My hike of the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one trip started well before I set foot on the Trail in Maine. It started as a glimmer sparked by my dad’s unrealized dream when I was a child. I only remember him mentioning the Appalachian Trail a few times and I didn’t even try backpacking until I borrowed his canvas rucksack for a weekend trip with my college friends.
My AT journey started with the statement, “Now that we live in Georgia, maybe we could go see the Appalachian Trail.” My husband and I had lived in Georgia with our three sons for two years, and that casual suggestion inspired a Sunday drive to the nearest AT trailhead to our Atlanta home. That was Woody Gap, about 15 miles north of Dahlonega, GA. A couple of hours after leaving home, we arrived at Woody Gap where a gravel parking lot, a wooden kiosk, and a concrete block privy greeted us.
Nearby, a narrow trail beckoned us up a mountain, rather unceremoniously I recall. “This is the fabled Appalachian Trail?”, I remarked. As we entered the woods and passed a worn wooden sign that read Blood Mountain Wilderness, I noticed that the trail was just wide enough for one person. It wound up the mountain, rather steeply, too. Still, this footpath called me somehow. Within minutes, still climbing the narrow, rocky path, I started feeling a thrill of excitement.
Voices, and visions of hikers, began drifting into my mind. I tingled with the realization that hundreds, if not thousands, of others had gone before me, walking this same path! Legends like Grandma Gatewood, a woman who had walked the trail alone in her sixties, had stood right here! Now, here I was, on the Appalachian Trail myself! “If I just keep walking”, I thought, “I could go all the way to Maine!” I was hooked!
We only walked two miles up to Preaching Rock that day before descending back to our car at Woody Gap. But, my heart never left! I was lured by the AT like Ulysses by the Sirens!
It took another six years to begin my thru hike at Mt. Katahdin, Maine, but I as I look back, I realize that those years comprised a thorough and natural training for my seven-month walk. A few weeks from that first visit, we returned to the Trail, this time walking six miles from Jarrard Gap to Woody Gap. We had just one car, so my husband and I hiked alone in opposite directions, doing a “key swap” in the middle. I was impressed with how quickly that walk went. It took just under three hours, and I thought that the trail was simply beautiful! I was hungry for more!
Over the next three years, we hiked the southern 100 miles of the AT in 6 sections:
Garrard Gap to Cooper Gap (9.2 miles) Gooch Gap to Amicalola Falls (24.5 miles) Garrard Gap to Neels Gap (5 miles) Neels Gap to Unicoi Gap (27.2 miles) Dicks Creek Gap to Unicoi Gap (17.6 miles) Dick’s Creek Gap to Deep Gap, NC (17.7 miles)
On each of these weekend hikes, we refined our gear, trying out new equipment, letting go of non-essential items, and learning the ways of the trail. We used a two-car shuttle system. This allowed us to take one-way walks, but required many hours of driving on the winding mountain roads of north Georgia. The 17.7 trail miles between Dick’s Creek Gap and Deep Gap required about 600 miles of road miles in the two shuttle cars! We were ready for more hiking and less driving!
Our trips got longer as our enjoyment of the trail got stronger. The next 600 miles of the Trail were walked in just 4 trips!
Arriving in Damascus, VA
Wallace Gap to Fontana Dam (57.8 miles in 5 days) Fontana Dam to Hot Springs, NC (109.2 miles in 10 days) Rt. 19E to Hot Springs, NC (114.9 miles in 14 days) RT 19E to Catawba, VA (294 miles in 25 days)
My pack got lighter as I learned about lightweight backpacking and how to focus paring down the weight of the “big three”: pack, sleeping bag, and tent. I dropped the fanny-pack topper from my pack, bought a women’s length mummy bag, and made a silnylon tarp from a RayWay kit.
Our month-long section from 19E to Catawba, VA galvanized my love of the
AT and my desire to hike the whole thing – all 2,173 miles from Georgia to Maine. My husband’s job got more demanding, however, and during the year following our month-long section, we didn’t hike the AT at all! It was on a winter overnight to Springer Mountain that I crooned that in a year I could be completing a southbound hike of the AT. My husband responded that he didn’t really care if he finished the trail. My heart sank, but not for long. “I’ll just have to do this myself!” I thought. And the planning began!
At that moment, my 2007 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike began. I didn’t know then that it was to be a life-changing journey, both personally and professionally. And that’s another story!
This book gave me a new view of life and the tools to make that new view a reality! It’s not just theory, it’s the Law of Attraction in Action. Just 5 practical steps turn your troubles into blessings. It’s an easy read! Start today!
