Peaks and Valleys
“Whelp, it’s time to feel again.”
Bear Legs wrote to me after one of my emails showed up in his inbox.
He continued, “I do love your blog posts. They always hit really hard, especially right after the trail, some of them legit made me cry. Now they’re more of a beautiful reminder of that life, and where I want to be.”
Bear Legs and I crossed treks in Front Royal, Virginia. It was the summer of 2021. We were each walking from Georgia to Maine, unbeknownst to him at the time, when he approached me. He asked what I was doing, typing on a bluetooth keyboard at a brewery, with dirt living under my fingernails and a big backpack sitting at my feet.
Two weeks ago, I spent some time in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Celebrating my birthday and walking on my favorite footpath. The colonial town was adorned in Christmas, its holly only second to the miles of twinkling lights that lined High Street. As was the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the spiritual half-way point of the Appalachian Trail. I retreated to its library and scoured through binders stacked to my shoulders, dating back to 1979. Their pages were laminated and held 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of archived Polaroid photos. Photos of each thru hiker as they passed through Harper’s Ferry, making it half of their way to Maine.
There they were. Deja Vu. Old School. President. Wandering Cowboy. I kept flipping, frantic for reunion. Link. BZ. Sunshine. Gourmet. All smiles and thick in the thighs. Sergeant Pepper. Flowers. Crush. Ken. I wished that we were all together again, just as we were back then. Footloose and fancy free. Ranger in 2016 and Surefoot in 1992. I was transported back in time.
To a time when I got to learn about a girl.
A girl named Serendipity.
She smiled at me from the page, through the protective film that covered her.
I was effortlessly doing a wall sit against the exterior of the Conservancy, my smile worth all of the words. My thighs were steady. I vividly remember them being steady. I could have held that position until the sun set. My legs were so strong. With 1,000 miles under their belt, they were ready for 1,000 more. And my arms, they were raised above me, pretending to support the weight of the wooden sign that was nailed to the stone above my head.
I missed her. I missed becoming her. I missed who I was and how I felt in that photo. But she still lives inside of me, she promised never to leave. She helps me make decisions, to do no harm but take no shit. Because of her, I wear shorts now. Skirts now. Letting my gnarly spider veins hang out for the world to see. And when they ask, “Why do you have so many bruises on your legs?”, I tell them that I was born that way. That my powerhouses are seasoned. I ran my fingers over my backpack in the Polaroid and was about to close the 3-ring binder where Dips now lives in purgatory.
When I saw one more familiar face.
It was Bear Legs.
His photo was taken only a handful of days after our sole interaction over beer and my keyboard. Our thru hikes never intersected on foot again, but our minds aligned for the years that have followed.
“Bear Legs, it’s Dips! I’m at the A.T.C. In Harper’s! They actually archived us! I miss you, brother. I hope that you’re doing well out there.”, and I attached his Polaroid to my message.
“Hey! That’s me!!! And where are those blog posts, Dips? I haven’t seen one in a bit.”, Bear Legs’ words sobered me.
They were truth tellers.
Gave me that little pang in the gut.
The one that reminded me that I haven’t written to you all in quite a while.
It’s been a monkey in my backpack. Weighing it down. Wanting so badly to share my experiences with the world but wondering if they remain relevant.
Because a blog is just a journal entry that no-one asked for.
A “Here are my unsolicited thoughts, my most vulnerable inter-workings, my triumphs and my uglies. And I swear that I won’t waste your time.”
“You are a magical person.”
“Keep being you, it helps me be me.”
“You have taught me that it’s never too late.”
This role is one of my greatest gifts.
We write when we are ready.
As I have my memoir.
In May, I finished the first draft of my book. Yes. I wrote a fucking book in 2024. The book that you all cheerleaded me to start. To move you. Drive you. And who knows what you might do because of my words. 110,000 of them over 32 chapters. And now I am cleaning it up. Trimming it way down. Polishing it for publication. Because now, now I am ready.
“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.”
I absolutely relish in a new year. It is an opportunity to check in, a categorical line in the sand, to reevaluate our time. Our tendencies. Our wins. Our losses. Our goals. And our bullshit.
Our peaks and our valleys.
The more honest that you are able to be with yourself, the more bountiful the exercise.
This is not easy. Nor is it comfortable. It can actually be really fucking scary.
“If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.”
Are you on the right train?
You are never too old to switch trains.
But you are too old to keep doing what isn’t working.
What went well for you last year? What made you smile? What are you really proud of? Your biggest accomplishments?
