Jennifer Pharr Davis: The value of the trail is always going to be found in your experience. I wasn't having a whole lot of fun. I was not in control. The only thing I had control over was myself and my attitude.  When I finally realized that,  the trail started to get easier.  When I got to the end, I was  a completely different person. And I like the woman at the end a whole lot more that the girl who had started.

Hey y'all thanks for coming out. I'm really excited to be here.  I am a hiker, I love to hike, I've hiked all over the world. And still, the trail that means the most to me, the trail that has changed my life the most, is the Appalachian Trail. And I have actually done the entire Appalachian Trail now three separate times.

And it was the most recent time in 2011, where with my husband's help and a whole lot of help, I started really early and actually didn't stop until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And I set the overall record, and along the way averaged 47 miles a day, for 46 straight days! But hopefully, hopefully tonight and especially in this place, we can agree that a journey of any distance or any speed always starts with a single step. Right? And my first step, into the wilderness took place when I was 21-years old. I had just graduated from college, and like a lot of recent college grads I had absolutely no clue what it was I was going to do with my life. So, I needed time, I wanted a place to figure things out. But from what I had heard about it, and in my 21-year old head, you know, hiking the Appalachian Trail was just walking. So I figured how hard, how hard could it be?

So, I started on my own in Georgia, with all my brother's old boy-scout gear in the month of March, and my goal was to make it all the way to Maine. And I realized very early on that walking the Appalachian Trail was the hardest thing I had ever done. And it never got a whole lot easier. About three weeks into my first journey, I made it to the Smoky Mountain National Park. I had stopped at a shelter, and I remember that night just being curled up in my sleeping bag, and shivering, and listening to the sound of rain fall on the shelter roof. And then the next morning when I woke up, the first thought that went through my head was, “Oh thank you God, I don't hear rain on the shelter roof anymore. It must've stopped.” And then I looked outside. And what did I see? Snow! There was six inches of snow already on the ground, and it was coming down in blizzard-like conditions. Hiking down the Appalachian Trail is difficult. Right? It is especially difficult in a snowstorm, because the entire 2,185-mile trail that goes through 14 separate states is marked with only one single symbol. Do you know what that is? A white blaze. a two-by-six inch white rectangle that is usually painted on trees. So now I am looking for a white mark on trees that are covered in snow. But you know, on the bright side, on the bright side, I am an optimist. Most of the time the trail, or what I thought was the trail, was inside the forest. And so the trees somewhat protected me from the wind and the snow that was coming down. But then at one point the trail left the forest  and went on this long, exposed ridge line. 

And as soon as I left the tree cover, well, I felt the wind, and I felt the snow, and it burned, just burned my skin. And, so naturally I ducked my head and closed my eye, and kept walking as quickly as I could to get back into the forest. But when I got there, I lifted my head and I couldn't open my eye.  It had literally frozen shut, which I didn't know that could happen but it can. It can. And I had to stand there and pick icicles off of my eyelashes, and wipe frozen crust out of the corner of my eye until I could  once again lift my eyelid, and regain my sight, and keep hiking down the mountain.

Now thankfully, thankfully I made it out of the Smokys and after about a month of walking I made it to Virginia. And I was so excited to be in Virginia because for the first time on my trip, it actually started to feel like Spring. The weather was a little warmer. I could wear my hiking shorts instead of just sticky rain-pants all day. And there were actually wild flowers coming up along the trail.  So, while I was no longer always pre-occupied with Mother Nature, now I started to enjoy the human nature aspect of the A.T.

And again there's a lot that makes the A.T. really special, but at the top of that list, it has to be community. I mean, the community on the A.T. is probably the most quirky, eccentric community I have ever been a part of. But it's also the most wonderful group of people I have ever known. The two main groups on the trail are gonna be, you know, folks right out of high school or college, and then individuals who have recently retired. Because those are the two times in life where you can go and take a five month hike. And what I discovered is that that is a really amazing combination. I mean as a 21-year old I was relieved to meet other people my age and realize they didn't have it all figured out either. But more than that I was really fortunate to spend a lot of time and a lot of miles with people in their 50's or 60's or early 70's. And they had a lifetime's worth of experience, and knowledge, and wisdom. And on the trail they had time to share their stories. And there are many occasions when after hiking a full day with another hiker and then parting ways, it felt like I knew that person as well as someone I had known my entire life. And I loved that. And I loved meeting new people on the trail.

Now after, uh, after about  two and half months of hiking I made it to Pennsylvania. And on one hand I was really excited because I had come over 1,000 miles and, you know, before I'd started the trail that kinda seemed impossible.  The only problem was, hiking a 1,000 miles had been the hardest thing I had ever done in my entire life, and I still had over a 1,000 miles left to go. And to add to that, Pennsylvania is not the easiest state on the trail. Does anyone in here know what Pennsylvania is known for? Rocks! Pennsylvania rocks. It's like all the other states took all their rocks and just dumped them in Pennsylvania. But in Pennsylvania, I told myself things will get better when you get out of the rocks, things will get better when you get to the next state.