Call Regina Reiter, Certified Radical Forgiveness Coach
678-938-2075
www.forgivenesswalks.com
Satori means “awakening”. It’s the Radical Forgiveness board game, played over the course of two to three hours. It reveals unconscious beliefs and patterns that drive your life’s drama.
Move your token by turns from Victimland through the awakening process to reach Satori. It’s like a transformational Candyland! You move through the game, shifting how you see an “event” in your life, drawn randomly from the Event and Context decks.
You’ll be surprised how the cards you draw mirror your life’s experiences and feelings. You’ll get the same shift in energy that all of the Radical Forgiveness tools generate. Each board sits up to five players. Multiple groups can play at the same time.
Regina Reiter will facilitate as Game Master, bringing her Radical Forgiveness experience and her love of this game to the table! You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll gain new insights and leave the table with more energy. Don’t miss it!
“I didn’t expect the evening to be what it turned out to be. What happened in the game was a wonderful surprise. I almost don’t have the words to tell you how great it was. Here’s what comes to mind: Cleansing. Communion. Completion. Thank you.” -LD
Yesterday, I joined Adela Rubio’s Conscious Energy Shift Inner Circle call – our first in this year-long program. Adela reminded us that these calls are focused on empowering us in using our Co-Creative Energy. “It’s not about healing energy”, she said.
I hadn’t thought clearly about distinctive forms of energy! I realized, though, that all the courses and programs I’ve been in this year have supported me in distinguishing between them.
Healing energy is that which dissolves stuck energy blocks, bringing my energy into the present moment. This energy is the experience of Radical Forgiveness, of Landmark Education’s Completing the Past, in Brenda Cobb’s colonics and detox at Living Foods Institute. This is wonderful, powerful, necessary energy to dissolve and shift blocks keeping me from recognizing my value, my health, and that of others around me!
Co-Creative Energy, however, is that which focuses this clear, high vibrational energy toward manifesting what’s in my imagination! It’s what inspires my pen to describe my Hiking Goddess Walks. Its the energy that inspires my actions for attracting clients to my programs. Its the energy that courses through me when I connect to others on Adela’s calls.
I am always touched by the courage and openness shown by the people who share the Satori Game with me. Sunday’s game was no exception. Old Stories of abandonment, self-doubt, and feeling-stifling shifted to New Stories of Abundance, Self-love, and Self-acceptance.
What is apparent during the game is how empowering, soothing, and awakening it is for us to express and to hear the words of the game: “We love you just the way you are.” OR “I love myself being in my feelings about this” OR, my favorite “And what a healing angel you are for them too.”
I LOVE THIS GAME! I WANT TO SHARE IT FAR AND WIDE!
Thanks to Deb Unterman for creating and sharing it.
Do you want a New Story? Come play Satori. The next games are
Sunday, March 20 at 4 p.m. and Friday, April 23 at 6 p.m. in Decatur, GA
I met someone yesterday while on my walk who had an immediate response to my introduction as someone who teaches forgivness. “”What if I have someone I don’t ever want to forgive?”
My smug thought, before really knowing the story, was that Radical Forgiveness works for anything!
Can Unforgiveness serve us? Can it be better, safer, more effective to hate someone else who we blame for our suffering, or the suffering of others?
As we walked along on our nature walk, noticing trees, small animal holes in the pine needles, changing slope on the mountain, and multi-colored fungus adorning rotting logs, our observations of Nature were interspersed with the unfolding story. Bit by bit, the pain and suffering were revealed.
The consciously nurtured hatred of this man touched my heart. I was almost convinced that, indeed, here was justified, necessary unforgiveness. He needs that.
What woke me up, though, is the very reason that he says he’s maintaining hatred – for his children. Hatred protects them, he said. By practicing the art of discerning the truly bad people one can survive.
I was wondering, however, if it’s because of the children that we would want to forgive, so they don’t experience the anger, the separation, the hardness of hate.
We talked for a little longer before our paths diverged, I feeling honored that he would share his story, hoping that I had planted a seed of willingness to be open to the possibility that even this transgression happened for a spiritual purpose and healing. That seed may grow over time.
Later, I was listening to testimonies from graduates of the Living Foods Institute. http://www.livingfoodsinstitute.com . A lovely, healed woman tearfully proclaimed her experience of Forgiveness in the program. “In this week,” she related, “I learned that I could let go of the anger, the abuse that I had received and STOP it now. That my son, sitting over there, could now receive the LOVE that I have to give. I can stop the chain of generations of hatred. That’s what I got from this program” Applause and free flowing tears in the audience affirmed the power of her statement.
