke to my situation at the time. It was this motivation that sparked a personal revolution and gave me the guts to go talk to my boss the next day to tell her I was tossing around the idea of leaving the company to go pursue this crazy dream of mine to walk the 2,186 miles up the spine of some of the oldest mountains on the planet. At first she was slightly taken aback but I could see that a flame burning in her eyes. She looked at me dead on and said, “Go do it. Do it now or you’ll never go do it.” And so that’s what I did.
I informed the company that I would not be taking a job immediately post-graduation as I wanted to try to take a leave of absence to go fulfill a personal dream of mine. I didn’t think I wanted to leave permanently as I had liked certain aspects of my job and they had invested several hundred thousand dollars into training me for which I was grateful. However, I was accused of trying to get special treatment and conspiring with my old program manager who had left to go work at another company after she was boxed into a job she didn’t want. The company was inflexible in letting me leave so after several weeks of emotional rollercoasters and accusations, it was the myopic words of an executive that confirmed my leaving was the right decision. “If you leave the company, you might not get a job back here. You might have to get a job somewhere else,” were her words, emphasized like my resignation would be the end of the world and that she was certain that there were no satisfactory jobs at other companies for a double major mechanical and biomedical engineer who had just graduated one of the most prestigious operations leadership development programs in the world. I was done with the drama, done with putting off my dreams for corporate success, done with my complacency accepting the status quo. It was time to start living.
As it got closer to my departure date of March 12, 2014, I had an outpouring of support for my hike from my colleagues, family and friends. My going away present from work was camping gear, mainly ultralight airplane alloy utensils (very fitting) and paracord survival bracelets. My friends and family helped me dehydrate hundreds of pounds of veggies, fruits and meats to take with me for healthy foods along the trail. During the day I would spend hours running or snowshoeing in local parks with my fully-loaded 30 lb. pack. The looks that passerby walking their dogs would give me were priceless and I would just smile and nod as they would comment on how scary it was for a young woman to be going out into the woods alone for six months. At home, I would stay up late into the night planning out the logistics of my mail drops, tending to shelves of dehydrated food and scouring online forums for the optimal gear for my six-month-long trip.
During my trip, my friends and family sent me greatly appreciated packages of food, hilarious messages and letters of encouragement all along my journey. In return, I posted my whereabouts and trail stories from my iPhone when I had phone service in trail towns every 5-7 days. Their support was critical in helping me complete this little walk in the woods and they helped get me through the really tough days where I felt like quitting. Without all of them, I could never have achieved my dream of hiking from Georgia to Maine over the equivalent elevation loss and gain of 16 Mt. Everests. I thank all of you and am forever grateful for supporting me along this journey. I hope I can support you through whatever journeys big and small that you take through life.
To the strangers who fed me, housed me and gave me words of encouragement at the random road crossings and trail towns – I am forever indebted to you for your random acts of kindness as Trail Angels. I thank you through my own random acts of kindness that I pass on not only to thru-hikers but to members of my community as well.
To all of the wonderful people I met along the Appalachian Trail (thru-hikers, section-hikers and day hikers alike) – you taught me to believe in the kindness of humanity again. You taught me many infallible truths that I will take with me the rest of my life. No matter whether you were a multimillionaire retiree or a recovering drug addict fresh out of jail, you taught me that success is not defined by your job, your social status or your material possessions. Success is about being grateful for what you have, living life to the fullest and creating meaningful, loving relationships. Only the wisdom gained from listening to the stories of so many diverse people could have taught me this life lesson that many unfortunately will never learn.
The following blog posts have had content updated post-thru-hike as I had more time for formatting and editing on a real computer versus an iPhone screen in the middle of the woods. As I usually try to get outside adventuring during my time outside work, I may be slow in responding to comments or emails and apologize ahead of time. I hope these posts on my 2014 Northbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail entertain, educate and give you a raw perspective of what it was like to undertake living in the woods for 6 months with nothing but what was carried on your back.
Some advice I have for all you out there reading this on your computers: Dare to dream people! But more importantly, as Mr. Shia LaBouef so eloquently states, “Just dooooo ittttt!” and make those dreams a reality.
Below is the original welcome post to my blog from Feb 2014. Enjoy your read and happy trails!
-Voodoo
February 2016
Over the next six weeks I’ll be preparing to get ready to walk 2,184 miles all in one go. Life is going to be a lot slower than what I’m used to and I’m excited to share my journeys with you on the Appalachian Trail!
Look for more posts as I get ready to hike from Georgia to Maine! Check out below one of my training hikes around Cincinnati.