Current Location: Cheshire, MA
Miles Hiked: 1586.1
Miles to go: 612.3
Percent of trail completed: 72%
I continue to have aggravating plantar fasciitis pain in my feet, but otherwise I am doing quite well. The states are smaller in the north and thus you can hike through each one relatively quickly. Since Pennsylvania, each state seems to have whizzed by. I can sum up each in a single word.
New Jersey (72 miles) – Pleasant
New York (93 miles) – Rain
Connecticut (52 miles) – Mosquitoes
Massachusetts (90 miles) – Hot
Crossing each border gives a motivating psychological boost. Even though my pace is more or less the same as always, I really feel like I’m making progress.
Being in New England is also motivating because each state has a lot of meaning for me.
Back in May I traveled through the state I currently call home (Virginia), and now I am hiking through my other home state – the state where I was born and raised. The trail in Massachusetts also happens to travel very close to the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival, where I spent the summer of 2004 making music under the mentorship of some of the best musicians in the world.
In a day or two I will pass into Vermont, where I prepared for the AT by hiking the Long Trail last summer. About 100 miles of the AT overlap with the Long Trail and it will be rewarding to revisit those miles a year later, this time stronger, more experienced, and actually doing the thing I prepared so hard for.
When I was a kid my family spent all summer every summer camping in New Hampshire. It’s the state where I fell in love with sleeping in the woods. It also is the state where I went on my very first AT backpacking trip with my Dad, 20 years ago at age 15. It was around that same time that the dream of being an AT thru hiker grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
And what about Maine? Maine is the journey’s end, the culmination of my thru hike and everything leading up to it. But I’m trying not to think too much about that yet. Though it is exciting to be in New England, there is also a danger in thinking that I’m “almost there.” Not so. I still have over 600 miles to go, and they happen to be the most challenging miles of the whole trail. No room for complacency.
Reminder that you can find more photos of my thru hike on my Instagram here.