But pretty soon, uh, after I made it out of Pennsylvania, I had the hardest day I've ever had on the trail, and one of the hardest days of my life. And, uh, something really tragic happened when one morning I was hiking by myself to the top of a mountain, and about 20 minutes before I  arrived on top of the mountain,  someone had driven up and taken their own life. And I was the first person to come across the scene. And I didn't know if it was a suicide or a murder,  I didn't know what to think. I just felt like time stood still. It seemed like my stomach dropped out of my body and I turned and I ran. And I ran to some point where I stopped and I pulled out my cellphone and I called 9-1-1. And the police came out and they met me on the trail and they sat me down and asked me questions for about 15 minutes. About 15 minutes of questions and then when they were done, they packed up their paperwork and they looked at me and they said, “Okay, you can keep hiking now.” And because I didn't know what to do, I just kept hiking. And looking back, I know it was the best thing I could've done. I learned in the hours and the days after that incident that there is something very powerful and very healing about physical forward motion. And also at that point in the trail, I realized that my friends and family were not 1,000 miles away. My friends and family were all around me on the trail. These people who I thought were strangers when we started in Georgia, well the hikers a few miles ahead of  me or behind me, they all rushed to me.  I mean, they rushed to my side, and they said, “If you want us to walk with you every step to Maine, we will. If you need space, we'll give you space. If you want food, you can have our food. And thru-hikers never offer other thru-hikers food.  And it was that accountability, and that support, and that sense of community that gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going.

Well, then I got to Massachusetts, and up until Massachusetts, I had had only two bug bites the entire trip. Then my first day in MA, I got 137 mosquito bites. And I counted twice, okay! So, I know. And that was before we reaching, uh, Vermont and discovering, you know, the black flies of New England and um, you know, I had this day in Vermont where I was, uh, you know, very hot. At this point it was humid, it was in the 90's. And I was surrounded by a cloud of black flies, and my bug spray kept sweating off every 15 minutes, and I was just miserable. And I was so mad because at this point I thought the trail should've been fun. I thought it should've been, you know, less difficult. And I actually thought about quitting. I mean, I had come through 12 states and I only had two left to go, and I thought about what it would look like to get off the trail. And I did some pretty serious soul searching. I finally recognized that on the trail... Well, first of all, the trail is innately difficult. At no point would it be easy. But on the trail, more than that, I was not in control. Duh! Right? It kinda seems like that's obvious.  But I think, you know, as a 21-year old in our culture, that was a hard pill to swallow. The only thing I had control over was myself and my attitude.  When I finally realized that, that was the moment the trail started to get easier. Which is really saying something, because the last two states are by far the toughest. I mean, Maine and New Hampshire, up there you don't hike with your feet, you just scramble up mountains and you slide down them on your bottom. But I had a blast, 'cause I was a completely different person. When I got to the end I was a completely different person, and I like the woman at the end a whole lot more than the girl who had started.

When it was over, when I got up to Katahdin, I did what most any hiker does. I got off trail. And I think everything said that, you know, I should've been happy. But then the weeks started to pass, and the months started to pass, and all I could think about was the trail. And it was at that point I started saving up time away from work, I started   saving up money from work, and I started to plan my next adventure, my next hike. And for the next three years fell into a routine of working and hiking and working and hiking.  And, by the time I was just 25,  I basically admitted that I had a problem. I mean, I was a hiker. That's where all my time and all my money went.  And at that point, I decided that I wanted to try and establish a women's record on the A.T. 

So on June 8th, 2008, Brew, that's my husband, Brew and I were married and then just 12 days later, we went up to Maine, we started at Katahdin, and we began to work our way south-bound. And talk about a honeymoon. But that said, after just 57 days of being a team, working together, we made it to Springer Mountain, Georgia. And along the way, I had averaged 38 miles a day. And that's not too shabby, right? But now there's this small voice inside of me that said, I might have what it would take to set the overall record. It got to the point where I knew there were only two options. Either we would go back and try for the overall record or else I would always look back and I would always wonder what might have been. And I didn't want to look back and I didn't want to wonder.