There are obvious peaks. An addition to your family. A job promotion. Finishing a bike race. A marriage proposal. A thru hike.
But not all years are “thru hike” years.
There are the quiet peaks. The rolling hills in the distance, equally as beautiful but without names. Keeping your house plants alive. Creating art. Forgiving a friend. Climbing out of debt. Counting your steps. Learning to ask for help. Executing your “yes”.
Executing your “no”.
What do you simply feel good about?
Celebrate your successes.
And give grace to your valleys.
Did you spend enough time with the people that you love? Did you spend more time on the couch than on your feet? Did fear keep you from an opportunity? Did you leave the sunroof open during a rain storm?
Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.
Learn to love your bad decisions.
Some things go wrong to get you right.
To get you on the right train.
There were times last year when the valleys swallowed me whole. When the peaks felt a distant past and never to return. Healing isn’t pretty. It is crying at 2am when the anxiety is suffocating and the loneliness feels unbearable. Piggybacked by mornings when the pain feels permanent.
But the only way out is through.
I am bent, not broken.
And my bent-ass self climbed out of the valley and back up to the peak.
Forty eight of them, in fact.
The 48 highest mountains in the state of New Hampshire.
The pack that I carried on my back was filled with things like a tiny, little stove, a 23 ounce tent, a water filter, and a compass. But it was mostly heavy with emotion this time. Heartbreak. Anxiety. Anger. Rumination. Self-doubt. Secrets. And sadness.
If you love someone, you give them the power to destroy you.
Partners. Family. Friends.
Don’t allow someone else to be the main character in your story.
Deep in the bellies of those 48 mountains, those majesties, were boulders and there were brooks. There were rivers and there was mud. There were ridges and there were ravines.
But there were lessons.
The photos of me smiling on top of the summits- those smiles are my wins. They are leaded with physical pain. With sweat. And with lots of tears. They are me choosing not to quit climbing. The mountains, nor myself.
For someone who truly does not enjoy peak bagging, 22 summits in 16 days of hiking was a beastly, intimidating, arduous endeavor. I haven’t been entirely kind to my body as of late, but it showed up for me when I asked it to do the unthinkable. It showed up for me for 50,088 feet of gain and 50,281 of descent. I thanked my legs and my lungs each day. What beautiful machines we are. We need to take care of them. I didn’t escape a day on the mountain without falling. Bleeding. Without crying. But I fucking needed this win.
“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
Daily, I called ahead to my 76 year old hiking partner, “Are we there yet?!?”
And Ken would reply, “Yes, Dips, we’re almost there. It’s just around the corner.”
“You promise?”, I’d challenge him.
“I promise.”, he’d fill me with hope.
When we both knew that the worst was yet to come.
But it’s always just right around the bend.
Your next peak.
I promise.
Just keep climbing.
Take care of the valleys, the peaks will take care of themselves.
Marking my territory in the pantry at The Notch Hostel, Lincoln, New Hampshire.
Rocks with a cameo from upstate New York!
Mother Nature’s recliner.
Ken reaching the summit of Mount Jefferson via the ambitious Caps Ridge Trail.
PB & J with a view.
There’s something special about doing hiker laundry while on trail and wearing your rain gear because everything else needs to be washed. It’s that feeling of vagabond, footloose and fancy free.
When your Sawyer water filter’s flow slows to a trickle after non-use, it is usually dried out with minerals from backflushing with tap water. You can soak it in hot, distilled water (~140 degrees F, not boiling) for 2 hours, and then soak and backflush with white vinegar and then again with the hot, distilled water (to remove the vinegar taste). Tried this method for the first time, and it worked great!
Magpie did!
I met Brightside (pictured immediately to my right) on the first day of his thru hike, March, 2024, while I was out in Georgia doing a section. And then he walked into The Notch, 5 months later, having not heard from him since his start. The Serendipity.
Summit of Mt. Eisenhower with a visit from Old School! He was a big part of my O.G. Appalachian Trail tramily (tear!).
The essence of Ken.
Old School onlooking over the Presidential Range. The largest peak to the far left of the photo is Mount Washington, “the most dangerous small mountain in the world”.
Old School always leaves me nature notes!
The logistics of reaching each summit was no easy task, as they weren’t on a singular trail. It took connecting multiple trails to plan routes.
My favorite kinda kitchen.
There ain’t no water like fresh spring water!
Mountains look different from the inside.
Cream of leek soup at Galehead Hut for $2.00.
