When I left my spirit back at the Pleasant Pond Lean-too in Caratunk, ME, 150miles from Katahdin, I was on a Greyhound bus thinking what do I do now? I yearned for the trail because I still had life's questions incessantly knocking at my door reminding me that, "you're not in high school anymore, you're a college grad, you can't get away with having an entire degree under your belt and pull off, 'I don't know what I want to do but I know that I could never see myself in a cubicle,'"
The truth is I had no direction in my life so I chose South. Maybe I did this subconsciously, but while my college peers were applying to grad schools, or going to job interviews, I was, during my fifth and final year of text books, saying, "ummm, I want to be on my own, know that I can take care of myself, experience the wild, and figure out what I want to do with my life."
I am not speaking for all thru-hikers, but the ones I met shared a similar story whether it be that they dallied with college but had no idea for a career path (myself included), or they just got laid off or quit their dead-end job, therefore put themselves on a path that had a clear and defined direction: AT heading South to Georgia or AT heading North to Maine.
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