[00:00:00] David Mertens: That dream never died, but what really transitioned it for us was when the pandemic hit. If you go through our YouTube videos, you’ll hear more about our story. I lost my job in 2012, became a stay-at-home dad supporting her dream of going back to grad school, and so my way of coping with young kids was getting them outdoors.

[music]

[00:00:29] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and I am so excited for this conversation today with the Mertens family. I have to tell you, I’ve been waiting a long time to have this conversation. Our CEO, Ethan Demme, over a year ago said, “You’ve got to find this family. They live near you.” The irony of it is we live less than 10 miles apart, but we’ve only met digitally thus far. We’re going to have the opportunity today to talk about their story and how they took their kids on the road. David and Sally Ann, I’ll let you all introduce yourself, and then we’ll get to it.

[00:01:06] David: I’m David, and this–

[00:01:07] Sally Ann Mertens: Sally Ann Mertens.

[00:01:09] David: As Gretchen said, we have four children. Today, they’re 16, 15, 12, and 10. We’ve been married 19 years, been together 23 years. Really, we’ve had this– or everybody points at me when they ask, “How on earth did you come up with this idea to hike the whole AT?”

[00:01:28] Sally Ann: To hike the full Appalachian Trail, yes.

[00:01:32] David: It had been a dream of mine since high school, more so because of the outdoors and then the challenge of it, just the physical challenge. One way or another, life got in the way, and so it got postponed, as most things do.

[00:01:45] Sally Ann: Then you married an indoor girl who had never camped prior to 2019.

[00:01:52] David: Yes.

[00:01:53] Sally Ann: Not even once.

[00:01:53] Gretchen: Oh, my goodness. Sally Ann, I didn’t realize that. I used to joke that my definition of camping was running out of toilet paper at the Marriott.

[laughter]

[00:02:03] Sally Ann: That was about my experience. Yes, zero camping. Then he worked on me for 14 of our 19 years of marriage to convince me.

[00:02:12] Gretchen: I was going to say that’s quite a sales job to be able to talk somebody into doing that.

[00:02:17] David: It was for the long haul. One of the great things is that that dream never died, but what really transitioned it for us was when the pandemic hit. Everything shut down, and yet the outdoors remained open. If you go through our YouTube videos, you’ll hear more about our story. I lost my job in 2012, became a stay-at-home dad supporting her dream of going back to grad school, and so my way of coping with young kids was getting them outdoors. I’d take them out to the forest, small adventures, playing in a river, hiking a small trail to a waterfall, whatever it might have been.

As they got older and their legs got stronger, those sessions or adventures gradually got longer to the point that once the pandemic came, we started hiking really as an entire family. Then started to really launch into planning this dream of how do we fit it in with work, with school, with church, with money, with all these different aspects when you’ve got young kids at the house and trying to figure out, as we all do as parents, how best to raise them.

[00:03:32] Sally Ann: Yes. One element that had to change, we did hike as a family, but I had to get comfortable being out with the kids on my own. It was during 2020, later in that year that I started venturing out. We did Wilderness Wednesdays, is what I called it with our homeschool. We would do very short trails that I felt comfortable with. As I started building confidence, we went further and further.

As someone who used to be a distance runner and kept getting injured, I really took to hiking because I didn’t get injured. I was able to go long distances. I wasn’t running by cars. I could take my kids with me. I wasn’t able to really bring them along running except for when they were tiny and in strollers. Yes, it was a nice adjustment to be able to be in nature, exercising.

[00:04:24] Gretchen: Wait, but your youngest was like five when you started this adventure. Not yet five.

[00:04:30] David: When we start–

[00:04:31] Sally Ann: We started hiking?

[00:04:33] Gretchen: Yes, [crosstalk].

[00:04:35] Sally Ann: Yes, in 2020, Gideon would have been four and a half.

[00:04:39] Gretchen: Wow.

[00:04:39] Sally Ann: He’s our only boy and just had the endurance and the energy. As most people know, if you have sons out there, daughters can have energy too, but there’s something special about those boys. He could carry weight from a young age. Yes, he was doing just longer hikes from a very young age.

[00:04:58] David: Granted, it was age-appropriate. With the kids, with them being so little, I’d carry them in a backpack carrier or gradually it progressed to, “I want to carry my own water. I want to carry my own snacks.” Giving them those opportunities to show that they can do it and not pushing them past their limits when they’re young, but finding appropriate ways to get them involved at their age-appropriate level to carry or do the distance was important. It was a good fitness goal for our family too, like she said, just trying to incorporate them to an active lifestyle.

