Appalachian Trail Inspirational Quotes

I would never have started this trip if I had known how tough it was, but I couldn't and wouldn't quit.

Her chest full of crisp air and inspiration, her feet atop a forgettable mountain where the stars make you feel insignificant and important all at once. And she sang.

I did it. I said I'd do it and I've done it.

There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.

If I'd been afraid," she said, "I never would have started out in the first place."--Grandma Emma Gatewood

The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.

Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders.

Every eccentric needs a story, and if one is not provided, one will be created.

She introduced people to the A.T., and at the same time she made the thru-hike achievable. It didn’t take fancy equipment, guidebooks, training, or youthfulness. It took putting one foot in front of the other—five million times.

We do not go into the woods to rough it; we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home. —GEORGE WASHINGTON SEARS Now or never. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU I get faster as I get older. —EMMA GATEWOOD

She had told her children she was going on a walk. That was no lie. She just never finished her sentence, never offered her own offspring the astonishing, impossible particulars.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, “Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Never quit on a bad day.

Perspective can be both humbling and inspiring.

Charles Dickens captured the ecstasy of near-madness and insomnia in the essay “Night Walks” and once said, “The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.

Well,” she said, reappearing, “you got grandma across.

Because,” she told a reporter, “I wanted to.

when someone doesn’t feel valued or heard, their desire to participate in a job or relationship disappears.

It was just numbers. I knew I could outrun numbers.

The forest is a quiet place and nature is beautiful. I don’t want to sit and rock. I want to do something.

Remote for detachment, narrow for chosen company, winding for leisure, lonely for contemplation, the Trail leads not merely north and south but upward to the body, mind and soul of man.

William Wordsworth was said to have walked 180,000 miles in his lifetime. Charles Dickens captured the ecstasy of near-madness and insomnia in the essay “Night Walks” and once said, “The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of “the great fellowship of the Open Road” and the “brief but priceless meetings which only trampers know.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, “Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.” More recently, writers who knew the benefits of striking out excoriated the apathetic public, over and over again, for its laziness. “Of course, people still walk,” wrote a journalist in Saturday Night magazine in 1912. “That is, they shuffle along on their own pins from the door to the street car or taxi-cab…. But real walking … is as extinct as the dodo.” “They say they haven’t time to walk—and wait fifteen minutes for a bus to carry them an eighth of a mile,” wrote Edmund Lester Pearson in 1925. “They pretend that they are rushed, very busy, very energetic; the fact is, they are lazy. A few quaint persons—boys chiefly—ride bicycles.

...observers, by nature, had to create a story to understand why one would set out on foot, leaving the shelters we build to plant us in civilization and set us apart from the world, the cars and houses and offices. To follow a path great distances, to open oneself to the world and a multitude of unexpected experiences, to voluntarily face the wrath of nature unprotected, was difficult to understand.

The children all worked hard, too. By two years old, they were sweeping floors and gathering eggs. By three they were collecting kindling for the potbellied stove. By four they were washing and drying dishes. By five they knew how to wash their own clothes.

She stood, finally, her canvas Keds tied tight, on May 3, 1955, atop the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world, facing the peaks on the blue-black horizon that stretched toward heaven and unfurled before her for days.

When we trust in the Power above And with the realm of nature hold fast, We will have a jewel of great price To brighten our lives till the last. For the love of nature is healing, If we will only give it a try And our reward will be forthcoming, If we go deeper than what meets the eye.

After more than two thousand miles on the [Appalachian] trail, you can expect to undergo some personality changes. A heightened affinity for nature infiltrates your life. Greater inner peace. Enhanced self-esteem. A quiet confidence that if I could do that, I can do and should do whatever I really want to do. More appreciation for what you have and less desire to acquire what you don’t. A childlike zest for living life to the fullest. A refusal to be embarrassed about having fun. A renewed faith in the essential goodness of humankind. And a determination to repay others for the many kindnesses you have received.

In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes: A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do. To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep; to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts. The

That evening around dusk, she hiked up to Maryland Heights and sat on a cliff looking down upon the picturesque little town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. One hundred seventy years before, Thomas Jefferson called the view “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.” In a book first published in France, he wrote that the scene alone, the passage of the Potomac River through the Blue Ridge and its crashing merger with the Shenandoah, was worth a trip across the Atlantic.

On August 25, she hiked to Lafayette Campground, then walked back a little ways on the highway for a good view of the Old Man of the Mountain, a set of granite outcroppings on a mountainside in the shape of a man’s face. The great orator and statesman Daniel Webster once said about the outcropping, “Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.” The

when Atlantic Monthly published one of Thoreau’s essays, called “Walking.” At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us. Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders.

