My first adult backpacking trip was with a hiking club I discovered in a Creative Loafing magazine classified ad after moving back to my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1998. Little did I know that joining that first hike would set me on the incredible path I walk today. From the moment I stepped onto the trail with that group, I was hooked. I made lifelong friends, found a new passion, and even met my late husband through that fun little club. But, I wasn’t always a fan of backpacking.
My first-ever backpacking trip was a weeklong trek on the Appalachian Trail during my senior year of boarding school, a rite of passage we affectionately called “Senior Survival.” If you maintained a certain GPA, you could skip final exams and embark on this seemingly innocuous outdoor adventure instead. We had all been accepted to our dream colleges, and high school was already becoming a fading memory as we looked toward bigger and better things. A week outside with 23 of my closest friends? Sign. Me. Up.
Well… add a little rain (okay, a lot of rain), ill-fitting borrowed gear, utterly inappropriate clothing, and a backpack filled with nothing useful except hair products and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups… what could possibly go wrong? Thoroughly miserable at the time (yes, of course I hiked in soaking wet jeans), I now look back at those memories through a different lens. The handful of photos I still have tell a much different story—one of laughter, unexpected lessons, and the kind of camaraderie that only forms during a wretched, drizzly week in the woods. (And let’s share a moment of gratitude for our fearless, endlessly patient outdoor leadership director, Mr. Wofford. Thank you!).
When we finally stumbled back to school, I threw everything—clothes, shoes, and, of course, all my essential beauty products needed to make it look like it hadn’t been a week since I washed my hair—into a giant trash bag. Unfortunately, my boyfriend’s dad mistook it for actual garbage and threw it all out. And you know what? I didn’t even care. I had already made up my mind—I was never going backpacking again.
That was the spring of 1989.
It took nine years for me to come full circle and realize that backpacking meant everything to me—dirty hair and all. A lot happened in those nine years (but that’s another story for another time). What matters is that, after navigating my own inner storms, I found the healing and joy that had been waiting for me just a short hiking trail away. I found backpacking at exactly the right moment in my life, and it brought me more happiness than I ever could have imagined.
Oddly enough, I now live just a few miles from where that group photo was taken on the Appalachian Trail all those years ago. And while my trail wardrobe has vastly improved and my gear actually fits now, this place still makes me feel like that 17-year-old kid—except now, I love taking long walks in nature.
And it has made all the difference.