[00:05:32] Sally Ann: About two years before we set out on the trail, so in 2023– Was it 2024 that we started our monthly fitness goals?

[00:05:38] David: ’24.

[00:05:39] Sally Ann: ’24, okay, so a year before. Each month we added a new fitness goal as a family. I think January was like– I should have grabbed those off the fridge, I could show. I still have them. We had a calendar printout and we’d get a sticker each day for all six of us if we did our-

[00:05:57] David: Step goal.

[00:05:57] Sally Ann: -step goal or our 20 squats or our whatever push-ups and added something different each month so that by December before leaving for trail, we had 12 daily things we were doing to get our bodies strong. I’m trying to think of what else we did. We did that. Also, in 2023, we started working ahead in school, which we might get into later, I don’t know, homeschooling-wise, so we could take five months off. It took us two years to get five months.

[00:06:26] Gretchen: You did not take school on the trail then.

[00:06:29] Sally Ann: Not traditional school. There was definitely a lot of learning that occurred, but not in a traditional sense, no.

[00:06:38] David: Rather than it being dedicated book or laptop application-driven, it was more experiential. As we’re hiking through segments of the trail, there’s history, there’s flora and fauna, there’s physical activity, there’s logistical planning that we incorporated them in.

[00:06:56] Sally Ann: There’s project management.

[00:06:57] David: More or less.

[00:06:58] Sally Ann: Yes, time management, stewardship, a lot of math in your head with mileage calculations and percentages completed and distance to town.

[00:07:07] David: You’re studying the weather, too, because that’s a large factor in how far you can go or how soon you have to stop and take breaks.

[00:07:15] Sally Ann: Then just the school of interaction with people from all different backgrounds. That’s not something you can teach in books.

[00:07:21] Gretchen: It took you a while to grow to this, Sally. How about the kids? The girls were all like, “Yes, we’re in,” or were there different personalities at play here?

[00:07:31] Sally Ann: Oh, for sure. They were more excited in 2020 when they were younger than when we got very close because as the girls got older, the oldest being 14 and 15 when we started the trail, they had very deep roots here in Western North Carolina, deep friendships, and it was difficult for them to imagine leaving those for any amount of time. In our experience, being older, five months is nothing, five or six months, but for them, it felt like an eternity. They’d be missing out on everything. All in all, they were on board. They just weren’t as over-the-top enthusiastic. I’d say our least enthusiastic child, though, is Naomi. She’s our girliest girl, loves fashion, loves being comfortable.

[00:08:18] David: Arts and crafts all the way.

[00:08:19] Sally Ann: Yes, and so the thought of not being clean and not having her hair fixed and not having a cute outfit. When we would get to hostels along the trail and we’d get something called loaner clothes– When you go to a place to stay and you get to wash your clothes, you don’t have other clothes to wear while you’re washing your clothes. The hostel will give you– they just have like a closet of randomness, but Naomi– Go ahead.

[00:08:44] David: No, I’m good.

[00:08:45] Sally Ann: Naomi would take such a long time perusing to find just the perfect thing. She’d tighten it up with a rubber band or roll the waistband down so the pants weren’t too long, whatever it was, so she’d feel cute for a day. [laughs]

[00:09:02] Gretchen: I think that was the hardest thing when my son left here. He had a 45-pound pack, and there was maybe a pound of clothes in there. It was food and tent and sleeping pad and things like that. Now, how did you all determine weight? Did everybody carry the same amount or-

[00:09:27] David: No, there’s–

[00:09:27] Gretchen: -you weighed a pack mule? [laughed]

[00:09:31] Sally Ann: He definitely had the heaviest bag, as you should. You’re the heaviest person in our group because it’s a percentage of weight.

[00:09:36] David: Yes. We tried to follow the rule of thumb. Nobody should carry more than 20% of their body weight. Even with Gideon being 80 pounds, really only 16 pounds was really the max, the target that we tried to keep his pack around.

[00:09:53] Sally Ann: He, just sidebar, would ask to carry more. We would give him more, and he would try it, and typically, never gave anything back. There were a couple of days where I had Achilles pain, and it was lessened when my weight on my back was less. On that day, Gideon took my tent, which was three or four pounds that he took, the tent and the poles, which made a huge difference for me, and he didn’t complain. He was so excited to be my helper in that time. The younger two carried 16 to 18 pounds. The next two carried around 25.

[00:10:29] David: 20, 25.

[00:10:39] Sally Ann: 25 pounds. Then I was in the 30s, and you were usually at 40.

