For the past eight years, I had spent the summers hiking. The well-refined tasks of packing, wrapping up work, and cleaning up our house for a renter filled our thoughts and our time before the departure. Upon leaving Asheville, we enjoyed our two-and-a-half-day road trip up to northern New England. Brew had a bounce in his step that I hadn’t seen in a while. Not only was he excited to conclude a very trying school year, but he was also recovering nicely from the ACL surgery that he had undergone in March. Because of his unexpected knee injury, he would not be able to hike with me this summer. But thankfully, many of our friends offered their on-trail and off-trail support as a substitute. It was a bit demoralizing to parallel almost the entire 2,000+ mile A.T. in less than three days especially when I knew how difficult it would be to work my way back down south on foot. But the full magnitude of the undertaking did not set in until we met Warren and Melissa in the small logging town of Millinocket, Maine, the closest civilization to Katahdin.
