Now, I certainly haven’t hiked everywhere in the world, but I have hiked a lot of places, and so far, for my money, the John Muir Trail is the best backpacking trip in the world. It has a lot of everything you want: grand vistas, dense forests, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, abundant water sources and wildlife, solitude, side trips, reasonable resupply options, and minimal bug pressure (if you go in the fall). This would be my longest backpacking trip up to this point, and I was excited and nervous to see how I would do. It ended up being a marvelous two-week trip. Over time, I have come to see longer backpacking trips as the purest expression of freedom. You get up, hike, eat, sleep, repeat, all in some of the most beautiful surroundings this world has to offer. You don’t need to make big, elaborate plans. You go with the flow and just follow a line. It’s simplicity at its finest. On top of all that, you get to interact with like-minded folks who are there for the same love of nature as you. Some are there to find themselves, some might be escaping something, and some might just be taking a much-needed break from work, but what brings us all together is the healing power of nature. It’s interesting what happens once you’re on the trail for a long period. After being away from all your distractions for so long and only hiking every day, your mental chatter quiets down, and it just becomes you and nature. These long-term backpacking experiences have the potential to be some of the most peaceful, profound, and insightful experiences you can treat yourself to. It’s not easy at first. It’s actually quite hard, physically, of course, while your body takes time to adapt to the daily grind, but mentally, it may be even more challenging. Away from your comforts, you have to retrain your mind’s expectations, and that is not always easy to do. But once you get over the physical and mental hurdles in the beginning, you get into a sort of flow state that’s hard to beat, and that’s why so many people get addicted to long-distance thru-hiking.
