“Okay,” I said, my voice lighter than I felt. I felt a deep weight settling into the pit of my stomach, sinking down to my feet, holding me to the earth. Grounding me. “Okay,” I repeated, as the hikers ahead of me crested the hill and disappeared into the shimmering heat. “I’m coming home.”

So, no more shame, I decided, and when I came to a crossroads, where I could follow the PCT over a series up pointless ups and downs, or road walk, I decided to test that conviction. I had been a purist on the Appalachian Trail, until I realized how that mindset had been holding me back and blue-blazed on the very last day of my thru-hike. It was time, I knew, to give myself grace, walk a continuous footpath, but hike my own hike.

Sure, I had scrambled up vertical rock faces and outrun microbursts and survived bone-chilling cold on the Appalachian Trail; but the challenges the PCT posed were its own version of difficulty, and commanded my respect. Like the stretch of trail before me, I felt uprooted, torn apart, washed away. I was a stranger in a strange land, and while I was captivated by the beauty of this wild place… I missed Appalachia every day.

On the decision to thru-hike for a second time, why the PCT, the fears I no longer have... and the new ones I do have.

Here’s what I’ve been doing to physically recover after the end of my hike. This is what’s worked for me, and it may not work for you. My hope that you’ll find my experience helpful if you’ve just completed a thru, still out there hiking SOBO, or if you’re planning on thru-hiking next year.

t was strangely disorienting to go back to places I’d walked past only weeks or months ago. To see white blazes and, rather than following them deeper into the woods, turning from the trail to climb back into a car and drive south instead of walking north.

Regret, and sadness, and conflicted emotions are the asking price of choice. Regret doesn’t necessarily mean that you chose wrong: it means that you chose, and in doing so, you didn’t choose the other thing.

To me, “embracing the suck” sounded like hustle culture. It sounded like embracing suffering for suffering’s sake. And it didn’t make sense in the context of thru-hiking: in taking a journey for the journey’s sake.