[00:10:34] David: 40 to 50.

[00:10:35] Gretchen: I know on the Continental Divide Trail, there were days where Duncan would go like six, seven days with no water supply. I am assuming on the AT, the water supply is more abundant or more frequent. Did you all have to carry water for those adventures, or?

[00:10:55] Sally Ann: Just in the beginning, I think, for the most part. It was in Georgia. Right when we started, they just hadn’t had rain for quite a while. They were sort of in a drought.

[00:11:04] David: They had a very dry winter and fall. Actually, when we started, they had a little bit of a heat wave. It was 70 degrees in February. We actually got sunburned in Georgia.

[00:11:16] Sally Ann: On day two, we’re planning. [laughs]

[00:11:19] David: Which we were not had planning for. You’d think February, even in the South, it gets chilly and cold at night. That wasn’t until we hit the North Carolina state line.

[00:11:26] Sally Ann: The water sources, I don’t know that they weren’t abundant in Georgia. It’s just that we were so hot, because the temperature was higher, that we were going through far more than we anticipated for the spacing of the water. We did have to carry water a few times, and we had three-liter collection bags that David and I would carry. I guess those were what, like seven pounds each when they were full?

[00:11:48] David: It would never last more than a day that we’d have to carry water.

[00:11:52] Gretchen: Did you all decide in advance the miles per day, or did it vary based on how the kids were performing and how everybody felt?

[00:12:04] Sally Ann: Yes. You want to talk a little bit about that? The town to town.

[00:12:11] David: The entire course of doing a long trail is just a lesson in discomfort. Having to develop a plan, but then adapting on the fly. I think that’s a valuable lesson for kids to learn.

[00:12:25] Sally Ann: Dust, too.

[00:12:26] David: Yes, dust, too, but how to deal with that discomfort. You can set a plan. You have to check it against it. Midday, you might have to pivot and say, “We just can’t do any more today.” We’d come up with a daily mileage goal because you’re stuck for the AT planning between resupply points; how far you’re going to carry food before you have to go to the grocery store or gas station and buy more. That’d end up being three to four days at a time. Okay, how far is it from point A to point B? Then determining, breaking it up into manageable chunks.

[00:13:04] Gretchen: I know we didn’t have this question asked, but I know there’s a homeschool mom who’s thinking, did you take picky eaters onto the trail?

[00:13:13] Sally Ann: Having four kids, I know everyone’s different, but from the very beginning, we’ve never been short-order cooks. What is provided for you is what is provided for you. By about age two and a half, we were like, “If you’re going to refuse to eat it, that’s on you.”

[00:13:31] Gretchen: Your next meal will be at– Yes. [laughs]

[00:13:33] Sally Ann: Correct, and so we don’t have picky eaters. They have preferences. Naomi, particularly, doesn’t like cheese. There’s certain meats that Abigail doesn’t like, but they were hungry. I don’t know, if you were to take picky eaters on trail, I think at some point that’s going to break, because you’re so hungry.

[00:13:50] David: You’re hungry.

[00:13:51] Sally Ann: You’re burning so many calories and you’re consistently in a deficit. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to be in a deficit. On average, we were burning, what, 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day. It’s hard to eat that much, to be able to carry that much and eat it.

[00:14:05] Gretchen: Obviously, you said your tent, so everybody had their own tent to carry, or did you all–? How did you choose to do that?

[00:14:14] David: We had three tents so that we could pair up, because especially as we’re getting used to life on trail, with Naomi and Gideon being the younger two, we didn’t put as much responsibility on them. It took a little more training on their part to learn how to set up a tent, how to set up their sleeping bag, and then break it down each day. By being paired up, you had a buddy. We kept Naomi and Gideon with us the first month on trail as they got used to setting up and breaking down and packing their pack.

[00:14:46] Sally Ann: Yes, David was with Gideon, and then I was with Naomi for a little while. Each of our tents was a three-person tent, so we had a little extra space.

[00:14:52] David: Yes. There was extra room for gear to keep it in the tent with us overnight.

[00:14:56] Sally Ann: Then David and I carried a tent each. Then Abigail, our oldest, carried her and Madilyn’s tent. Then Madilyn carried the poles for their tent to split it.

[00:15:07] Gretchen: The logistics of this, did you all sit down and plan as a family? I can see a very rich environment to teach all sorts of logistical skills to kids in this process, but what was the first, oh, that’s not going to work out for you all that you found? Sunscreen, right?

[laughter]

[00:15:27] Sally Ann: Yes. We did get sunscreen.

