TrailWife

Andy, my spouse of 13 years, embarked on a flip-flop thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail on April 17! Here’s a selection of some of the questions I’ve been asked the most often since we started telling people about his trip.

• What’s a flip-flop, and why isn’t he just hiking the normal way? There are several ways to complete all 2000+ miles of the Appalachian Trail (AT) that are accepted as true thru-hikes, one of which is known as a flip-flop. For this type of hike, you start somewhere in the middle of trail and head either north or south from there to one of the trail’s terminuses, then go back to your starting point and hike to the other terminus. In Andy’s case, he started in Harpers Ferry, WV, and will hike north to the summit of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, then fly back to Harpers Ferry and proceed to the southern terminus on Springer Mountain in Georgia. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) says some of the benefits of a flip-flop are that you have a longer period of mild weather to hike in, you can start on easier terrain, and you avoid the crowds that start all around the same time on Springer (“the bubble”), which is good for you and good for the trail. All of those are reasons Andy chose this method for his thru-hike. The cool part is that once he “flops,” as I keep calling it, he’ll be hiking home toward me, since we live in the Atlanta, Georgia area!

(Because I am an editor in my day job and pedantic by nature, I feel the need to offer this note on spelling. I would like to spell it “through-hike,” but the ATC seems to use “thru-hike,” and who am I to argue with their authority? So I’m going with it.)

• How long will it take him? I’ll admit to being a bit surprised by how many times people have asked me this; I guess I’ve lived in a bit of an outdoorsy bubble where I thought “everyone” knew about the AT! That said, the trip can take anywhere from four to six months. Andy says it won’t be four (that tends to be people going for speed or people who are doing a supported hike, e.g. not carrying all their stuff) but I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t take him six, either, so I go with five months as my answer.

• How long has he been planning this trip? Part of me feels like an AT thru-hike was an inevitability for Andy. He was an Eagle Scout, and he actually introduced me to backpacking in 2008. (Youthful Andy and Laura pictured below.) A few years ago he started doing a 1- to 2-week section hike in the summer and ultimately traversed the entirety of the AT through Georgia and Tennessee, and most of North Carolina. He went back and forth about whether he wanted to attempt a thru-hike or just keep chipping away at it in sections, but ultimately, several factors lined up to make 2023 the year that it made sense just to do it. Once he got more serious about it, we started talking and making loose plans in the fall of 2022. Thanks to his years of outdoor experience, and the fact that he stays in pretty good shape from running, there honestly wasn’t a whole lot that needed to be done! However, we did do some tangible things together to set us up for success, which I’ll talk about in my next post.

• What will you do while he’s gone?! Honestly, I’ll mostly continue living my life! One of the factors that has enabled Andy to take time off of work and make this trek is that I’m employed by a company that offers health insurance coverage for a dependent, so I’ll be working from home doing my corporate job. My income will also enable us to continue, you know, paying our bills while he’s not employed. My parents live around the corner from us and we have a good group of friends in town, so I’ll continue to have opportunities to socialize. I’ll take a few trips of my own while he’s on the trail, some to catch up with him (more on that in a future post!) and some just for fun, like my family’s annual beach trip. Of course, being solo means I have to pick up some household responsibilities that Andy normally covered (I had to learn how to use the weed wacker!), so I’m not going to have six months of total leisure time. I’m actually already noticing that I need to be careful not to overfill my time just because I’m alone, since I am a homebody who requires a lot of alone time to recharge!

Andy and I are at in interesting juncture in our lives that’s not necessarily the stage at which many people attempt a long-distance trail thru-hike. (I tend to think of it more as a just-finished-high school-or-college or a retirement thing.) I’m starting this blog to feel a little less alone in the being the spouse who’s “left behind” at home, in hopes that there might be others out there who find themselves in this situation, too, and stumble across my words when they’re lying in bed at night panic Googling and not finding anyone else out there who understands. (Er, uh, maybe that was just me?) I’m figuring it out as we go along—join me on my journey!