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My Own Hike

Posted by MysticTurtle 296 days ago (http://www.squidoo.com)

At the age of 41, after years of harboring the dream of an Appalachian Trail thru-hike, Nancy Shepherd set off to hike the 2,168 miles of trail from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Katahdin in Maine. Having never backpacked more than 30 miles in her life, Shepherd embarked on her journey with hope, determination, and a pack full of fears. In My Own Hike, Shepherd takes readers along to experience both the good and the bad of the trail. Together they confront the pain and the exhilaration; together they experience the camaraderie and the loneliness; together they come to realize that the difficulty is as much psychological as it is physical. Using the format of a trail journal, Shepherd relates the day-to-day life of a thru-hiker. Through accounts of wilderness beauty and wildlife, hike-threatening injury and the kindness of strangers, admissions of fears and soul-searching anguish, she describes a trip that started as merely a hike from one mountain to another and ended as a journey of the spirit. My Own Hike follows along as Shepherd grows from an inexperienced hiker into a confident long-distance backpacker and gains the self-assurance to go beyond the perceived “rules” of the trail and end the hike on her own terms.