The trail was designed to have no end, a wild place on which to be comfortably lost for as long as one desired. In those early days nobody fathomed walking the thing from beginning to end in one go. Section hikes, yes. Day hikes, too. But losing yourself for five months, measuring your body against the earth, fingering the edge of mental and physical endurance, wasn’t the point. The trail was to be considered in sections, like a cow is divided into cuts of beef. Even if you sample every slice, to eat the entire beast in a single sitting was not the point. Before 1948, it wasn’t even considered possible.

She was simple in her intentions; she embraced the challenge of seeing the thing through.

The Reward of Nature” If you’ll go with me to the mountains And sleep on the leaf carpeted floors And enjoy the bigness of nature And the beauty of all out-of-doors, You’ll find your troubles all fading

Exploring the world was a good way to explore her own mind.

Strength Doesn’t Come From What You Can Do. Strength Comes From Overcoming The Things You Once Thought You Couldn’t.

When we find fault in others, it’s often because of the concerns we have about our own abilities.

and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us.

To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep; to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts.

Stats’s real name is Chris Odom and he’s a physicist and former rocket scientist who now teaches physics at a Quaker boarding school. This is his eighty-seventh day on the trail and he decided to stay in the lodge, near the halfway point, because he’s meeting his family soon.

Among the ranks of two-thousand-milers are two six-year-old boys, an eighty-one-year-old man, an eighty-year-old woman, a blind man, barefoot sisters, a cat, and a woman who, in 2011, reportedly completed the entire trail in forty-six days, eleven hours, and twenty minutes, the fastest-ever unofficial time.

That evening around dusk, she hiked up to Maryland Heights and sat on a cliff looking down upon the picturesque little town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. One hundred seventy years before, Thomas

Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them. A desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill. —Muhammad Ali

At the beginning of the decade, only 9 percent of American households had a TV set. More than half had one by 1954, and 86 percent would own one by the end of the decade. Americans began to experience life not by the soles of their feet, but by the seat of their pants.

There’s one response among the dozens that I’ve come to think best answers the question, a declarative sentence in the public record that is equal parts truth and defiance. It’s a statement that betrays a secret at the same time. There’s something both bold and hidden in the response. Something beautiful and independent, mysterious and brave. There is escape between the words. Escape from abuse and oppression. Escape from age and obligation. It ends with a period that might as well be a question mark, four words that launch a thousand ships, and it’s an answer that frustrates and satisfies. “Because,” she told a reporter, “I wanted to.

I think I know why all these people line up by that big plaque on the boulder every year and funnel—baby step-by-baby step—onto the Grandma Gatewood Trail. To be here is to participate in an experience, her experience. To walk this path that she loved is to embrace her memory, to come as close to her as possible. To see what she saw and step where she stepped and feel some thin connection to a farm woman who decided one day to take a walk, and then kept going, getting faster until the end. I could be imagining all this, but I lost myself a little. In her footsteps, I forgot my troubles. Maybe the fountain of youth wasn’t a fountain at all.

She lacked most of the pieces of equipment that hikers consider absolutely essential, but she possessed that one ingredient, desire, in such full measure that she never really needed the other things.

because unless we be strong as steel, our lazy and baser natures yield to the temptation of time-saving when a ride is offered us,” wrote Mary Magennis in 1931.

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. —Bob Marley

And that’s one of the secrets when you’re hurt—don’t focus on what you can’t do. Focus on what you CAN do.

In most cases, you can’t or won’t get everything you want overnight, but you can choose the path you’re going to follow. And by choosing your own path, you can become who you’re meant to be, making your way through the long journey that we call life.

If you think something is going to be difficult, then it will be. If you can get yourself to believe that you can do it, then anything’s possible.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. —Mahatma Gandhi

I can heal myself. I am healing each and every day. I can hike the entire Appalachian Trail.

The aching, burning sensations in my leg reminded me of why I was there. I guess you could call it a mission. I was determined to heal myself.

When we find fault in others, it’s often because of the concerns we have about our own abilities.

You have to embrace the suck.

I’ve found during my life that our thoughts can affect the way we respond to the world around us. Rather than just accepting the negative thoughts that pop into our minds, I think it makes more sense to choose the thoughts we want to hear.

I can confidently tell you that anything you or I really want to do can be accomplished if you just break it down into bite-sized pieces that you can handle each day.

