Beginning a Thirteen Year Odyssey on the Appalachian Trail

The following is adapted from Sticks and Stones by Diane “Sticks” Harsha.

On the Appalachian Trail, there is a revered tradition for long-distance hikers to adopt trail names. The origin of this practice has been lost to time and conflicting claims, but it has been practiced for decades. As far as I know, this is the only sport or activity (except for perhaps professional wrestling) where the participant is known almost solely by his or her alias.

Who chooses this moniker? It is customary for fellow hikers to bestow the name; it is rare that it is self-imposed. For example, someone might call a hiker “Chips” because he eats a lot of them or “Barefoot” because she rarely wears shoes. I suppose some people try to name themselves, but it seems the ones that stick are those that evolve organically. You might start your hike thinking you’re going to earn a trail name like “Superman” or “Blazer,” and then you become something like “Squirrel Nuts.” And — fair warning — these things are hard to undo.

So you can call me “Sticks” now. But it would not be until halfway through a thirteen-year section hike on the Appalachian Trail that this name was assigned to me. When my hike and this story first began in 2005, I was still known by the name given to me at birth in 1959 small-town Alabama.

I was not born into a family of adventurers or into a community of outdoor enthusiasts. There was a smattering of nature-bonding experiences — Girl Scout camps and backyard sleepovers — but these were hardly the stuff of the wild. My parents did take my siblings and I, first as eager young children and then as sullen adolescents, on occasional car-camping trips in the hot summer months to Elk River in nearby Lauderdale County. Daddy fished and drank Schlitz, Mom read Harlequin romances while reclined under a tall sycamore, and we kids waded in the creek to look for crawdads under rocks. The Swiss Family Robinson we were not.

I grew up and moved away, as some people do. My interests outside of work seemed to be mostly urban-centered, and there was no time and space in my life to appreciate nature or take to the outdoors. What vacation time I had (and with what little money I had) was spent at the beach or visiting family.

As my twenties gave way to my thirties, I met and married my husband. We bought a small tent and a camp stove for weekend getaways in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, a short drive from our home in Kansas City. That gear was packed away with the birth of our daughter, which happened to coincide with our transfer to Detroit. Neither of those two events were conducive to outdoor activity.

When said daughter was in kindergarten, we moved once again, this time to Nashville. By then, we figured she was old enough that we didn’t have to worry obsessively about plucking her from a campfire or lake. So we dug out the old camping gear and introduced our only child to nature.

For several years, until this daughter reached the eye-rolling stage, we enjoyed an annual tradition of camping at one of Tennessee’s state parks. We hiked on easy trails or canoed on placid rivers or boated on still lakes. These weekends were about family harmony and simple pleasures; there were no attempts to conquer the wilderness or take on physical hardship.

As our daughter grew and our lives became more settled in some ways and more complicated in others, I began to be drawn to the idea of the peaceful serenity of the silent woods and yet also to the challenges of serious hiking. I craved quiet strength, physically and emotionally.

Long walks, for several hours, became a habit on the weekends. (As a lifelong habit, at least as an adult, I also ran a few miles several days a week, but this was more about staying fit for my job and my vanity than as an enjoyable pastime.) The idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail, or at least part of it, began to seep into my mind. I don’t know how this idea came about or even when I first heard of the Trail. I suppose, on some level, I was always vaguely aware of it. After all, the southern portion of it is not far from our home, and I occasionally read news reports about an event on the Trail or a certain hiker’s accomplishments or woes.

I read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (as anyone who appreciates biting humor, intelligent wit, and piercing insight should) and found it so beguiling that I searched out other books about the AT and long-distance hiking. How lovely, I thought, strolling along a pine-needle-covered path bordered by wildflowers and moss-covered trees, listening to birdsong, breathing the clean, fresh air. I suspected perhaps Bryson, in his wry manner, had overexaggerated the difficulties of such a hike. Really, how hard could it be?

A thru-hike was impossible; I had neither the desire nor the means to leave my family and career for several months. But, it began to occur to me, there’s no reason in the world I can’t at least try it for a few days. If I like it, I can go back from time to time. These were my thoughts at the very beginning of the twenty-first century. But I was an FBI agent and the world had other plans.

The late summer of 2005 found us living in a furnished apartment on the outskirts of Nashville. By us, I mean my forty-six-year-old self, an unemployed husband, a daughter who was at that delightful age of fourteen, and one high-maintenance dog. We had just returned from North Africa, where my job had taken us, and our own house, a rambling old Victorian in nearby downtown Franklin, was currently occupied by subletters who were reluctant to be dislodged.

A sense of unsettledness hung heavy over our lives as if we were in a holding pattern between past and future. I drove to Nashville every day to reacclimate myself into my stateside career, Tim surfed the internet in search of a job, and Melanie began her freshman year of high school. The dog just seemed confused.

“Tim,” I said one evening as he and I sat in the charmless living room, Melanie in her small beige bedroom, no doubt furiously IMing her friends to complain about our current state of affairs.

He looked up from the newspaper.