Feeling tiny on the summit of North Twin.
Hiking into sunset en route to the Bonds.
Mount Guyot with blue waves of peaks in the backsplash, some of which I was standing on days before.
The sun was my alarm clock at Guyot Shelter.
Whiskey cheers to making headway!
With Lake of the Clouds Hut in the valley and Mount Washington standing before us, we descended from the summit of Mt. Monroe, watching the AT weave below us in memory’s lane.
To be back…
Refueled with a clementine at Zealand Hut on my way to the summit, reminiscing in sitting on the exact same bench 3 years before with 351 miles to go.
Zealand Mountain. The outlier. Its summit sits 20 yards off of the Appalachian Trail, a summit that I thought that I had already snagged while on my thru hike. Over a snack with Grateful by a stream, I learned that I, in fact, had not. So on a planned off-day, I went at this one alone. The serendipity of navigating a 4K by myself proved to be exactly what I needed, what I was really afraid of, sight unseen.
Lots of swelling ensued as I beat on my body. Legs felt like lead. Balloons. Weights.
Not an ankle fracture, but dependent edema from spending dawn until dusk on foot, bouldering. Ratchet shit.
Making our way in the wind to the summit of Mt. Adams.
The summit of Mt. Adams brought wind gusts of 62 m.p.h. with a windchill of 19 degrees F, while the trailhead that we departed from sat below at a comfortable, sunny 70 degrees. Safety comes in preparedness and the utmost respect for Mother Nature.
Sheltering from the frigid before descending.
The descent of Mt. Adams.
And then there was one. One final summit to complete our 48.
Our last challenge congratulated us with navigating ankle deep mud by the light of our headlamps.
…and beer. Beer that we stashed in the bushes at the trailhead earlier that morning to sip upon our completion!
Coming home to some homemade surprise swag from Smoller after weeks in the wild and a 14 hour drive back to Pennsylvania sure filled my cup!
Gotta stamp those thighs with this kinda win!
Tramily reunion with Ken and Bullet…
…and Treehouse and Lady Unicorn.
Laptops in low places.
Michaux State Forest, Pine Grove, Pennsylvania.
Volunteering at the Appalachian Trail Museum has afforded me countless serendipitous, lifelong connections. Here, Nan, the previous record holder for the eldest woman to ever thru hike the Appalachian Trail, connects with a thru hiker hopeful.
The first time that I carved a pumpkin since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
Happy dress silly day!
Post-it notes on lampshades. And highlighters. And Sharpies. And three-ring binders. Ruled paper galore. Thoughts so jumbled that I am finding it difficult to extract them from my mind and transfer them to the keys.
I write, because even if one of your lives is changed through reading my words, then it will all be worth it.
Any day that’s a new backpack day is a good day!
The ornaments that hang from these branches tell the story of my life.
From Christmas Eves on Joel Street as a young girl, praying for only a Snackmaster and a Claddagh ring and peace under the tree in the morning. To friendships spanning decades, filled with mixed tapes and angels and hand forged clay snowflakes. To a holiday abroad. They have all brought me to my now. A now that is filled with both pleasure and pain, but one that is right on time.
The first time that I walked past this very sign, this exact fucking sign, I had big, BIG feelings. Feelings that were powerful enough to leave me speechless, categorically rewire my mindset, and ultimately reroute my entire life.
Feelings that whispered, “There’s a big, big world out there, Sarah. Pack your fears, walk my spine, and I will show you that you can trust yourself.”
It was oh so good to be back on Maryland’s Appalachian Trail. Back home. To the place that gave me my wings. The place that fueled me to fly.
To walk.
Happy birthday cupcake for 1!
Pure Christmas joy!
Dad loves wearing the ribbons and the bows. And his “NH 48” proud Pappa hat. And Amelia loves Dad!
Was a very Merry Christmas with the “Mineo’s”!
Minus a Steeler win and T. Swift…
My Dad has a cousin named Roger. Roger lived in Florida. I never had the chance to meet Roger. But Roger grabbed ahold of my thru hike and he didn’t let go. He emailed every single week for 27 weeks. He was the first one to call me after I summited Mount Katahdin. And we vowed to meet, to walk at least 1 mile in the dirt together one day. But then Roger passed away unexpectedly before we had that chance.
His wife Sandy sent his Steeler hat to me to keep.
A piece of him.
One that was close to his vest.
So do “it” tired. Do it sad. Do it unmotivated. Do it scared.
Do it alone.