For Those That Look at The Reasons Why You Cannot Do Something, Perhaps You Are Looking at it The Wrong Way. Consider Why You Must.

One Day This Pain Will Make Sense to You

I saw a falling star and made a wish that I might soon be home in my wife’s arms.

Giving up meant resigning myself to a life filled with pain. Pain that was likely to never get better.

Your best life is waiting for you right now; all you need to do is reach out and grab it.

Rock Bottom Became A SOLID Foundation on Which I Rebuilt My Life

Climbing a mountain, climbing this mountain, means following a river against the flow through the valley, then a stream up on the mountain’s flank, past waterfalls, and, eventually, to this little spring. It means walking against the hydrological cycle, against the order of things, to the source of life. To youth. To birth.

It wasn't actually being on the trail that made me truly free. I don't want anyone to read this and believe that they have to hike the Appalachian Trail in order to find themselves. It also wasn't ending my marriage or leaving my career, though I do believe those things were a necessary part of my journey of change and rediscovery. The true key was the mindset I learned to adopt, one amplified by the trail. It was the ability to appreciate the current moment, the willingness to be in it, and taking it in at the speed the moment required.

Growing up near the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey, I never saw it as anything of any great importance, just the woods I would disappear into for a day. Looking back on those memories, I realized just how far from that trail I had come and how far I had to walk to get back.

A few weeks after my injury, when I was in the rehab center, I found someone willing to travel to the center to give me a massage. Partway through, she suggested trying something called Reiki. This is where instead of touching you, the masseuse waves their hands through the air over you to “adjust your energy fields.” You can probably tell by the way that I describe this that I think this is a bunch of BS. Does it work for some people? Of course it does. The placebo effect can work with any type of treatment or medication by providing someone with an improvement if and when they expect to get one. The nice doctor in the white lab coat gives you some pills and says, “Take two of these each morning, and your pain should feel much better.” The medication that the doctor gives you could be nothing more than sugar pills. Still, if you really believe that you’ll benefit from it, your brain finds a way to make at least some improvement come true. In double-blind studies, it’s been proven that the placebo effect can provide as much as a 32 percent improvement. Because of this, for new drugs to be approved in the US, they need to test at a level that’s higher than the 32 percent placebo level of improvement. So, if I’d believed in Reiki, then I may have experienced some benefit from it, but I don’t, so I didn’t get anything out of the treatment. That said, I think it’s interesting that when dealing with chronic pain, the temptation is to try almost anything, no matter how crazy it sounds. The hope is that maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to get some relief from your ongoing pain.

As crazy as all of this may sound to you, I know that our brains are able to control so many things depending on how we think about something. About twenty years ago, a business partner and I taught real estate investing seminars. One of the most significant factors that affects someone’s success in real estate, or any other endeavor, is belief. I’ve heard it said that if you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, either way, you’re right. Suppose you really honestly believe that you’ll succeed in real estate or any other endeavor. In that case, you’re about 1,000 times more likely to put in the effort and stick with it. If you don’t believe you’re going to succeed, then most people put in next to no effort to basically prove themselves right when nothing happens. At our seminars, we would demonstrate this by teaching the concept of “Spots.” We explained that according to an ancient methodology, we all have a weak spot and a strong spot. Speaking in a strong, confident voice, we’d say, “Here’s your strong spot right here,” and demonstrate this by touching the center of our forehead. “You also have a weak spot” (speaking in a softer, weaker voice). “It’s located in the soft fleshly spot right here behind your ear.” We again demonstrated and encouraged them to follow along. Then to give it a little emphasis, we added, “Careful, don’t push it too much, or you’ll get really weak!” Then we said, “We’ll show you how this actually works,” and invited one of the stronger-looking participants up onto the stage. We’d touch the person in their “strong” spot and ask them to hold their arm straight out to the side. “Now I’m going to push down on your arm, and I want you to resist me as much as you can.” We’d push down with a decent amount of effort, and our client’s arm would not budge down at all. “Now I’m going to touch your weak spot” (touching the person behind their ear). “And watch as I’m now able to push their arm completely down.” The crazy thing is that no matter how hard the subject tries to hold their arm up, after touching their “weak” spot, it drops right down with much less effort than during the first attempt. Then we said, “Now I want you to prove this to yourself. Pair up with the person next to you to test this out for yourself.” The room would buzz with the sounds of people talking as they discovered that the strong and weak spots really did, for the most part, work. Then we would switch the spots. “Isn’t it crazy that just because we told you to push on the strong spot behind your ear, that made you really strong? And when we told you to push on the weak spot in the middle of your forehead, that made you really weak?” we’d say. “No, no, you’ve got them backward!” the crowd would shout at us. At which point, we’d demonstrate that the spots worked just as well if you switched them, finally telling them, “We actually made all this up—but it works anyway!” What you tell yourself and what you believe really does make a difference. I don’t know if this helps to explain why I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I was passionately committed to the belief that if I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, then my foot and leg were going to have to be better. Each day that I hiked, with every mile further north that I went, heck, with every single step I took, I was reclaiming my life. I know that anything is possible. My adventure on the trail proved this to me each and every day. 14 May—Finding a Buddy You Can’t Avoid Pain, But You Can Choose to Overcome it. —Paulo Coelho Two and a half hours after leaving Shenandoah National Park, I arrived home.

