Confronting a Ghost in the Green Mountains: One Hiker's Return to the Long Trail.
Reprinted by permission from The Trek - Sep 12, 2025 : Niki DiGaetano
Editor’s Note: For those who have tested themselves against it, the Long Trail is more than just a path; it's a formidable character in their story. For one writer, it was the antagonist. Three years ago, hiking the Appalachian Trail through Vermont, she was broken by the Green Mountains—or rather, by the personal demons she carried into them.
The state became a "dark spot," a blur of exhaustion and heartbreak in her memory. This August, she returned. Not just to hike, but to confront that memory, to see if the trail that shattered her can also be the place she finds redemption. In the powerful essay she wrote just before her trek, she explains what’s at stake.
A Chance for Redemption: Why I’m Thru-Hiking the Long Trail
This piece is both summary and story. It’s an explanation of the reasons I’ve decided to embark on a Long Trail thru-hike, none of which can be told without understanding the story of an Appalachian Trail hike that set it all in motion. My Long Trail attempt began on August 2nd, 2025, so these pieces are being written now that I’ve returned – except for this one, which was drafted and mostly written prior to my departure. Please be aware that this essay makes a few candid mentions of mental health and self-harm.
I can barely walk, my quads making known their fury from yesterday’s 10 mile trek up the rugged, granite-studded peak near my home in Utah. This was my and my partner’s piss-poor attempt at “training” for our Long Trail thru-hike coming up next week.
I know I might be screwed. And I don’t care. I’m ready to go.
But it’s not without trepidation. I’ve sat sedentary at a desk, managing my main job and two side hustles as a death doula and a copywriter. In my impending absence, I worry about my clients – especially those I am supporting through grief. I worry about my body, fretting that my sporadic weight-training sessions won’t be enough to withstand trekking all day through the rugged Green Mountains.
Ironic that I worry so much when only a few months ago, I was eagerly counting down the days. The first half of 2025 was cloaked in a fog of lethargy, like I was waiting for the year to begin. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of dodge and back to the mountains where I belonged.
Now that time’s almost up, I’m suddenly hesitant to leave behind the little routines and community I’ve cultivated. Stepping away from such stability is a stark contrast to the circumstances that led to my 900 mile Appalachian Trail hike in 2022.
Three years ago, the decision to walk to Maine was essentially made for me, my (seemingly) idyllic life collapsing in the wake of the words, “I need a break.” I later discovered my then-partner requested that time apart so he could date a woman he met on Bumble, typing messages to her while curled in bed with me. When I took my first shaking steps onto the Trail in West Virginia, I had no idea what would happen: on Trail or After with us.
It wasn’t long before I fell in love with the rhythm of hiker life, the Mid-Atlantic states a hopscotch I cruised through on my newfound trail legs. And then I slammed into Vermont.
Plowing through miles and dead-set on Katahdin, I pushed long past my physical and mental edge. I was in such a fog I barely remember any of it. I don’t know how we got food or in which towns we stopped. My normally meticulous hiking journal is a glaring blank.
Though I missed normal food and not smelling like piss and sweat, I missed my then-partner most of all, the magnetic pull of our bruised relationship a craving to return and forgive him of everything. To put the parts of me that I’d freed on Trail back into the exile where she’d languished for five years. To be the meek, complacent partner who constantly “died to her own needs” in devoted support of his.
I know now: the urge to abandon the Trail and return to my partner wasn’t love – it was a codependent itch I yearned to scratch. It was, in hindsight, akin to the longing I felt when I used to cut myself on purpose, using self-harm to curb the desire to end my life, when depression took root in the darkest crevice of my soul.
In the end, I didn’t get off Trail. What I did do was give up on Katahdin, deciding to release the control I loved to clutch so tightly. Though the rest of my hike (particularly through New Hampshire’s White Mountains) was breathtaking, Vermont remains a dark spot marring the journey.
This, above all else, is why I need to go back. I need to test myself again. I need to know if I could have handled Vermont – enjoyed it, even – if it weren’t for the unconscious desire to continue harming myself by throwing away everything good.
This time, I’ll be attempting the full 272 miles of the Long Trail, which contains approximately 172 more miles than the AT. Double the Vermont, double the fun. To make things even more interesting, it’s said that those extra miles are significantly more challenging than the AT portion.
Returning to the state that broke me feels like redemption – a second chance to experience something I never should have surrendered. And when I step once again onto that worn dirt path, I won’t be alone.
On a balmy June evening during my AT hike, a kind, goofy, sunshine-human stumbled into camp at hiker midnight.
I learned three things the next morning: 1. he was utterly clueless; 2. he was trying to make it to Katahdin like me; 3. he was very, very handsome.
Though neither of us were remotely looking for romance, we reconnected after hiking together for 600 miles. Then we decided to give love a shot, even though my heart – battered after fearing for my safety in the wake of my ex’s catastrophic breakup – worried it was too soon. Then we moved across the country to Utah. Then we rented a sweet little condo where we’ve been blissfully happy for the last two years. As one does.
When we’d recently begun dating, my partner texted, “Maybe we’ll do the Long Trail together.” The innocent joke birthed an idea that never died.
We made plans last year but decided against it at the eleventh hour – he’d recently landed a new job and couldn’t leave so soon after being hired.
So this year is our shot. We’ve taken the month off work and given ourselves a three-week deadline.
With family visits stacked up for the final week of August, we’ll have to stick to our loose-ish mileage plan. I’m nervous about that, since deadlines are what screwed me over on the AT.
Not to mention, the last time my partner and I backpacked on-Trail, it was as newfound friends, not lovers. There were no expectations. How will we manage cramming into the same small tent for three weeks every night? Will he feel smothered by me? Or I by him? Secretly, I worry about all this too.
Next week, I’ll find out. I’ll find out if my unprepared body will remain injury-free; if my partner and I can withstand the tests that inevitably spring from an extended foray in the woods; if we can walk to Canada. Maybe Vermont will be as hard and hellish as my patchy memory recalls. Or maybe it will be something altogether different.
Maybe it will be something beautiful.
Either way, I’ll catch you guys on the other side.