Letters from the Trail

By Blueberry

Letters from the trail: Excerpts from a collection of letters written by a 50+ year old woman from Maine and Maryland as she pursued a life goal of hiking the entire 2,170+ miles on the Appalachian Trail.

This book is filled with information people always ask about hiking the AT, including where she slept, what she ate, how she stayed safe, how she planned her hike, what she carried for equipment. This is an inspirational book for those who want to hike, an information book for the questions people ask, and a tribute to life in the outdoors- - -all rolled into one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479723874

Blueberry

Peggy Alden Stout AKA Blueberry As a life long writer, Peggy Alden Stout, is dedicated to writing in order to record all there is in her life. A former English teacher, she taught students how to write for a number of years. In her personal life, she is a daily journal writer and a constant letter writer. From 2000-2010 she hiked the whole of the Appalachian trail as a long distance section hiker. Excerpts from the letters she wrote to family and friends while she was on the trail are now compiled into Letters from the Trail. She and her husband enjoy life in rural Maryland and on a lake in Maine.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Blueberry.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012918091

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-2386-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-2385-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-2387-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

107729

Contents

Why Do I Hike?

What Are the Details of My Hikes?

Who Are My Friends on the Trail?

What Are the Dangers on the Trail?

Where Do I Sleep?

What Do I Eat?

What Is Day-to-day Life Like on the Trail?

How Many Miles a Day Do I Hike?

What Kinds of Animals Do I See?

What Do I Have for Equipment?

What Have I Learned from My Hikes?

How Do I Plan a Hike/Know Where to Go/Keep from Getting Lost?

What Is It Like to Finish a Long-Distance Hike and Go Back to the Other Life?

Blueberry’s AT Vocabulary Glossary of Terms

*I realized as I was organizing all these letters that I should probably divide them into topics or categories. The problem with that is the letters often focus on more than one topic! However, I’ll give it a try and place them the best I can, based on what I’ve written. I have decided to use a question format as I think the letters can easily be adapted to answering the questions.

Dedicated to

•   Marty, my husband, my love, and my main support and advocate, who was always there to help… and, without whom, I could never have done the hikes or put together this book.

•   Jeff, my son, who has inspired me to follow my dreams.

•   My father, Russell Alden, a Maine guide whose love and knowledge of the outdoors has always inspired me.

•   My mother, Marion Philbrook Alden, who skied down Mt. Washington when she was twenty and who would have hiked the AT had she known about it in the 1930s.

S-48.jpg

Dear Reader,

I have been traveling parts of the Appalachian Trail since 1997 when I turned fifty. During each of my hikes, I have used letter writing to family and friends as a way of daily journaling about the trip. After each trip, the letters were sent back to me so I could keep a record of my thoughts, feelings, daily events, responses to questions about the trip, and all the other miscellaneous pieces of information I had gathered about long-distance hiking and the AT, in particular.

I have compiled the letters into this book, organizing them or parts of them around certain themes. I am using more recent letters to my niece Maria as the overall structure for the book and as a way to introduce various topics.

There is much to say about hiking the AT, and I hope the informality which these letters lend will allow you to feel a part of what I have experienced. There may be some letters which repeat information given in other letters; I have tried to use only parts of certain letters to eliminate that, but at times, I felt compelled to leave the whole letter intact because of the flow of information or thoughts.

As you read these letters, I hope that descriptions of the adventure of day-to-day life on the trail, the community of the AT, the satisfaction of being self-sufficient, and the unlimited time for self-reflection will convey the sense of why I am continually lured to hiking and the outdoors.

Enjoy!

S-54.jpg

The Appalachian Trail: a continuous 2,150-plus-mile footpath which spans the crest of the Appalachian Mountains from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. The trail passes through fourteen states and some of the most scenic lands on the East Coast.

S-53.jpg

December 2008

Dear Maria,

It hardly seems like time for me to be writing to say congratulations on graduation from college! Just yesterday you were a little girl, and now it seems that you are on your way to being a full-fledged adult. I have such vivid memories of your early life and our first attempts to go camping… sleeping in our tent in the basement, sleeping part of the night in the tent at the edge of our lawn—and then just having you come for the campfires because you weren’t sure that you liked camping! So what a surprise it was to us when you went away to college and we started hearing that you were going on camping trips to the Everglades and other places. Suddenly, you were loving camping, hiking, being outdoors, snakes, etc.! I was struck by your comment to me in March when

S-16.jpg

I’d been winter camping in Maine. You said, Sometimes it’s just good to get outside into the woods in the snow and cold. My sentiments exactly, and you were the only one who had responded to me that way about that trip.

I am delighted that you have discovered the power of the outdoors and are combining it with the power you have as a woman. You always have been one, even as a ten-year-old, who spoke your mind, who knew who you were and what you wanted to do. That is so important for a woman of the twenty-first century.

Like you, I have found over the years that I thrive on what the outdoors does for me. As you know, I have hiked the Appalachian Trail as a long-distance section hiker over the past ten years. I actually started traveling parts of the AT in 1997 when I turned fifty, beginning with day hikes in the Maryland section and, from there, moving into one—or two-week trips, as well as two two-month trips.

S-54.jpg

I have managed, at this point, to complete 2,000 miles of the 2,100-mile trail. Initially, most of my hiking was done alone which gave me an opportunity to know myself in a way that the normal life I lead does not. As you know, the beauty and solitude of the woods create a setting for self-reflection that is hard to replicate in any other setting.

I have to tell you that the overwhelming response when