Trail Magic Stories
One of the main things I am looking forward to on the trail, is meeting the people!
Working in retail as I have done now for over 10 years (kill me now) I get pretty bogged down and upset by the general public. Now obviously I don’t show this as its bad customer service, but more often than not nowadays if your dealing with a customer they are grumpy and angry! Whats even more frustrating and leads me to lose faith a lot of the time with the human race is that it’s almost always over something ridiculous! It actually upsets me, not because they are directing anger at me but that this has become the norm and that this is a part of life now that these material things have such power over our personality, I thought shopping was supposed to be a fun experience. I am sure that if I was introduced to most of these people at a pub or party or on trail that we would have a great time and it would be the complete opposite.
Whilst doing all the research into the trail one of the main things that pops up, time and time again, is ‘Trail Magic‘ and ‘Trail Angels’. Trail Angels being the people and the magic part is what they give, for free…… to strangers…….. that they have never met! Amazing!
These are people who live along the trail, some have hiked before whether it be weekend hiking or full on thru-hikers, some just do it to become a part of trail life and give people a boost along the way. Some do it as a one-off like offering to drive a hiker into town, some do it year after year, fill their car up with tons of food drive up to the trail and set a whole BBQ up to greet hikers as they pass through with a burger and beer.
I heard one great story about a couple of thru-hikers that got picked up by a guy, he took them into town paid for their hostel bill and also took them out for a big three course meal, then in the morning came and picked the guys up again and took them back to the trail! This is a guy they have never met, just a straight up selfless deed!
This is one of the biggest things I am looking forward to on the trail and I have no doubt in my mind it will be one of the biggest things I take away from the trail. I will also just add here I by no means expect this from the trail but even just hearing about other people’s experiences with Trail Angels and to see the effect this has had on them whilst on trail will be enough.
Then there are the other hikers I will meet while thru-hiking. Some people are lone hikers and do the whole thing without really spending a lot of time with other hikers and that’s great, they are doing a thru-hike for completely different reasons. But I hope to meet some great people along the way and have my own stories to tell about my ‘Hiker Family’ because that’s what the people become I guess, you spend many evenings together you eat together you may hike all day together and this is for up to 6 months, there are not many people you spend that much time with other than family and if you do and they are a friend, then they become family.
Well as you can tell I am constantly thinking about what life will be like on The Appalachian Trail it is on my mind 24/7,(apologies once again to my wife and anyone else thats bored of me jabbering on) once the trail starts calling thats all you can think about!
Thanks for reading guys
Thruhiker2013