“You know next weekend is Labor Day, and I’m thinking I might go over to Georgia and hike the Appalachian Trail.”

A quiet, patient man, he looked at me blankly for a minute. “The Appalachian Trail? Isn’t that like a thousand miles long?”

“Uh, no. It’s like two thousand miles long, and I’m not planning to hike the whole thing now. God.”

“Well, you’ve had crazier ideas.”

I had to admit this was true. But I had mentioned hiking the AT to him several times over the years. (He had always been encouraging but noncommittal as if I were saying something like, Honey I might like to try parachuting someday.)

“Just a short trip, a couple of days. You want to go with me?”

“No, thank you. Think I’ll pass.” He returned to his newspaper.

Amanda, a friend and neighbor with whom I run several times a week, agreed to accompany me on this little adventure. Forty-year-old Amanda, beautiful and gregarious, was recently divorced and had three young children, who would be spending the weekend with their father. (I’ve always thought a selling point for divorce is that the ex gets the kids every other weekend.) Amanda was happy to get away and eager to try something new — but although fit, cheerful, and fearless, Amanda gives not one whit about nature, flora, or fauna. Couldn’t tell the difference between a possum and a polecat. No matter: off we went on a road trip to Georgia.

The official southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail is at the summit of Springer Mountain, Georgia. For most of the near hundred-year history of the Trail, the only feasible way to get to the starting point was to walk the strenuous 8.1-mile Approach Trail from Amicalola Falls State Park. Many thru-hikers even now consider this route as part of the overall Appalachian Trail experience, but it has never been and is not now an official white-blazed section. (A blaze is a mark on a tree or pole or sometimes a rock that indicates you are on the right track; in the case of the AT, the blazes are four-by-six-inch white rectangles.) I felt no compunction in skipping this Approach Trail; I would have enough of a challenge doing the real thing.

In recent years, United States Forest Service (USFS) Road 42 was extended to provide closer access to the Springer Mountain terminus. This is where Amanda and I began our adventure on a pleasant and sunny September Saturday.

This was late in the hiking season for northbound thru-hikers to be starting their journeys, and the parking lot was relatively empty. In March and April it is jammed with worried parents or slightly pissed-off partners dropping off their starry-eyed loved ones and waiting for them to make the U-turn at Springer and come back through.

Why come back to the parking lot? Because here is another AT quirk (already two, and we haven’t even started): the road crossing here is still almost a mile to the official beginning of the Trail. You are required to walk a mile south on the AT, slap the plaque depicting the universal symbol for hiker, and then retrace your steps for the same mile back to where you started. I have been told some people just give up then and there.

After that little redundancy, we began our true journey through mixed forest on a soft trail of pine needles and fallen leaves. The day was not excessively warm, and soft breezes cooled the sweat on our backs and brows. There are some ups and downs on this nine-mile section but none that truly tested us. After the convolutions involved in actually getting to and then getting on the Appalachian Trail, it seemed to make amends now with a gracious and hospitable welcome.

This is exactly what I had hoped for and expected. The woods were hushed except for sweet sharp bird twitter and the sound of twigs snapping under our boots. The sun’s rays rarely penetrated the dense green canopy above our heads, and yellow dapples danced with small white flowers growing in the shade of gnarly roots. Through the summer aroma of spruce, there was the smell of something wild, of prey in flight, or of blood spilled by a predator. We were caught in that season between summer and autumn which only migratory birds and burrowing animals can define.

Amanda moved with athleticism and speed, but I was happy to walk slowly with reverence and appreciation, savoring this first hike and already beginning to feel and hope there would be many more. We crossed small streams on charming little footbridges and stopped to admire sparkling waterfalls which had flowed through the millennium down slick and shiny cliff faces. Chipmunks and squirrels scattered and scolded at our approach. Deer, foraging in small clearings, froze and stared at us before turning to lope, heartbreakingly elegantly, into the deeper woods. Bear tracks in the mud around a drenched campfire gave us reason to pause and wonder.

Arriving at Hightower Gap to meet our driver, I was stunned by the accomplishment of this day. The smell of the Georgia pines, the sight of the little wildflowers and bright-green ferns lining the trail, and the sound of the easy conversation with my companion made for a simply glorious day.

The next day, as warm and pleasant as the day before, proved just as magical. Each step and then each mile along the soft, musky-smelling path reaffirmed my decision to hike the Appalachian Trail. This weekend was the true beginning of the journey, the hazy reasons for doing it no longer important. The Trail itself was reason enough.

For more advice on hiking the Appalachian Trail, you can find Sticks and Stones on Amazon.

Sticks (as she became known on the Trail) was not born into a family of adventurers or a community of outdoor enthusiasts. She discovered a love for hiking in the post-9/11 years, when she sought a sense of balance and serenity away from the demands of her career.

From 2005 to 2017, Sticks lived her life with one foot on the Appalachian Trail and one foot off, her heart always in two places but her mind at peace. Now retired from the FBI, Sticks lives in Franklin, Tennessee, where she dreams of future trails.