[00:15:29] David: We’ll take a step back because I’m sure not everybody watching is an outdoorsy family. We took it more as we’re planning a big goal, and a big goal should scare you and get you out of your comfort zone a bit. Where we took the approach, we’re going to do a long trail. Not everybody has that luxury and that ability to do so. This is just one approach that we took. We did spend five years planning for it between vectoring in work schedules, homeschool planning.

[00:16:02] Sally Ann: Saving enough money.

[00:16:03] David: Saving the money.

[00:16:04] Sally Ann: Living very frugally to be able to save. We have had folks asked if we were just independently wealthy or something to be able to afford it. Absolutely not. No. I worked extra shifts. I’m a speech pathologist, so I took on extra jobs that way. We didn’t do as many vacation kind of things to save the money.

[00:16:25] David: Absolutely. We’ve tried to incorporate the kids in every part of that. We’d go on little camping trips and say, “Okay, here’s how much food we have to plan. We’re planning meals ahead of time. We’re planning our daily mileage. These are some of the sites that we’re going to see,” and there’s a level of adapting because you can’t get weather reports in the middle of the forest most of the time, so you’re just studying weather patterns while you’re at it. Then obviously you have to listen to your body too if it’s telling you, “I cannot go any further today.” That’s part of it. You should make an effort to push yourself, but if you’re injured or push too long, too hard, you are going to need a break and rest.

[00:17:10] Sally Ann: Yes. Abigail is our only child with a phone. She got it right before trail. We put the app FarOut on her phone, which if you’re in the long trail world, FarOut, it’s a navigational tool used for long trails. At her tent at night, she and Madilyn would look, which ended up being, honestly, why we finished as fast as we did.

They would look at the next chunk of trail, and the next morning we’d get out of the tent and we would announce like, “All right, guys,” because we would have planned in our tent, “We’re looking at 14 miles today and,” whatever, “planning to end here.” Abigail or Madilyn would say, “Actually, if we go 19 miles, we will end up at this little campsite and then we can get to town a day earlier,” or whatever. The planning ended up being much more joint than separate because they pushed us along.

[00:18:09] David: They did.

[00:18:09] Sally Ann: They recognized they could push harder than they initially thought.

[00:18:13] David: That was one of the downsides. They started their own little planning sessions.

[00:18:19] Sally Ann: [laughs] With the younger two.

[00:18:21] David: Kids are much more resilient than we give them credit for. They recovered a lot faster than she and I did. We wake up, they’re packed up, packs on, ready to go. She and I are just rolling out trying to pack our own stuff up.

[00:18:36] Sally Ann: Very stiff. Yes.

[00:18:38] David: The stiffness, the soreness, the muscle aches kicked in, so yes, they pushed us to finish faster because they were eager to get home by that point. That whole saying youth is wasted on the young is true.

[00:18:53] Sally Ann: Yes.

[00:18:54] Gretchen: You all made the decision to go from Georgia to Maine. Why did you choose that as opposed to the other way around?

[00:19:02] Sally Ann: The vast majority of thru-hikers on the AT go south to north. They go northbound or NOBO. It’s, one, just proximity. We live in North Carolina, so it was a lot closer to get to Georgia. If something did go sideways, it’s a lot easier to get home on that first, honestly, half of the trail all the way through Virginia. Resources and support along trail is a lot richer in the south, so we knew it’d be a good launching point. Also, we have family support, friends support, just a lot more access to that in the south. Also, when you’re going northbound, you’re chasing spring. You start later in the winter season, and then as you’re going north, it’s just gradually warming up. We started earlier trying to avoid the bugs-

[00:19:49] David: The heat.

[00:19:50] Sally Ann: -and the heat as much as we could. For the most part, we did. We only had a couple weeks there that were difficult.

[00:19:57] David: Just going from north to south shifts your hiking season earlier in the year. If you’re going north to south, you have to wait until the snow melts or-

[00:20:08] Sally Ann: Starting June.

[00:20:08] David: -state parks open up in the north where they might be closed during the winter, so it would have delayed us a later start of the year.

[00:20:17] Sally Ann: It also lined up better with our homeschool. In our working ahead, all four kids finished their homeschool year, their ’24 to ’25 homeschool year, in February, because we had just been working ahead, working through the summer. In North Carolina, you have to do standardized testing. We did our standardized testing early February, wrapped up everything. I did all of my transcript stuff for high school, had all that done, hopped on trail. Then when we got back at the end of July, we got to take a little break and then jump smoothly into the next school year. That worked a little better than going June to November.

