They always felt safer walking together in the backcountry as well as biking at home. On the Pacific Crest Trail in 1999, twentysomething hikers named Lara and Jason drew arrows in the snow to help guide my parents through the Mount Jefferson Wilderness after learning they’d been lost for hours looking for the trail. They often served as role models to younger couples who sought advice on the trail and later visited their home in Alabama. “Backpacking feels right because it gives us the ability to live outdoors and carry everything we need,” my mom wrote in her journal. Yet we didn’t know his time alone would come too soon. In 1994, they finished their first thru-hike from Georgia to Maine using the trail names Annie and the Salesman, a reference to my dad’s former job selling IBM computers. “And after all these years, I’m happy to let someone else do the cooking!” “He doesn’t want to hike alone,” she explained with a grin. She had a bridge group in the deep south but was a badass on the trail with a partner eager to support her. But long-distance hiking turned their conventional gender roles upside down. For thousands of miles on their hikes, he carried additional weight in his pack, and she set the pace.Īs a teen in the 1980s, I predictably wished she was more like the feminist working mother I wanted to be. These epic hikes in the US took training and preparation and five months or more to complete.ĭuring their trips, I was surprised to learn my dad did all the cooking and cleaning: the only meal I’d seen him prepare in my youth was heating up a can of Brunswick stew if my mom was sick. “Make sure you can see the person behind you!” my mom would shout to her “ducks in a row”, as she called her brood, with nine years between me and my younger sister.Īfter we were grown, my parents prepared to hike the 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail, the first of three thru-hikes that would include the Pacific Crest Trail and nearly all of the Continental Divide Trail. Walking solo was the opposite of how I was raised by parents who hiked and biked with their four kids every weekend in Alabama. Yet I rationalized that my boyfriend and I were giving each other freedom to “hike our own hike”. For years, I’d judged older men who walked far ahead of their partners on city crosswalks or outdoor trails, their torsos leaning forward as if pulled by some invisible force.

While I loved his adventurous spirit, the disconnect in our pacing allowed ample time for contemplation: “Do I want to commit to someone who prefers to hike alone together?” I’d wonder.

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