How to prepare for an Appalachian Trail thru-hike: couples' edition

May 1, 2023

When it comes to being apart from your spouse for an extended period of time, the military is the first thing that comes to mind. In the military, there are support groups and workshops about how to handle your spouse’s deployment, but there’s nothing similar for the AT, even though there are countless amazing resources for the hikers themselves. I suppose there are other jobs like working on an oil rig or deep sea fishing vessel when you’d be gone for long stretches, too, and jobs like being a trucker or a first responder where you might be away for nights at a time, but regularly enough that you miss some of the normal rhythms of life at home. There are obviously many differences: military personnel and first responders put themselves in harm’s way during their work, and I’m not trying to compare hiking a scenic trail to that at all. It’s just the only frame of reference I could come up with to help me wrap my head around spending six months at home while Andy is gone.

There are any number of reasons partners might not want to or be able to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail together. Since I like to hike and have gone on numerous backpacking trips with Andy, some people have been surprised I wasn’t joining him. To be honest, I never had a single iota of desire to do so (not that I don’t love you, Andy!). After about three nights in the woods, I’m ready for a shower and a real bathroom! Not to mention, someone needs to provide the health insurance (thanks, America). So anyway, I’m the partner staying behind to keep the home fires burning.

I had a lot of anxiety thinking about what that might mean for our relationship. The only example I had heard of was a couple I was acquainted with where one spouse hiked the trail and decided he didn’t want to be married to her anymore. Undoubtedly they had many other factors that led to that decision (I didn’t know them well enough to ask), but that was the worst case scenario I kept bandying about.

Several nights of late-night Google searching turned up a few helpful articles, which I’ll link below, but also some Reddit threads about on-trail relationships that only exacerbated my worst fears. The most important thing I did throughout all of this was to TALK TO MY SPOUSE. He understands me better than anyone and can speak much more directly to my emotional state than some anonymous commenters on Reddit. We worked through both of our emotional concerns about the trip TOGETHER and laid a strong foundation on top of our already-strong marriage of thirteen years.

There were also plenty of logistical things we needed to iron out. In some ways, the prepping for the actual hike seemed the easiest, since Andy has spent years backpacking and already had a lot of favorite gear. He ordered some new things to optimize for weight and durability, and did a few practice hikes to try out some new foods, but you can’t really plan too much more specifically for a thru-hike than that, since it goes on for long. Every day will hold its own challenges, but ultimately he just needs to keep walking!

In the absence of a helpful guidebook for partners of AT thru-hikers, we’ve been figuring out as we went along. Here are some things we did that (so far) have seemed to set us up for success.

Get your finances in order.
Once Andy officially decided he was going to quit his job to hike the trail, we started putting money into a savings account to cover both his expenses on the trail and any of my expenses at home that aren’t covered by my income. Building this up while we were both still working helped us feel confident about what could have felt like a scary decision (giving up gainful employment).

We also made sure that I was comfortable with handling all of our accounts and bills. We’ve been using YNAB to handle our finances for over a decade and have made our budget together every month for most of that time, but Andy has still always been the primary financial caretaker. So I took over a month before he left to get some practice while he was still around to answer questions.

Between knowing I have the emergency fund buffer and getting hands-on experience before I was left to do it alone, I’ve been much more confident about money.
Get your house in order.
Similar to our finances, Andy has been the home maintenance guy (thank youuuu!). He’s gotten really handy and been able to do a lot of things himself. Before he left, he finished up some lingering tasks that had been on his list for awhile. We also literally walked around the house together, and he walked me through how to do various simple things that will need to be done while he’s gone, like changing the air filter for our HVAC system. He also compiled some lists of things he checks on regularly and people to call on in case something comes up that’s beyond my comfort level. I’ve actually never lived alone, and, if I did, it probably wouldn’t be in a house as large as ours is, so this again boosted my confidence that I can keep it standing without him for a portion of a year.
Talk about your expectations for your time apart.
Andy and I dated long-distance in college, so we have some experience communicating when we’re not together in person, but that was a long time ago, and the longest we’ve been apart since we’ve been married is right around two weeks. Six months is, uh, a lot longer than two weeks, so I knew I would want to have a loose plan for when we would see each other during that time. Thankfully, I have a flexible job, so I’m planning to meet up with him somewhere every four to six weeks along his hike. I picked a few spots that I would also like to see, so it will be fun in its own right, and I’ll be able to see Andy and help him with his resupplies at that point. We also discussed that we’d want to talk on the phone once a week or so. He has a Garmin InReach that can communicate via text when there’s no cell service, and much of the AT is actually near enough to civilization to have coverage, so we’re able to text quite frequently as we each go about our days.
Spend plenty of time together.
Andy actually quit his job several months before he planned to start the trail, and we were very intentional about spending time together during those months. When you’ve been with someone for a long time, it’s easy to fall into routines where you may be in the same place at the same time but not actually enjoying each other. We did things together that we maybe normally would have done alone, we went on a few nice dates, and we prioritized just talking to each other throughout the course of the day. The weekend before his hike, we rented an Airbnb near the starting point and had some really sweet time together eating charcuterie, drinking boxed wine, and watching Cocaine Bear (okay, maybe that part wasn’t so sweet). I was worried he might have just felt antsy to get started, but I think we both really enjoyed the interlude between our old normal and our new normal. I would highly recommend this to any other couples preparing for a long separation!

Follow along!
I affixed a map of the entire Appalachian Trail to a piece of form board and made a little marker out of a photo of Andy so that I can move him around as he hikes. Andy’s mom and grandmother also have a map, as do my parents, so it’s fun to swap photos of where Little Andy is and feel a little more connected to him.

I’ve said a lot, so I’ll leave you with some of the other articles I found that helped me start wrapping my head around what it would be like during Andy’s hike. Some of these are more for the thru-hiker than the at-home partner, but a lot of the advice still stands!

This has been all about supporting me at home. In a future post, I’ll talk more about how I’m supporting Andy on the trail!