So, in the summer of 2011, we went back to the Appalachian Trail. And we went back to Katahdin, up in Maine. This was my third time. For the first few days it was as we had anticipated. But then on day five we got to Saddleback Mountain in Maine. And I was scrambling up to the summit when I started to feel a really sharp pain between my knee and my ankle in my right leg. When I got to the ridge, I was in so much pain that I put all my weight on the other side of my body and just limped along. Until the exact same pain that was in my right leg developed in my left leg. Within three hours I had full-blown shin-splints. But if I could just make it to Vermont. Has anyone in here hiked in Vermont? A lot hikers actually call Vermont 'Ver-mud', okay?  'Cause once you get to Ver-mud or Vermont there's a lot more dirt, if not a foot of mud that you're hiking through. And I thought maybe if I could just get there, it would be soft enough to where my legs could heal. So, now all I had to do was make it through New Hampshire to get there. And if there's one state on the entire trail where I just wake up in the morning and pray for good weather, it's New Hampshire. When I got there, I had about 24 hours of what I will generously call decent weather. And then I was going up the slopes of Mount Washington, which is not only one of the highest peaks on the entire trail, but at one point Mount Washington had the highest recorded wind speed of any place on the planet.  Sure enough, as soon as I got above tree-line, that wind picked up and then the clouds rolled in, and then the rain. The rain started to fall. When I got up to Franconia Ridge, well now the last week of June, I was hiking in the middle of a sleet storm. And finally I accepted what deep down I already knew. And that was I was moderately hypothermic, and it was becoming a lot worse very quickly.

By the time I made it to the base of that mountain, I was so stiff, I was so cold, that I could barely bend my joints. This is how I was moving, I looked like Frankenstein's monster, I did. But my saving grace is that, Brew, you know, he knew there was bad weather. So, in the middle of the day he had hiked in, he had set up our tent at the base of the mountain, and as soon as I saw it, I got inside.  So there I was inside the tent, and I put on a warm fleece and a dry rain jacket, and fresh socks. Fresh socks are like the best thing ever when you're a hiker.  But looking around the tent, I, you know, soon discovered there was not an extra set of shorts or pair of pants.  And so, I turned to the corner of the tent where my cold, wet, icy shorts sat in the middle of a puddle. Ugh! And then I turned to my husband. And I glanced back at the puddle and I glanced back at my husband and I said, “I want your shorts.” Right?  And this is so my husband, because he did not bat an eye, he did not disagree, he just looked straight back at me and said, “Ask nicely.” Right. Had to have some dignity, some standards on the trail. So I did, and I got his shorts and I was able to keep going. And, um, you know, I tell that story and I hope it's clear, I mean, I think it's clear after that story, that it was really my husband's support that always allowed me to keep going. And I know that I would have quit without Brew. 'Cause the first day we made it to Vermont, the first day we got to that one state where I was sure it was all gonna get better.

Well, my first day in Vermont was the worst day of the entire summer. I mean, my body couldn't take it anymore and I got sick. So I was even more depleted and becoming severely dehydrated. And you know, at this point I wasn't even hiking one mile per hour. So, for the first time on any trail, any hike I quit. I mean 100 percent I quit. I told myself I'd just somehow get to the next road crossing.  And when I made it there, we were going home. So when I finally arrived, I saw Brew and I told him how much I hurt. And I told him how sick I was. And I told him that we were done with the record. And he looked back at me and this is so not my husband. Because he looked back at me and he said,  “Suck it up!”  And he said, “If this is really what you want, that's fine, you can quit. But you just can't quit right now.” He said, “Right now I think you feel too bad to make a good decision. So right now you got to eat, drink, and take medicine and keep going. And tomorrow night, if you still want to quit, we'll go home.” So I left that road crossing counting the minutes and the miles until I could officially throw in the towel. But after the 12 slowest, most painful miles that I have ever known, I started to feel about that much better. And as soon as I felt a hair better, well, you know, I no longer thought that I could set the record on the Appalachian Trail, but I didn't want to get off the Appalachian Trail. I wanted to keep going, I wanted to see what would happen. And never again that summer did I think about stopping.

That summer, one thing the trail forced me to do was just live in the moment. 'Cause if I thought about yesterday, I was exhausted. And, if I looked ahead, forget about tomorrow. If I looked ahead to the afternoon or the evening, I was demoralized. But I always knew that I could take one more step, and I always thought, I always hoped that I could hike one more mile. That was my mantra all summer. One more step, one more mile, one more step, one more mile. And on the trail that summer I wasn't having a whole lot of fun. But every morning I woke up with a strong sense of purpose,  and the joy of knowing that I was getting to live my dream. And after 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes, we made it to Springer Mountain, Georgia. And we did what almost everyone thought was impossible. We set the overall record on the Appalachian Trail.

And I want to share my experience with you right now with a few pictures from the Appalachian Trail record.

I had my dreams and big ideas

But reality was grounding

I appeared to be a dying tree

With others towering around me

My roots go deeper than these eyes can tell

An endless running water well

Feeds me till I've had my fill

Deeper than these eyes can tell

You can't see what's hiding here beneath the surface

You can't tell how my heart grows till you unearth it

I may not touch the sky In my soul I am a seeker

Though I fail most times I try

My roots go deeper

My roots go deeper

My roots go deeper