The Night Before the Appalachian Trail Began

The night before the Appalachian Trail was about to swallow me whole, I discovered that the first enemy wasn’t the mountains, the miles, or the weather.

It was my own brain.

I was lying in a tiny tent, staring into the darkness, waiting for sleep to arrive. It never did. My body was ready. My gear was packed. Every decision, every training mile, every sacrifice had led to this moment—but the mind had decided it wanted a meeting at 2 a.m.

Was it the nerves? Probably. Was it the coffee I had foolishly consumed late that afternoon? Almost certainly.

The strange thing about these adventures is that the biggest battles are often invisible. Nobody sees the athlete lying awake in a tent questioning whether tomorrow will go according to plan. They only see the start line. They see the miles. They see the finish.

The next day I made a simple adjustment: no coffee. Not in the afternoon. Not even with breakfast.

That night, I slept.

A tiny change. A small victory. Sometimes surviving a huge adventure starts with winning the smallest battles first.

The journey had not even begun… and already the trail was teaching lessons.