How hiking the APPALACHIAN TRAIL taught Sally Chaffin Brooks to choose adventure

1st October 2024

How Hiking the Appalachian Trail Taught Sally Chaffin Brooks to Choose Adventure

Author of Going To Maine

A few months ago, there was a TikTok floating around where a creator asked people to name one seemingly small choice that you made that changed the trajectory of your life. I knew instantly what my answer would be; it was a conversation I had with my best friend, Erin, in 2002.

She called to tell me, “Dude, I’m going to hike the f-ing Appalachian Trail.”

On paper, I had no reason to even consider going with her. I was a year out of college and had landed a job I loved, lived in a city I adored, and had a wonderful boyfriend who I was building a life with. When I looked ahead at the trajectory of my life, I could see clearly how it would play out– within five years, I would be married, with a house and kids.

And that clarity scared the heck out of me.

When Erin presented me with a detour from my seemingly predetermined path, I jumped at it. Without having any idea of how I would make it work, I called her back to say “I’m coming with you.”

When we set off from Georgia in February, 2003, everything was harder than I had imagined. The first day, Erin and I took a wrong turn and missed the official start of the trail. On day three, I developed painful blisters on the backs of my feet. By the end of the first week I wrote in my journal:

I started wondering today if I should quit. I’m hardly ever happy while I’m hiking, and I’m in constant pain. Today is March 1st. I’ve decided that I will give it a month, and if I’m still not happy, I’ll leave the trail.

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By the time that month was up, I couldn’t imagine not finishing the trail, and by the time I had reached Maine, I had a different kind of clarity. I was clear about who I was– I was a person who could do hard things. And I was clear about what I wanted out of life– I wanted a life where nothing was predetermined, a life full of possibilities.

In the over twenty years since I set out to hike the Appalachian Trail, the clarity that I returned home with has spurred me to repeatedly leap at opportunities that have taken me outside of my comfort zone, to say yes to adventures with no idea what my life might be like on the other side. It gave me the courage to move to a small town in Hungary with my partner, a place where we knew no one and only spoke a handful of Hungarian words– including “nem tudok magyarul,” which aptly translates to “I do not Hungarian.” It gave me the audacity to submit a book I wrote about hiking the A.T. to publishers.

My craving for a life of possibilities prompted me to take a stand-up comedy class, even though my introvert’s stomach hurt every time I thought about getting on stage. And just like the trail, comedy was so much harder than I imagined. When I was still a fairly new comic, I was hired to tell jokes at a WasteWater Operator’s Conference in rural Kentucky. I tried in vain to get any reaction from the room of men in steel-toed boots and camo hats, but it was clear they were not interested in anything I had to say. Afterwards, one of the attendees told me, “Sorry, honey, we weren’t payin’ attention to you, we were passing around the ‘shine in the back,” and then offered me a sip of his flask full of moonshine.

But also like the trail, stand-up was much more rewarding than I could have imagined. The longer I stuck it out, the better I got, both as a comedian and at handling failure. The high from making a room full of strangers laugh all together from something I wrote was (and still is) incredibly powerful. So much so, that three years in, I took another detour and traded my career as an attorney for one as a comedian.

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For a long time, I thought that Erin telling me she was going to hike the Appalachian Trail was the thing that changed my life. But now I know that what changed my life was me choosing to take control of my own destiny. And even though now I very happily have the things I was scared that I was fated to when I was twenty-four– the house, the husband, the kid– I also know that a new adventure is never off the table. All I have to do is choose it.

Sally Chaffin Brooks

Sally Chaffin Brooks is a writer, stand-up comedian, and podcaster. A reformed lawyer, Sally has released two chart-topping comedy albums (Brooks Was Here, Street Bird) and co-hosts the comedy podcast The Ridiculist. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son, and heads to the mountains as often as possible. Sally’s debut memoir, Going to Maine is out now.

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