I’m Scout.
That’s actually my birth name, as I haven’t had the pleasure yet of earning a trail name (though I’m very excited about this – I saw that there was some girl one year called “Piss Bag” and she has become my hero for that name alone). I hate introductions. I’ve had to do them my whole life in school, theater, camp, work, and I’ve never been a fan. How do you appropriately and interestingly pack who you are into a concise and digestible info dump? If this were Dungeons & Dragons, my backstory would be long and complicated enough to frustrate any dungeon master.
I guess we can start there. I’m a professional D&D dungeon master (along with other things – you could call me a Jack of All Trades). It is not lost on me that I’m about to embark on my own epic quest, and as a “forever DM” (what we call a dungeon master who’s always relied upon to run a campaign rather than play in one) I’m very grateful to be a player in this journey. I just hope my research and preparation have earned me some buffs to my survival checks.
I like to use D&D often as a metaphor for life and aspects of living, and my favorite of those I think also describes me as a person very well.
I feel very strongly that there is a purpose for every party member in a situation. You need certain people who are healers, who focus on being there for others in their times of need whatever they may be. You need tanks, who will set hard boundaries and be stubborn about what’s necessary all while taking hits without going down. You need level-headed strategists who can focus on making plans and keeping everyone on schedule. You need glass cannons, who may not be the most resilient but are powerful and important in their own ways, ranging from avoiding a way through the power of song to totaling a town with an undead army.
I generally use this to describe interdependence and why it’s important, but I think it has a different kind of significance here. In the real world these roles aren’t static or mutually exclusive, but one person still cannot be all at once. Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like it’s my job to be a healer and glass canon, often at my own expense. I’m trying to be more of a strategist with enough tank in me to have my own back.
I guess that’s a great segue into why I’m doing this, or as I wrote in the title: why I’ve decided to say goodbye to modern plumbing and voluntarily live a life of dig-it-yourself toilets. I’m sure you’ve guessed that one does not make this choice lightly.
It’s kind of a Hail Mary.
A last-ditch effort to get my shit together and choose life. To force myself into a place where I can heal, a place where it doesn’t feel like I’m one bad day away from a bad place.
I’m sure I’ll get deeper into this topic as the journey unfolds, but the last two years of my life have been painful, stagnant, and messy at best. Some of which I wanted, some I needed, and a lot I couldn’t handle, all of which led to a downward spiral I’ve recently pulled myself out of. My not-a-joke joke about my initial decision to thru-hike the AT is that it’s cheaper to start than rehab, if that gives you an idea of the situation.
I need distance from my life in order to live it fully. I need to be put in a place where I’m forced to take care of myself so I can learn to do it better.
I’ve already began reaping the benefits of hitting the trail with this mindset. I’ve been struggling with feelings of overwhelming self-hatred for most of my life. Part of me that feels like anything less than verbally abusing myself is letting myself off the hook too easy. One example I can give you is when I put my lighterpack on the Appalachian Trail subreddit for a virtual shakedown, I found myself internalizing every response, even though they were all kind and helpful.
Prioritizing building up the mental fortitude to make it all 2,197.4 miles has helped me combat those thoughts, though. It’s helped me foster this new-found self confidence that acts as a protector amongst all my internal voices of hatred. Like a god smiting a horde of blasphemers.
I’ve got no experience backpacking. I’ve got a pitiful amount of experience camping and hiking. I’m really just throwing myself into this and hoping for the best, with the addition of spending all of my free time (which is a lot, currently) absorbing every ounce of information I can about thru-hiking and the AT. I’ve watched hours of YouTube vlogs and recaps, listened to what feels like a hundred podcasts. I’ve devoured every ounce of information I can find on ticks, lyme disease, other viruses I wasn’t aware existed before planning this adventure.
I’m doing all of this prep because I’m absolutely terrified that I’ll fail at this somehow. I so desperately want to make it to the summit of Katahdin, to show myself all that I can overcome and prove to myself that I can truly achieve anything I want if I actually apply myself. And because of that, I am so scared of failing. I’m afraid I won’t make it past the Smokies, much less Katahdin. But that’s exactly the point —
I’m doing this because I’m scared that I’ll fail at it.
I’ve historically been averse to taking actual risks in my life. Other people in my life see a lot of things that I’ve done as taking huge risks, but they were never things I was afraid of failing at. I always knew I’d find a way to land on my feet somehow, and always told myself that this was because I had a good mindset about the impermanence of everything. The reality is that I was so scared of genuine failure that I never took any real risks. If I could try to masquerade as mediocre from the start, I might cause less disappointment in the future.
I’m locked into the trail for that reason. If I can really succeed the way I want to in this endeavor then I’ll be able to leave the trail without feeling like I’m a failure, regardless of whether or not I finish it.
I’m doing this because I made a choice to radically teach myself discipline, patience, and resilience. I chose to force myself into a situation where I have to be understanding with myself. I have to check in, respect my limits, allow myself rest when I need it and not kick myself for it. The backcountry is a place where those priorities are not only encouraged but necessary to my wellbeing and survival.
At home I feel like a lazy burden for listening to my body when it tells me it needs rest. I’m always in the red physically, making it hard to focus on getting out of the red mentally and emotionally. The trail gives me an environment I can actually heal in, where how I heal feels like it isn’t centered around how much I can eventually contribute to the workforce or society as a whole but just on me getting healthier. This is where I can actually just focus on myself and my needs, with no distractions or responsibilities otherwise.
This trek was sparked by my desire to live out my own version of ‘Wild’ after seeing the movie (and immediately making my mom buy me a copy of the book down the block at The Strand), to have my own transformative experience in nature. This year, nearly a decade later, the circumstances have all lined up for me to actually appreciate what Cheryl’s journey was for her — and what mine can be for me. That eighteen year old just wanted to heal in a beautiful place. This nearly twenty-eight year old knows that the ugly parts of this journey are what will really help them grow.
On that note, let’s get this party started. Happy hiking, lovebugs.
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