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. —Bob Marley

It’s a funny thing. I work like a horse around the trailer court. But when I say I’m taking a hike, they say I shouldn’t because I’m too old. I got up on the roof awhile back and sawed off a tree limb. But no one said anything about that.

When you’re a 67-year-old woman on a 2,050-mile hike, though, maybe there isn’t another person in the world who qualifies as an expert on how to take care of your own feet.

It’s taken three years for me to begin to accept that I may never heal completely from my injury. I decided while hiking that I probably won’t be able to run again—ever. And I’m okay with that. I decided that I’d rather focus on what I CAN do rather than focus on what I CAN’T do. If I weren’t injured, it’s likely that I’d never have decided to hike the trail. It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do about it. With all that said, this was a day to celebrate.

Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day.

Johann Sebastian Bach once walked two hundred miles to hear a master play the organ.

William Wordsworth was said to have walked 180,000 miles in his lifetime.

Some 20 million Americans, more than a tenth of the 166 million US citizens, were subjected to federal security investigations.

she had walked more than fourteen thousand miles, more than halfway around the earth,

...she offered an assortment of reasons about why she was walking. The kids were finally out of the house. She heard that no woman had yet thru-hiked in one direction. She liked nature. She thought it would be a lark. I want to see what’s on the other side of the hill, then what’s beyond that, she told a reported in Ohio. Any one of the answers could stand on its own, but viewed collectively, the diversity of responses left her motivation open to interpretation, as though she wanted people to seek out their own conclusions, if there were any to be made. Maybe each answer was honest. Maybe she was trying to articulate that exploring the world was a good way to explore her own mind.

I did not worry if it was to be the end of me", she wrote in her diary. "It was as good a place as any." (Grandma Gatewood)

The young man is deflated; I don’t know how anyone could inspire him at this point. Anything said will cause him to search for the counterpoint, to rationalize why he’s miserable, entrench himself in his position. If help is coming, it will be from within.

Despite Old Leatherman’s mystique, Edward Payson Weston was probably America’s most famous pedestrian. In 1860, he bet his friend that Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t win the presidency. In 1861, he walked nearly five hundred miles, from Boston to Washington, DC, for Lincoln’s inauguration, arriving a few hours late but in time to attend the inaugural ball. He launched his pro career a few years later, walking thirteen hundred miles from Portland, Maine, to Chicago in twenty-six days. Two years later he walked five thousand miles for $25,000. Two years after that, the showman walked backward for two hundred miles. He competed in walking events against the best in Europe. Once, in his old age, he staged a New York to San Francisco one-hundred-day walk, but he arrived five days late. Peeved, he walked back to New York in seventy-six days. He told a reporter he wanted to become the “propagandist for pedestrianism,” to impart the benefits of walking to the world. A devout pedestrian, he preached walking over driving. Unfortunately, he was seriously injured in 1927 when a taxicab crashed into him in New York, confining him in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.

Aristotle lectured while strolling.

Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

They say they haven’t time to walk—and wait fifteen minutes for a bus to carry them an eighth of a mile,” wrote Edmund Lester Pearson in 1925. “They pretend that they are rushed, very busy, very energetic; the fact is, they are lazy.

A large metal plaque affixed to the rock said: GRANDMA GATEWOOD MEMORIAL TRAIL THIS SIX-MILE TRAIL IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF GRANDMA GATEWOOD, A VIBRANT WOMAN, SEASONED HIKER, AND LONG-TIME HOCKING HILLS ENTHUSIAST. THE PATH BEGINS HERE, VISITS CEDAR FALLS, AND TERMINATES AT ASH CAVE. JANUARY 17, 1981