On this section of the Trail where there was not much tree cover, I was hot, sweaty, and irritated. Then my thoughts started to make me laugh:
My sweat must be like takeout food for these gnats — they’re taking home their salty snack to their families. Maybe these gnats are delivering for DoorDash!
This burst of humor softened my irritation and brought me back to my reasons for being out on the Trail. Nature feels like a welcome refuge from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I love the sights, the sounds, and the feeling of awe I get when I am immersed in her beauty. I tune in, live in the moment, pay better attention to the world around me. I breathe more deeply, my jaw relaxes, and my mind is at peace. It is THERAPEUTIC.
Hiking the A.T. is also one of the most demanding things I have taken on in my life so far. I have completed around 800 miles as a section hiker and have been on the Trail with friends, my daughter, with strangers, and often all alone. People unfamiliar with backpacking often ask me why the heck I’m doing it.
“Aren’t there bears?”
“Are you sure it’s safe for a woman to be hiking alone?”
They have yet to ask me if I’m worried about all the gnats on the Trail.
As I humorously considered the gnats, my therapist brain switched on — when I’m not hiking for my own pleasure and adventure, I work as a psychotherapist and am a Certified Clinical Adventure Therapist (CCAT) — and I realized that my humor was very much a coping strategy. Since my car was parked some 60 miles north, my only alternative to continuing to hike with the gnat parade was to sit down and let them make a permanent home on my face and in my ears. So, I kept going — on the Trail and with the humor. My next thought was that maybe the buzzing was actually the gnats cheering, “You can do it!” in Gnatish, the well-known language of the gnats.
In my psychotherapy practice, I have a real office with a door, but I also provide therapy in outdoor spaces. I feel lucky to spend a good portion of my days among the trees and smelling the fresh air. However, I am trained to think about lessons from my own experiences on the Trail. My attention is honed to uncover the metaphors the Trail is showing me, like the glaring one about how an impediment like a swarm of gnats can potentially trip me up and prevent me from achieving my goals.
I was drawn to Adventure Therapy because I find outdoor activities personally therapeutic. Whether hiking, canyoneering, creeking, looking at a beautiful sunset or a million stars, or simply walking barefoot on grass, connecting with nature is soothing to my system even when it’s strenuous, challenging, or gnat-filled. I didn’t grow up hiking or camping, so I didn’t always know this about myself. When I was going through a particularly hard time in my life, I explored Shenandoah National Park with my sister and adventured in the Pisgah National Forest on an REI group trip. Neither trip was technically therapy, but both were definitely therapeutic. And they led to me adding Hike the A.T. to my bucket list.
When I think about why I do this backpacking thing, the simple explanation is that it’s good for me — body, mind, and soul. Backpacking is physically and mentally challenging and shows me what I’m capable of. The sense of accomplishment after gnat-infested, rain-soaked, or blister-filled days is incredibly fulfilling.
Every day on the Trail I have to plan, pivot, and persevere. Nothing is predictable and often things don’t go as planned, but I have to accept what I can’t control…like lots and lots of gnats! I can focus on the most basic daily tasks, and there is power in the simple fact that I’m carrying everything I need on my back. Hiking allows me to hear myself more clearly and listen to my intuition when making decisions, deepening trust in myself.
But what did I really learn from the gnats on this hike? There are hard parts of backpacking trips that are expected that I can plan and prepare for, such as a particularly hard climb, rain, darkness, and where to find water and shelter. Then there are the unexpected hard things. I did not have a gnat map, and they didn’t seem at all bothered by the bug repellent I was wearing. Every time I swatted them away, they seemed to multiply. I had to accept that they were there, and I had to deal with my emotions rather than trying to control the gnats themselves.
Even the best-planned hikes sometimes go awry. Like the time I pushed for a 20-mile day only to find the shelter area deserted. It was the first time I slept alone in the woods — with my sleeping bag cinched tightly around my head to drown out the sounds that, so soothing and nature-y during the day, took on a very different tone in the dark of night. Or the time when my spork inadvertently pierced the bag my freeze-dried meal was cooking in, as I helplessly watched the liquid seep out through the bottom and pool on the picnic table.
The gnats taught me that it’s sometimes only by letting go that I can truly feel the pleasure of the process of achieving my goals. Like the time that I grinned my way through a torrentially rainy section of the trail in Georgia and earned my trail name: “Sunny.”