[00:20:52] Gretchen: That makes sense. For me, the NOBO is the only way to do it, but in my head, I’m sure there are people going, “Why would you do it that way?”

[00:21:02] Sally Ann: Also, from a pure hiking perspective, there’s challenges all the way through the trail. There are definitely hard parts everywhere. There are big climbs in the south. There’s steep mountains. The north is just different. New England, so when you’re in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, the rockiness of the trail, the technicality gets so significant that you’re really preparing for it the whole way. To start there would have been much more difficult without having a background in bouldering and that kind of thing.

[00:21:32] Gretchen: Had you all done any long day preparations? Had you gone out for a week at a time or something like that before with the kids?

[00:21:44] David: We started them off locally doing a smaller trail called the Art Loeb Trail. It’s about 33 miles long.

[00:21:52] Sally Ann: They’ve done it twice.

[00:21:53] David: That was their introduction to backpacking. They did it twice. Then in the immediate lead up to the AT in the fall before we left, this would have been 2024-

[00:22:06] Sally Ann: Yeah, around Thanksgiving.

[00:22:07] David: -we did the Foothills Trail in South Carolina. It’s about 75 miles. Coming off a Hurricane Helene, half of it was closed, so we ended up doing an out and back.

[00:22:22] Sally Ann: 30 miles out and turned around.

[00:22:23] David: Yes. We got about halfway and then turned around and went back. It ended up being 60 miles. We did it over four days. That was our what’s called a shakedown hike where you test your gear, test your setup, really getting familiar with your pack and each other, really.

[00:22:41] Sally Ann: We also got to test our mental fortitude there because it was November when we went, and on day three or four, I think it was day three, regardless, we were looking at the remaining miles and looking at the weather, and it was going to dip down into the 20s because we had planned on five days. It was going to dip down into the 20s that last night.

We told the kids on our final– ended up being our final morning on trail, “Hey, guys, we can do the 13 or 14 we had initially planned or we can do almost 19 and end at the car and go home and not sleep in the freezing cold.” Not everybody was immediately on board. It was like, “Yikes, that’s long.” We said, “Let’s just try, let’s walk. We have our houses on our backs, we’ll be fine.” We ended up, they got all on board by midday, wanted to be done, and they pushed that longest hike ever for them that last day.

[00:23:36] David: Their reward was, we got home, unpacked, they get to sleep in their own bed.

[00:23:41] Sally Ann: We got hamburgers.

[00:23:41] David: We got burgers and fries. They pushed themselves for sure.

[00:23:45] Gretchen: That’s a good incentive, though, to keep pushing ahead. Three of my kids did the Foothills Trail the summer before Helene. Two of them went to go do it last spring. They were shocked at how much Helene had changed the topography.

[00:24:04] Sally Ann: Oh, I bet.

[00:24:04] Gretchen: How different it looked. There were places that they could not navigate through. I’m not sure that it’s open yet, even a year and a half after Helene.

[00:24:17] Sally Ann: Doing little, and that may not sound little, like a 60-mile hike is not little, but compared to 2,200 miles, doing that just gave us so many opportunities to experience things in a microcosm way, just this is a little picture of the AT because like that big day we had at the end of the Foothills, we had a day in Maine where because of weather conditions, we had to push 31 miles.

[00:24:42] Gretchen: Wow.

[00:24:43] Sally Ann: We just didn’t have an alternative. We had to get up and over a series of exposed-

[00:24:48] David: Peaks.

[00:24:48] Sally Ann: -peaks, and there were severe thunderstorms moving in the next day. We were cut off. There’s very little access to the outside when you’re in this last 100 miles. It’s called the 100-mile wilderness. We got up at 4:00 AM that morning and we’re like, “We just have to do it.” It was incredibly hard. We finished at 7:00 and just crashed, but finished.

[00:25:12] David: It did save us that next day from being the risk of exposure and a safety risk at that point.

[00:25:20] Gretchen: What was the biggest surprise for you all? I’m not anticipating that you would each have the same answer, so what surprised you the most?

[00:25:29] David: Logistical planning was a big piece of that. We’re both big planners, whether it’s planning for a school year, planning for a personal goal that we’ve set. We like that challenge, but what we, I think, underestimated was the community around the Appalachian Trail. We were blessed far and above by just, they’re called trail angels. They’re people who regularly come out and help hikers out of the kindness of their heart, whether that’s providing food, providing an area to sit down in the middle of their day.

[00:26:05] Sally Ann: Transportation to town.

