I met him on the Golden Road as he was approaching Abol Bridge. My friend, Charlie Cirame, struck up a conversation with a hiker as I was shooting video footage of Mt. Katahdin from Abol Bridge.

When I asked the bearded young hiker his name, he replied “Special Delivery.” The twenty nine year old hiker from New Hampshire had just come out of the Hundred Mile Wilderness heading into Baxter State Park where he would climb Mount Katahdin the following day.  He started hiking the Appalachian Trail on April 10 of this year at Springer Mountain, GA.

Only one in four hikers of the thousands who attempt a thru-hike each year complete the 2,180 miles of the Appalachian Trail in one trip. That is a mammoth undertaking that is almost hard to comprehend.

His smile and eyes were warm, friendly, and bright. I asked if he would mind being interviewed for my blog. With a big, happy grin he said, “sure, what do you want to know?”

I hope you enjoy some of what Special Delivery had to say as much as Charlie and I did.He has accomplished something I wish I had been able to do at some point in my life. In sharing his story on my blog, I hope others might be inspired to undertake this epic journey of self-discovery and rediscover an appreciation of the wonder of our natural world.

It seemed appropriate to me that the terminus of the Appalachian Trail would be Maine, the most wild, rugged and uninterrupted wilderness in the eastern United States. There is little doubt that this magnificent region is worth preserving for our children’s children and all who would long to discover what the world must have been like before humans.