Full Circle

“Just put it in this baggie, Sarah.”

My mother was encouraging me to place my leftover breakfast sausage patty into the zip-locked sandwich bag that she has been carrying her disposable facemasks around in since March of 2020.

And then she would place the bagged patty into her purse, she said.

For transport, she said.

The same purse that she offered to extract a bagged tuna melt from. Because they are my favorite. And because I would need dinner.

My father then reached deep into his coat pocket.

For his partial denture appliance.

Placing it into his mouth, while simultaneously asking our waitress for the proper-sized respectable styrofoam to-go container for my sausage patty, he was actively rebelling against Mom’s offer for her Ziplock.

Mom was pissed.

“No. No. No.”, she persisted, white-knuckling her container of leftover hotcakes, refusing to allow me to carry them to the car for her.

“The day the roles reverse is foreign. It’s a clumsy dance of love and responsibility, not wanting to cross any lines of respect. It’s honoring these people who gave their life to you- not to mention, who literally gave you life.”

— Lisa Goich-Andreadis

Full circle.

“This little tidbit from the book that I’m reading made me think of ‘pre-AT Sarah’- always planning, sometimes to the detriment of doing.”, Katie “Fuel” Webber-Plank wrote to me.

“When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something.” , it read.

“When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something.”, I repeated, again. And again.

I want.

To write.

A book.

But what about the margins. The spacing. Literary agency. Query letters. Beta readers. Elevator pitches. Testimonial pages. ISBNs.

Copyrights, editors, and grammar…

Oh my.

“Some people feel that way about hiking the Appalachian Trail. You just gotta break it down and start. There’s a map for the AT. This is a little less guided though.”, my friend, physician, and athelete, Patricia George, brought to light. With 2 of our 12 months of 2023 already having washed ashore, she reminds us, “We can start over or frame shift any day, any time, we choose.”, in her article, Living with Intention.

“Give me a map, or give me death.”, I thought, while reading the entire 19 page pamphlet of instructions prior to plugging in my 5-speed blender.

“There are three rules to writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Butt in a chair. That’s the piece of direction I give to anyone and everyone who wants to write, who is thinking about writing, who is asking how it’s done, who is fearful and intimidated by the act. It’s not poetic, and it doesn’t bespeak inspiration. What it does suggest, is a way into what is not a mystery but a process, a way into the story of yourself.”, Anna Quindlen wrote in her Saturday Evening Post article titled, “Get it in Writing”, including excerpts from her book, Write for Your Life.

Butt in a chair. Paper and pen at hand.

“A word, after a word...after a word, is power.”

— Margaret Atwood

The same woman that introduced me to the trail, reminded me to start where I am.

My Fuel.

Full Circle.

Solo.

Mills.

Reckless Abandon.

My 3 Wise Men.

On July 30th, 2021, I shared a table with an unmistakably seasoned hiker at The Wits End Tavern in Unionville, NY, mile 1347.8. I had left the lawn of the Post Office, where I was camping for the night, with my Bluetooth keyboard in tow, in search of a cold one. Solo, in the thick of his fourth thru hike of the Appalachian Trail and the author of close to 20 novels of his own, took an interest in my keys. “You a writer, kid?”, he inquired, my keyboard and looseleaf revealing my pen just as his wisdom and calf girth did his hiking resume.

“I hope to be.”, I replied.

“It’s just like a long hike. One foot in front of the other until you get there.”, he coached.

After less than an hour’s time together on that late July evening, Solo has become my guru of the peaks as well as the press.

Solo atop South Kinsman Peak, White Mountains, New Hampshire.

“Everything you need will find you.”

— R.M. Drake

It was a rainy June afternoon, nearly one year after Solo had found me, under a pop-up tent and representing the Appalachian Trail Museum at the annual Roundhill AT Festival, Mills Kelly did the same. Mills is a historian, a hiker, a photographer, an author, an award-winning educator at George Mason University, and the host of The Green Tunnel Podcast.

But on June 11th, 2022, Mills Kelly became my friend.

He was holding a photo that he and I had just taken together. And he placed it inches from my face. And he said, “This woman… This woman is shining. What is it that she wants to tell the world? Ask her.”

And I began to cry.