[00:26:06] David: Transportation, just providing financial resources. We never could have anticipated the help that we received while we were on trail. Then the fellowship with other hikers, too. People that we didn’t know a year ago are now close friends and we’re going to a wedding in-

[00:26:25] Sally Ann: [crosstalk].

[00:26:25] David: -two months with one of the guys we hiked with, or trying to plan a vacation together is, because you go through all the trials and challenges of the trail-

[00:26:36] Sally Ann: Together, yes.

[00:26:37] David: -you draw closer with a community that you wouldn’t have been part of otherwise. The people are really what make it special.

[00:26:46] Gretchen: Did you all have trail names?

[00:26:48] Sally Ann: Oh, yes. As a family, we are the Six Pack Hikers. What was your trail name?

[00:26:56] David: I was Remy. For those of you who have seen the children’s movie Ratatouille, I did majority of all the cooking on trail.

[00:27:06] Gretchen: I was going to say, that must mean you were the cook.

[00:27:09] David: Yes, I was the rat that cooked in shelters.

[00:27:11] Sally Ann: Yes. He got his name from me. I threw that name out and he liked it. Mine was Beacon. We did logistics together, but I tended to be the one keeping us on track and guiding us along the way. Our oldest daughter, Serenity, because that’s just her personality, very calm, very just stoic.

[00:27:33] Gretchen: That is awesome.

[00:27:35] Sally Ann: The next one, Madilyn, was Sunshine. She tends to have a sunny disposition and optimistic and–

[00:27:41] David: Bubbly personality.

[00:27:42] Sally Ann: Very much so. Then Naomi was Tunes because she’s singing on trail. If she was singing, it was a good day.

[00:27:50] Gretchen: It was a good day, right.

[00:27:51] Sally Ann: If it was a silent day, it was probably rainy or really hot or buggy. Then our youngest, Gideon, was Energizer because we would end up at camp and he would still be running around. We could finish a 20-mile day and he’d be climbing trees. It’s pretty unreal. He sleeps great, but he goes until he hits a wall and then crashes.

[00:28:15] Gretchen: Testosterone is a drug. Being the mother of three boys, I get it.

[00:28:19] Sally Ann: You understand?

[00:28:19] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:28:20] David: Yes, and for those who may not know, on the long trails, a trail name is usually given to you by someone outside your group, whether part of your history as a person or a trait that stands out or an unfortunate incident that you may or may not have caused.

[00:28:38] Sally Ann: Yes, we hiked with a fellow, his real name is Ben, but his trail name was Bear Bait because his food was stolen by a bear in the Smokies. Another one of the guys we hiked with all the way to the end, Jeremy, was Bog Leg because he kept falling into the bogs in Maine, like up to his thigh in this muck. Then Sean was Straps because he climbed up a huge mountain with his bag not clicked-

[00:29:07] David: [crosstalk]

[00:29:08] Sally Ann: -and he was complaining about how hard the climb was, but he hadn’t done up his straps. It’s fun. It’s like an alter ego, a little bit.

[00:29:16] David: A little bit.

[00:29:17] Gretchen: It is. It is. My older son, his trail name on the CDT was Lark. Then my younger son is Hopper. Much for the same reason that your son is Energizer. Yes, he has boundless energy, and he’s never met a stranger. What would the kids say was their takeaways from the trail?

[00:29:41] Sally Ann: We asked them that question on a live when we were live on YouTube. I think it was Abigail that just talked about us. This is not to pat us on the back, but it’s something that they brought up that they just don’t have friends with parents that would be willing to do something like this. We were definitely on an island-age and demographic-wise on trail, being a couple with kids in our 40s that didn’t really exist. You were either hiking with single young adults typically, retirees, college students. There were some couples, but nobody with kids, or very few, I guess I should say, because there was one other family that did it the same year we did.

[00:30:35] David: Yes. I think for them, they learned to test their limits more than they would have just from a comfort of their own home. It pushed them beyond their normal boundaries to where they learned what they’re made of a little bit more.

[00:30:49] Sally Ann: It also gave them so many opportunities to be strong in sharing their faith because when you’re just going through life, especially as a kid in a conservative household where you’re going to church and you’ve got your little co-ops and things, you may not have as many opportunities, and they had so many wonderful conversations with folks on trail. What we found is that people on trail were just very open to discussing anything. Everyone’s out there seeking and very open and, I don’t know, open-minded. It was refreshing to have conversations with folks without any kind of judgment or whatever.

