Here’s what I’ve been doing to physically recover after the end of my hike. This is what’s worked for me, and it may not work for you. My hope that you’ll find my experience helpful if you’ve just completed a thru, still out there hiking SOBO, or if you’re planning on thru-hiking next year.

t was strangely disorienting to go back to places I’d walked past only weeks or months ago. To see white blazes and, rather than following them deeper into the woods, turning from the trail to climb back into a car and drive south instead of walking north.

Regret, and sadness, and conflicted emotions are the asking price of choice. Regret doesn’t necessarily mean that you chose wrong: it means that you chose, and in doing so, you didn’t choose the other thing.

To me, “embracing the suck” sounded like hustle culture. It sounded like embracing suffering for suffering’s sake. And it didn’t make sense in the context of thru-hiking: in taking a journey for the journey’s sake.