appalachiantrials

I really enjoyed this quick read by Zach Davis, AKA the Good Badger. Like the author, I too was surprised to not see any books on the psychological aspects of an undertaking such as the AT. While hiker memoirs cover it as a personal aspect of their whole story, it’s not the focus of those books and rarely gets much of a mention. And none of them that I’ve read cover post-hike issues, generally ending with the hike. Davis’ book is split up into three sections – Pre-Trail, On-Trail, and Post-Trail – and deals with issues specifically in those categories. He seems to have spoken with a lot of other thru-hikers to address these issues so it’s not just his own personal experience being discussed. I have already heard of a lot of the issues people run into but it’s nice to see them all listed in one place, with action plans for how to prevent or deal with them. He also calls out more information listed on his website for further reading.