Why?

When we tell most people about our plans to hike the Mountains to Sea Trail, they are excited about the idea and can imagine themselves doing the same thing if the demands of work, family, life in general allowed it. Some people just look at us with a quizzical look and ask, “why?”.

Our first camping trip together in 1993.

The first of many.

There is not a straightforward answer. I usually start by saying that we have a map of the Appalachian Trail on the inside of our master bedroom closet door that we see every day as we get dressed for work, and we have always dreamed of that trek. We have been saving, and researching, and planning, and talking endlessly about an epic adventure like the AT since we got married 23 years ago. When our daughter finally graduated from college in 2017, we felt like we had the freedom to pursue the dream, or a similar one anyway.

We have both read a number of books about hiking the AT. For each of those that completed the trail – and some that famously did not (Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”) – it was clearly a life-altering experience of a lifetime, but all of them make it sound like a grind. Honestly, at over 2,000 miles of pure backpacking, it just sounds like an awful lot of painful walking. Maybe too much to truly enjoy. The AT is also getting so popular, with so many folks striking out from Springer Mountain in Georgia at the same time to head north in a big, smelly caravan, with only 10% of those that start finishing the job in Maine, and only 10% of those that finish being women. We were not convinced the AT was for us.

Several years ago, Debra shared office space with the good people that run the non-profit that helps promote, build, and maintain the Mountains to Sea Trail. This got us thinking about the MST as an alternative to the AT. With a current total of 1175 miles, the MST is about half the length of the AT. The trail in the mountainous western part of North Carolina is a well-established footpath, but after you reach Raleigh, the last 1/3 of the trail breaks down and is mostly a walk along greenways and roads. That was less enticing, so we started asking questions. Could we paddle the section from Raleigh to New Bern on the Neuse River, which roughly parallels the trail? Could we bike up the Outer Banks? The idea of a multi-discipline “hike” became much more exciting than a relentless slog with our packs. The MST folks were open to these ideas to the point that the Neuse River is now an officially recognized alternative to the trail, and biking road sections is accepted as part of an official “through hike” of the trail. Now we’re talking.

But none of this was likely to come together, at least not here and now in 2018, had I not broken my leg in the summer of 2017. That downtime on the couch recovering from surgery made me realize how one accident can take away your physical abilities and gave me the time I needed to really dig in on researching logistics to plan this hike, to figure out how long it would take and what gear we would need. While there are many books written about the AT and resources available to plan your trip, planning for the MST is more difficult. Since the trail was established in the 1970’s, fewer than 100 people have completed the trail, and many of those completed it in sections rather than in a continuous thru-hike. That means there simply isn’t a lot of information about how to do it and no playbook to follow; so we have been writing our own playbook.

Since I am involved, there are spreadsheets involved. No major decision making gets done in the Rezeli house without agonizing over a colorful and complex spreadsheet. That has helped us break down the trail, day by day, to know (roughly) where we plan to camp each night, where we can get water, where, how and how often we can resupply. It has been a lot of work, but necessary if we are to have any chance of being successful.

So back to the question of why. This is a roundabout way of saying that life and our physical abilities are fragile. We have always had a dream to disappear into the woods and modern society has done nothing to deter us from that dream. To the contrary, there are so many things about our digital world that I do not agree with that have strengthened our resolve to leave it all behind. In many ways the act of writing a blog introduces a certain irony, and I have been conflicted about the benefits, but we have had so many people ask if we would blog about the trip and encouraged us to do so. We think there is great value in spending time in nature and want to share our journey in the hopes that it inspires others to do the same. A world that treasures and preserves our wild and natural areas is one that I can live with.