Mills saw in me what I hadn’t yet seen in myself.

He found me.

“You just start free writing. And you let the story emerge as you write. At first, it will feel panicky. I just spewed. This has liberated me.”, my friend counseled.

Roundhill AT Festival 2022 — This is the photo. The photo where Mills saw my shine.
Jessie, myself, and Mills, Roundhill AT Festival, 2022.

“Surround yourself with people who get it.”

On May 23rd, 2021, just south of Pearisburg, Virginia, mile 637 of my thru hike, I saw him sitting by the fire. Surrounded by a slew of tents and prepping to cook his evening meal, I hadn’t seen Reckless Abandon since Uncle Johnny’s Hostel, Erwin, Tennessee, mile 344.3. He was struggling to find the proper treatment for a cellulitis wreaking havoc to his legs. His perseverance was oozing from him, a perseverance that continued to inspire me all of the way to Mount Katahdin. After having to abort his 2020 thru hike attempt once Sir Covid struck, he had the determination of a soldier. The pain, fevers, and immobility of this bacterial infection were not going to stop him.

I joined him by the fire when I noticed that both of his hands were badly blistered with open sores. The antibiotic, Doxycycline, that had cured him of the cellulitis had caused a sun sensitivity, leading to burns on his skyward-facing hands as as he hiked on.

“Dips, you’re a nurse, right? You put people to sleep and keep them alive, right?”, he asked, hopefully.

I held Reckless Abandon’s hands in mine, bandaging them with pieces of gauze that I trimmed with my pocket knife and strips of Leukotape that I peeled from the shafts of my trekking poles.

Last week, we spoke for hours, reminiscing and catching up on life after the trail. This man, whose hands that I nursed back to health at mile 637, had just become a new author himself, and he was eager to pay it forward, “I know that you have plenty of questions, I sure did. Just ask away, Dips.”

Or shall we say, Serendipity?

Reckless Abandon Katahdin — Reckless Abandon, author of “*Katahdin: Hiking the Appalachian Trail with Reckless Abandon*”, pictured on his summit of Mount Katahdin, September, 10th, 2021.

Ripples from the trail.

Full circle.

I sat on the tabletop of a picnic bench that lived in the Caretaker’s lot of Big Meadows Campground, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia. It was the morning of October 23rd, 2020, and Fuel and I had just finished our longest section hike to date. I had hoped that these 11 days, held captive to the elements of the wild, would cause a discomfort within me that would absolve me of my contemplation of a thru hike. For then, I wouldn’t have a decision to make. I wouldn’t have to live with the regret of not trying for the thing that I wanted so viscerally. Because I wouldn’t have wanted it after all.

I wouldn’t have to be afraid.

Shit.

Actual F$@k.

I wanted it.

Bad.

“Now what was I going to do?”, I thought to myself. I had my elbows on my knees, staring into the soil.

“Are you a hiker?”, the woman asked.

I lifted my gaze, “Kind of. I’m not a thru hiker though.”

She stopped walking towards her camper. She asked me questions. About my life. My career. My age. Was I married. Children. What brought me to the trail.

And then she asked the question that changed everything for me, “Why not?”

It haunted me.

What I wouldn’t give to spend an evening with this woman, listening to her story and sharing with her how she changed mine.

If you’re out there, my boldly serendipitous Big Meadows RV owner, thank you.

Thank you.

Keep using your unsolicited words.

The Parows Campground Host-VA — *The* picnic table.

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all- the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

— Randy Komisar

On April 1st, 2021, my second cousin Roger, whom I’ve never met, wrote:

“Hey Cuz!!

OK…you just made me wish all the more that I was with you on your journey! I can’t sufficiently explain in an email how excited, envious, and heartfelt I am every time I can read these anxiously awaited updates!

I so want to experience what you have accomplished thus far! Unfortunately, it will have to remain a moment lost to time, and that ever gnawing feeling of disgust of not wanting to take a chance earlier in life.

My heart is with you every step of your journey…God’s speed, Sarah! On to Virginia!

Love ya Cuz, Rog”

Roger was the first person to call me after I summited Mount Katahdin.

We talked of plans to take a walk in the woods together this Spring.

Roger unexpectedly passed away on February 15th, 2023, before we had the chance to meet.