Jen and I were married on June 8, 2008. Thirteen days later, after honeymooning in Montreal, Montpelier, Vermont, and on the coast of Maine, we camped out at Katahdin Stream Campground and woke up at 3:30 AM to begin hiking up Katahdin.
About a week later, after I’d missed a road crossing near Stratton and the only showers I’d gotten were when our tent leaked during the nightly rain storms, Jen—ever the upbeat thru-hiker—said, “I’m so glad we’re out here. This is the perfect way for us to get away from our families and spend time with each other as newlyweds.” I sighed loudly and said, “You know, we could have gotten away from our families and spent time together as newlyweds in Fiji instead.”
That’s kind of been a running joke for us ever since, that and the fact that Jen will owe me for the rest of our lives. After the 2008 hike, she offered to watch 57 Tennessee Titans football games with me—one for every day we spent on the trail—and give me a back massage at every halftime. I, in my wisdom, told her that I didn’t want to quantify things, that I’d rather hold it over her for the rest of her life than have it ever come to an end. Now I’ve supported her on two record attempts so she owes me twice as much. Two life sentences, if you will.
I remember when Jen came up with the idea to return to the trail and go for the overall record. It was spring of 2010. We were walking on the beach near her parents’ place at Ocean Isle, North Carolina, when she turned to me nonchalantly and said, “I’ve been thinking about my AT record . . .”
I said, “What have you been thinking?” She said, “Well, I just felt like I had a lot left in the tank when we finished in 2008. Do you think I could have done it faster?” I could already see the wheels turning. I could have squelched her hopes and dreams then and there if I’d just lied to her and told her that I thought she’d maxed out the last time and that she couldn’t do it faster. But I remembered how she stopped at 4 PM on Independence Day so we could watch the fireworks and eat funnel cakes in Woodstock, Vermont. How I’d held her up at a road crossing in Pennsylvania because I’d spent too much time at the Yuengling Brewery. Or how Warren and Horton both noted how remarkable she looked toward the end of the hike, how she made 38 miles a day seem almost effortless.
So I had to be honest and tell her, “Yeah, I think you could have done it faster. At least five or six days faster.” She replied, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking, too.” She waited for a minute, then said, “So . . . what do you think about us trying to go back and do it again sometime?” And then I knew she had me. She probably knew it, too. Or at least she knew how agreeable I am, that I can’t say no to her, that I’m a total pushover. I said, “Honey, if that’s what you want to do, then we can talk about it.” And just like that, Jen’s 2011 Appalachian Trail Record Attempt was on.
Why am I telling you these stories? I’m telling you for two reasons. First, I want to give you some background on Jen’s most recent hike. And second, as much as I enjoy living a lie, I want to dispel the myth that I am the perfect husband or some sort of saint.
I’m not. I get cranky a lot. And I got cranky this summer. When Jen wanted to quit near Killington, Vermont, I encouraged her because I genuinely believed she could still break the record. But I also encouraged her because I felt invested. And I guess that’s what this summer was really about. Being invested. All in. Together.
For me, being invested meant I didn’t allow myself to relax. For almost the entire 46 days, I was a nervous wreck. I knew we had the slimmest of margins and that if I missed Jen at a single road crossing, I could potentially ruin everything. No Yuengling Brewery this time around. Instead, I led this manic existence where I would rush and rush to get to the next road crossing, then, no matter how much I needed to relax or how much free time I really had, I would busy myself with chores—making turkey wraps, organizing the car, or calculating mileage.
I spent hours calculating mileage. How many miles is Jen ahead of Andrew today? How many more miles is she averaging compared to the 2008 hike? How many will she complete if she stops at Bake Oven Road tonight? What was her mile per hour average for the last section? How many miles is she from Delaware Water Gap? How many does she have to Springer?
I told myself that all of the number crunching was to encourage Jen with “positive numbers.” And that was true. But it was also because I had a ridiculous amount of nervous energy, and since I had a bum knee, I couldn’t get rid of it in a normal, healthy way. So I pored over figures and maps, prepared backpacks, and pretty much did anything to keep myself occupied, including writing blog entries.
I never thought people would enjoy them so much. And I certainly never thought it would turn into a book. I just figured we were doing something cool that our grandkids might want to know about someday, so I decided to keep a somewhat detailed and mildly amusing account.
The other day, I was reading a book by Shane Claiborne called The Irresistible Revolution. It’s a pretty radical treatise on how Christians have shirked their responsibilities and haven’t taken care of the poor. I’ve read a lot of books about Christianity and I can count on one hand the times that something has struck me to the core. Something Claiborne wrote did that to me the other day. Pretty early in the book, he’s talking about miracles, and he writes:
I started to see that the miracles were an expression not so much of Jesus’ mighty power as of his love . . . Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn’t that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.
Why am I saying that? While Jen and I can be very proud of what we did this summer, it’s inevitable that someday, somebody else is going to come along and break Jen’s record just like she broke Andrew Thompson’s and Andrew Thompson broke Pete Palmer’s and Pete Palmer broke David Horton’s and so on.
But the deeper miracle or accomplishment or whatever you want to call it is that we went through this ordeal together, that we supported each other wholeheartedly, that we overcame a lot of obstacles, and that through it all, we loved each other really well. I love watching the video clip of us hugging on Springer Mountain because it embodies all of that.
On the surface, that may not be as impressive as setting a record. But in the long run, it’s much more significant. I know you may not have chosen to read this book if Jen hadn’t broken the record. For that matter, it may not even have been published. But do me a favor and try not to read it just as a journal of a record attempt. Try to read it as a love story. Because that’s what it is. And when it’s all said and done, love’s going to outlast records. Shoot, love’s going to outlast everything.