Goat: Notes from an Appalachian Trail Hiking Adventure 2024, The Presidentials, Wildcats, Carters and Mahoosucs

A tumble of massive gray boulders up the steep mountainside ahead. We look left, look right, for another way around. Seeing none, we stumble forward, seeking to find a way out of no way. 

For the last two weeks my backpacking friends and I have been making our way out of no way. A steep ascent up a smooth rock ledge with not a hand-hold to be found. A precarious descent down a tumble of mossy wet rocks. Rotten dark planks over the bog at the top of Old Speck that disappear into thick brown and bottomless mud. 

The trail looks so easy on the page, a little green line winding its cheerful way up and down the mountains. But here on the ground, it’s another story. Sharp rocks and slippery roots, boulders to heave ourselves over on all fours. We’ll ascend and descend the steepest sections of the AT, crawl our way through that tumble of house-sized boulders called Mahoosuc Notch, the most difficult mile of a difficult trail. Get lost on Mount Success in the worst marked part of the entire AT in the middle of a thunderstorm. Nothing is easy out here on the trail these weeks, and its easy to be overwhelmed.

That morning as we saw no other way than over the massive pile of boulders up the steep trail ahead, we happened to look down and see there below us the white blaze of the Appalachian Trail and an arrow pointing the way down and under the rock pile. We took off our packs and pushed them ahead of us through the cold tight cavern, making a way when none was to be found.  

Neuroscientists like Norman Farb (co-author with Zindel Segal of Better in Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help you Reclaim Your Life) explain how our minds use “mental maps” of navigation. Our brains seek simplicity and make patterns that we depend on to help us make our way less stressfully each day. We drive to the store, slowing down and turning right at the pond. We just do it without consciously thinking about it. And while our mental maps serve us, they can also get in our way and provide debilitating narratives or trapping stories that can keep us stuck in mind-map loops of ways of being in the world. 

Here at the intersection of the AT and the Carlo Col Trail, we meet our through-hiker NOBO (Northbound) friend Sully coming up the trail. He looks shaken. 

It’s rough going ahead. Right there, he turns and points to the little green rise in the trees ahead of us, It’s downright dangerous. Be careful, go slow. 

As we say goodbye, I pause to tighten my pack as Jen and Pat descend and cross the small brook ahead. We can now all see what made Sully pale. Dad called it a “chimney” and I can see why – ahead of us a vertical rise of massive rocks up the mountainside. Below me Jen and Pat have headed up towards the rocks. But from where I’m standing above, I can clearly see it, a goat, a brown line of a trail heading off just to the left of the rock face through the trees. Another possibility, a way out of no way. 

Neuroscientists will tell you how our mental-maps can freeze us and trap us in mind-loops as we keep traumatizing ourselves with anxiety even though the trauma is no longer happening now and may have happened hours, days or decades before. But in our mind-loops it feels like the trauma is happening all over again. Look at that pile and familiar feelings of shutting down, clenched jaw, gnarled brow, fear and anxiety all take over. 

The key for getting out of the stuck places of our mind-maps is letting in sensation and feeling that interrupt our debilitating mind-loops.

I call to my friends below to turn back to the goat trail they missed off to the left. We wade through ferns wet with morning dew and hoist ourselves up holding tight to sturdy trees. We’re feeling our way forward, finding our way to another possibility beyond the worn trail.

Unclench your jaw!  Look for the goats!, become our daily reminders as we come across yet another impassable section of the trail.

Today, a few days following our hike, I sit here on the porch looking out at the mountains across the lake. My toes throbbing, rubbed red and raw, from wearing wet socks and boots on the twelve miles of our last day on the trail. I rub my itchy wrist where I have a long cut and my right forearm covered in cuts and scrapes. I bend down to scratch my shins, bloody cuts from the ascent up Wildcat. 

It’s easy to say (my own mind-map) that my cuts and scratches are signs of my failure to find a way out of the mind-maps that no longer serve me as well. On the other hand, perhaps the scrapes and sore toes are in fact the way we find our way forward as we feel our way to new possibilities beyond our worn mind-maps. 

Ahead, two rotting plank boards disappear into the thick mud ahead. We poke in the mud with our trekking poles, continue to poke, looking for something solid below the surface to step securely onto. Here, a partly submerged rock, there what feels like the edge of the board. We continue to poke and step out, foot by careful foot, onto the submerged plank, ever so careful so as not to slip off like the through-hiker we talked with who ended up submerged to her waist and had to be pulled out and back onto the trail.

Now days off the trail, I witness how I’ve come home to the familiar routines of my life with a bit of welcome disorientation. I longer just go through my daily routines without thinking.  Instead, there’s now a bit of space as I wonder what I am doing and why. 

Something happened these past eleven days poking our way forward through the muck, grabbing the tree and twirling ourselves around to the rocky ledge below. Something happened feeling our way forward through the ferns up the goat trail on the side of the ledge.  

Through it all we felt our way into a little space of openness and curiosity we’ve carried with us home. A little opening of opportunity to do things another way. We see differently; in fact, we are different. We have a choice we didn’t see before, to keep on following the familiar worn trail of being in the world or to feel our way into something new.

I can sit here this morning watching the morning sunrise on the lake looping in my old familiar mind-maps, thinking my way forward into what the day will bring. And I can unclench my jaw, feel my feet on the porch, my breath rising and falling. Squinting in the sunlight, feel my way into here, now, the possibility of something more.