Why Did I Write A Book About The AT?

There’s lots of ways to tell a story these days – YouTube videos, Instagram Reels, Tik Toks – honestly, a book was the last thing on my mind.

Before Pam and I left for the Appalachian Trail in 2022, we tried more “modern” forms of storytelling. You may remember, around that time, we started Pam & Kevin Outside and gave YouTube a shot. As we prepped for the AT, we published practice videos from our hikes in the Adirondacks and New Hampshire. We even had a blog website ready to go. Then we started the trail… and reality set in…

Life quite literally became eat, sleep, hike.

We quickly ran out of energy to feed our blog or any social media algorithm. It also felt a little wrong to be thinking about taking “B-roll” footage, instead of focusing on the journey itself. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things, it’s just how we preferred to go about it.

So Pam & Kevin Outside died, and our journey north continued. From Georgia to Maine we walked.

Then we went home.

In the months after coming off the trail, I struggled to understand what our AT journey was about. We had all these great trail stories. Our friends and family kindly asked about our adventures, but there was never enough time to tell the tales. As I held the fresh memories in my head, I felt like it’d be a shame to let time blur the details. So I pulled out my computer and started typing.

I wrote down our stories from trail, plus all the things I found interesting about trail culture, towns, traditions. If I was someone who wanted to learn about or experience the AT, what would I want to know? What questions would I want answered? And so I typed it all out…

It took a year to write the whole thing. And going through the process was as much therapy as it was a creative endeavor. After reflecting on it for so long, I gained a better understanding of the lessons the trail taught us. Overall, it felt like something beautiful and worth sharing – and my beta readers told me it’s pretty good, so maybe take their word for it!

Then there’s been figuring out how to get this thing edited and published, which I’ve also gone about myself…

So after creating this thing… a book. It feels like a bit of a happy accident. Like I’ve kept fumbling a football in a generally okay direction.

And after doing all this, I’ve gained a huge appreciation for the format. Books don’t ping. They don’t buzz for our attention. They simply sit on a coffee table or a book shelf, ready to transport a reader at their leisure.

So, when you’re ready (and when the book is ready), I hope to transport you to the world of the AT. I think you’ll laugh. You might cry. But you’ll certainly get all the action without any thru-hiker stench. And that, my friends, is a blessing 🙂

With that, I humbly ask to keep you in the loop on all things related to my book’s release. If that’s something you are open to, please consider subscribing to this website so I can share exciting and important news as it comes.

Thanks for reading this post and Godspeed.