2000+ Miles.
14 Eastern States.
4 Pairs of Shoes.
One Unforgettable Journey.
The Call
I didn’t plan to hike the Appalachian Trail.
The idea arrived as two quiet, unmistakable words:
Appalachian Trail.
No fanfare. No explanation. Just clarity.
Ten days later, I was on a plane with a backpack and no real idea what obedience would cost—or give. I had crossed borders before, more than fifty of them internationally, chasing culture, story, novelty.
I knew how to move. I knew how to arrive.
What I didn’t know was what it meant to walk toward the same destination for months on end.
The Trail teaches that early.
One Direction
When you wake up every morning aimed at the same distant mountain, travel changes. There’s no rush to consume experience. No checklist of highlights. Just the next white blaze and the quiet promise that if you keep walking, it will lead you where you’re meant to go.
Movement becomes devotion.
Progress becomes faith.
The Appalachian Trail is simple in design—one blaze to the next. This straight and narrow corridor through wilderness is the longest marked trail in the world. There are switchbacks, climbs, descents, and moments where the path disappears into rock or root—but the blaze always reappears.
That’s how divine guidance works too.
You don’t need the whole map. You just need the next marker.
Learning to Listen
Out there, stripped of distraction, the Voice inside me finally had room to speak—and then, slowly, to replace my thoughts with His. I learned how little I actually needed to carry, and how much weight I’d been hauling that was never mine to begin with.
Doubt disappears.
Urgency fades.
Clarity sharpens.
I stopped asking where am I going? and started asking why?
Authority, Not Control
I used to think nature was something to be managed or endured. The Trail dismantled that idea.
I walked through hail that stung like judgment. Watched skies twist into something dangerous and alive. Felt the ground remind me it can move when it wants to. In those moments, I remembered the story of a man asleep in a storm—unafraid, not because the storm wasn’t real, but because He knew who held it.
I don’t fully live there yet.
But I’m learning the difference between control and authority. One clenches. The other rests.
Creation isn’t something to dominate. It’s something to move through in alignment.
Staying Oriented
On trail, you get lost sometimes. Not dramatically—just enough to realize you’ve drifted. And when you do, you don’t panic. You look for the white blaze.
That’s it.
The blaze reorients everything.
God’s voice works the same way. When things get noisy or unclear, you don’t need a new destination. You need a reference point. Scripture is the FarOut app for your soul—not replacing the walk, but confirming where you are. Reassuring you that the trail still exists, even when you can’t see around the bend.
You’re not failing because you wandered.
You’re learning how to return.
Company on the Way
There was solitude, yes—but never loneliness. It’s hard to feel alone when you’re being led. And it was clear, He was with me every step of the journey.
There was community too—unforced, generous, fleeting and deep all at once. Strangers became companions simply because we were walking toward the same end. On the Trail, no one asks who you were. They ask where you’re headed. My answer was always “North”.
Direction matters more than history.
The Summit
And then, one day, the final mountain appears.
Katahdin rises not as a prize, but as punctuation. A period placed gently at the end of a long sentence. I climbed not as someone who conquered a mountain, but as someone who had been carried to it—step by step, blaze by blaze.
At the summit, the wind spoke louder than words. The miles behind me fell silent.
I understood then: the Trail didn’t change me by adding anything new. It changed me by removing what wasn’t true.
It taught me how to walk when called.
How to listen when uncertain.
How to trust the path even when I couldn’t see far ahead.
Still Walking
The journey doesn’t end at Katahdin.
And it doesn’t end off trail either.
But obedience always leads somewhere worth standing.
Sometimes all you need is the next white blaze—and the courage to follow it.
I’m Gr8ful.
P.S. If you’re a fellow thru-hiker, I want to hear from you. Leave a comment with your trail name and what trail you completed. I’m especially interested in hearing from my 2025 AT family!
Regarding the topic of the article, your journey sounds truly amazing! I’m curious about the ‘divine guidance’ part; how did you differentiate that voice from your own thoughts?