[00:31:29] David: The way that we planned for it, I’d say we didn’t intend for it to be like a missions trip with the church. It just evolved into a ministry as you’re sharing conversation and breaking bread with other hikers and just trying to get to know who they are and what their background is. People were really open. I think that’s another thing, back to your question of what stood out most on trail or what surprised us is everybody’s willingness because how often do you get 14 uninterrupted hours to walk through life with someone shoulder to shoulder over the course of miles through struggles together day after day and not open up?

[00:32:11] Sally Ann: Yes, you get past the surfacy stuff pretty quick if you’re walking alongside someone for 10-plus hours a day.

[00:32:17] Gretchen: Now, I have the impression that the AT has a lot more people on it than the CDT. There were periods of time where Duncan would go eight or nine days and not see another person when he was out there last summer. I don’t get the impression that that would have been the equivalent for you all.

[00:32:34] Sally Ann: We had a few days here and there where we didn’t see anybody.

[00:32:37] David: Yes, I think the longest we went was three days without seeing another person. Yes, it’s definitely not as common.

[00:32:46] Sally Ann: No, and part of that is just population density. There’s just a lot of people that live near the trail and come out and do day hikes. Then part of the reason we had a few days is we started early and moved quickly, so we were ahead of the main bubble or group of people. I think that was Vermont? I don’t remember where it was, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts and Connecticut, where we had just some empty pockets of no one was really around.

[00:33:16] David: Back to the education piece, too, there’s so much history on the AT, but it takes you so close to many significant points, whether that’s going through Harpers Ferry, you’re there at the intersection of Three Rivers, and it’s a lot of history in that area.

[00:33:34] Sally Ann: With the Civil War, yes.

[00:33:35] David: You go through pretty close to Gettysburg. We passed by, you can see New York City off in the distance. If you want, you can hop off trail and go to New York City.

[00:33:44] Sally Ann: There were monuments on trail referring to the Civil War and different sergeants and things.

[00:33:49] David: Yes.

[00:33:50] Gretchen: In your mind, which state stands out to you the most as, “Gee, I think I’d like to go back and spend some more time there”?

[00:33:59] Sally Ann: Oh, we were just talking about this the other day. I’ll let you go first. I know what I’m going to say. I have a couple, so I won’t repeat yours.

[00:34:07] David: I’ve wanted to go back to Massachusetts because right there at the Connecticut-Massachusetts line, there’s this beautiful alpine forest that you walk through called Sages Ravine. There’s one area that stuck out to me that I want to go back to.

[00:34:22] Sally Ann: It was pouring when we went through it. Maybe that’s when you want to go back. It was raining hard.

[00:34:27] David: New Jersey surprised me the most on trail. I think surprised us on trail.

[00:34:31] Sally Ann: Yes, beautiful.

[00:34:31] David: Just the beauty of New Jersey, which, having never been there, I didn’t know to anticipate. Then I think I’d go back to Vermont in a different season. We went in the rainy, muddy season. I would not go back during that time. I’d want to see it more in the fall.

[00:34:50] Sally Ann: For me, it’s New Hampshire and Maine. They were so beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but we were at the very end of our hike, and at least for David and I, our bodies were breaking down, and so the experience of the hiking through there was very challenging, just physically, it would have been physically demanding regardless, but you were nursing a knee injury. I had plantar fasciitis, and we were just so tired and sore. I’d like to go back and experience that fresh through the White Mountains, through the wilderness. It’s just so pretty.

[00:35:22] Gretchen: Wow, Sally, and as a veteran of plantar fasciitis myself, I can’t imagine hiking on trail with that-

[00:35:28] Sally Ann: It started in Virginia.

[00:35:28] Gretchen: -and you soldiered through? Oh, my word.

[00:35:32] Sally Ann: Yes. It was rough. It was rough for sure.

[00:35:36] David: One of the things they don’t tell you about the long trail is that it’s really three phases. The first phase, your body is trying to figure out, “What exactly are we doing here? What are you putting me through?”

[00:35:47] Sally Ann: “What are you doing to me?” [laughs]

[00:35:49] David: It’s like a shock to the system. Then you get into the growth phase where you’re super strong. You’re pushing. Every day comes easily. Your body’s just moving through, but by the third phase, you’ve pushed so hard for so long, it actually starts breaking down regardless of how much rest you give it.

[00:36:09] Sally Ann: Yes, it’s kind of like pregnancy. That second trimester is awesome. You’re feeling so great. You’re cute. You’ve got energy. You’re not too huge yet. Then you get to that last trimester, and you’re just ready for it to be done. We did get to that point where it was like we were on a mission to finish.

