IT’S TIME TO GO LARGE. Perchance to dream… of days that stretch into weeks, perhaps even months on the trail. As we look forward to summer, we’re squinting into the middle distance with our best gimlet-eyed, thousand-yard stare, gazing out at an endless mountain horizon fringed with landskein, thinking of those once-in-a-lifetime trips that redefine who we are.
It’s a big ask, and so we asked those who went big. We’re unashamedly focusing on ‘thru hikes’. The term originates in the United States, and – no surprises – it involves doing things on a massive scale. Legendary American thru hiker Heather Anderson, who kicks off our proceedings here with the mother of all stateside strolls, defines a thru hiker as ‘someone who completes an entire trail in a single hiking season’. But the word ‘trail’ has serious implications in a country hosting the likes of the Pacific Crest Trail (2653 miles), Appalachian Trail (2200 miles) or the Continental Divide Trail (3028 miles). So as lovely as it might be, doing all of the South Downs Way (100 miles) in one sitting probably doesn’t quite qualify as a thru hike in this context! There’s something about scale here, and time, that makes these walks transformative.
For all our contributors, it meant stepping outside their normal routines and responsibilities. These trips are too long for anything else to be possible. Even the shortest route in our roundup takes a month or so: long enough for the extraordinary mix of scenery and exercise to become – well, if not routine, then at least a new normal.
Of course, a walk involving this kind of commitment will simply be out of reach for some. Even for most of the contributors here, their big walk meant a sabbatical, quitting work altogether, and even reorganising their lives in the aftermath to bring the mountains closer to home and nearer to their everyday. For others, it changed their perspective about how they viewed a place, or what they were capable of. And who wouldn’t want that? Let’s dare