[00:36:28] Gretchen: Did you all go all the way to the top of Katahdin?

[00:36:31] David: We did.

[00:36:32] Sally Ann: We did. It took us 148 days. We finished on July twenty s–

[00:36:37] David: Third.

[00:36:37] Sally Ann: Third. I was about to say 7th. July 27th or 3rd, [unintelligible 00:36:41].

[00:36:42] Gretchen: Wow. That’s amazing. Then how did you guys get home from there? What was the plan to get back from Maine?

[00:36:50] Sally Ann: David’s parents and my parents came up to see us, not at the Summit. My mom was very disappointed to learn that the Summit wasn’t something she could just drive up to. It would have been nice-

[00:37:02] Gretchen: [crosstalk]

[00:37:02] Sally Ann: -because she wanted to be at the end. They wanted to have their signs and stuff at the end, but they waited at the base. The last five miles, you go up, turn around, and come back. They had come up, and they took us into Bangor, Maine, where we flew back home from there.

[00:37:19] Gretchen: If someone is watching us or listening to us, and they have this desire, what would be the first thing you would say, “Do this first, as you plan to do something like this with your family”?

[00:37:34] David: Start simple. You gain experience, you gain skills along the way. Don’t try to tackle it all in one piece. We took five years to plan for it. Not everybody has to do that, but I think that was necessary as we gave the kids and challenged them more with each as they grew. It takes a while to accumulate all the gear, but I think just doing it, keep it simple, do what you’re capable of, even if it’s just day hikes as a family, trying to figure out your water, your supplies, endurance level, learning each other while you’re out on trail. Just don’t over-complicate it right from the start.

[00:38:19] Sally Ann: Yes, because, really, any long trail is just a series of little backpacking trips from town to town. If you can build up to a point where you’re comfortable doing three or four days away from town, that’s all it is. It’s a series of that. Beyond that, you’re just having to plan for the time away from work, the time away from school, but you’re just doing a series of little backpacking trips.

[00:38:44] Gretchen: I think you all have such a unique experience. You got to know your children in a way that a lot of parents don’t have the opportunity to know their children. I think that’s a precious opportunity that you made memories with your kids they’re never going to forget. In these last couple minutes, what advice would you offer to folks who have watched this video with us? What would you say to them?

[00:39:10] David: For anybody who’s got young kids at home, parenting’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. We’re at the opposite end of the spectrum. We’re out of the early infancy days. We’re more looking towards, we’re counting down the number of days we have left with our kids at home.

[00:39:30] Sally Ann: Not eagerly. I’m excited for them to fly, but it’s also bittersweet.

[00:39:38] David: Yes.

[00:39:39] Gretchen: It is, indeed.

[00:39:41] David: Just display patience, even when you don’t want to. Give your kids a benefit of the doubt. Try to study them. Ask questions. Get to know them because, as we’re learning, you think roughly 18 years before they leave the house is a long time, but it’s not.

[00:40:04] Gretchen: It is not.

[00:40:05] Sally Ann: Yes, and just, I don’t know, this is just a general parenting thing, but something that I’ve been more convicted of in recent years, which is making sure your kids never feel like an inconvenience. When they need you, let them have you. If they need to talk, this has happened much more even recently. We’ve got daughters that like to talk really late at night, because that’s when they’re done with everything for the day, their mind is clear, and they’ve got the deep questions and the hard things, and we’re tired, but those are the moments that really solidify your bond with your kids, is those conversations, and when they need something and you just say, “Yes, right now, let’s do it, let’s talk.” Yes, just making sure they don’t feel like they are an inconvenience because they’re not.

[00:40:56] David: No. That’s a good point.

[00:40:57] Sally Ann: We pray for them. We talk to them.

[00:40:58] Gretchen: I love that. That’s the best of advice. We’re never promised our next breath, and to be able to keep those accounts short and enjoy our children because they really do grow up too quickly.

[00:41:14] Sally Ann: Yes.

[00:41:15] Gretchen: I want to thank you both for joining me today. I want to thank you for sharing your story. I was inspired. Thank your kids for the experience that they had. We will put the YouTube channel in the show notes so folks can find their way to your adventure. Thank everyone who came in and joined us for this conversation today. Thank you for allowing us into your living room. We appreciate it so very much, and we can’t wait to hear what your next journey is. It’ll be awesome.

[00:41:48] Sally Ann: Thank you for having us on.

[00:41:48] David: [crosstalk]

[00:41:48] Gretchen: Thanks, everybody. All right. Take care. Bye-bye.