How I went from thru-hiking the East Coast to being a Grizzly in the wild west
by Emily Acer
This past year, I thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. To be more specific, I spent six months hiking 2,197.4 miles along the entire east coast. My partner and I set this as a goal while we were finishing up graduate school, and after years of planning it felt like a dream to immerse ourselves in the woods while only relying on what we had on our backs. Months of eating candy, sleeping on an inflatable pad, and showering once a week can really wreak havoc on your presentation. How does one transition from being a feral mountain person to supporting small communities through service on the other side of the country? Well…
It all started when my partner (other 2024 GrizzlyCorps fellow Clay Groetsch!) did a year of service with GrizzlyCorps in 2022. After graduating with their Masters, they took off and worked with Mariposa Trails helping build out their ecotourism program and designing a map for their trail systems right outside of Yosemite. They talked about how cool it was to connect with the land, learn about the communities in the area, and support a small new organization that was centered on increasing sustainable outdoor recreation.
Meanwhile, I was still in graduate school finishing up my MS in Forestry. Graduate school is already difficult, but after some additional personal hardships, I was ready to spend some time reconnecting with nature and disconnecting from the world. Right after I graduated, I worked in my advisors’ fire ecology lab, spending a few short months learning about the research they had been doing on prescribed burns in the southeast US. I really enjoyed the work, but being burnt out from years in school I still needed a break. Since Clay had finished their year of service, we were ready to tackle hiking many miles along the Appalachian Trail (AT).
What an adventure of a lifetime! The AT starts in Georgia and runs along the entire east coast, finishing at Mount Katahdin in Maine. While we enjoyed the disconnect from real-world responsibilities, it’s not hard to begin thinking about what life will be like after trail. Clay would occasionally talk to other hikers about their time with GrizzlyCorps, and I did more digging into what a year of service might look like for me. Part of the mission is to build fire and forest resilience, and after those months in the fire ecology lab, I wanted to see how my new knowledge might be applied in a more community-minded sense. I decided to apply, and with some of the positions being close to each other, Clay applied with me.
What’s important to note is that we both applied WHILE on trail. We submitted our applications while lying in our tent one night, checking to make sure we had the right documents downloaded while we had a bar of service. We tried to line up our phone and Zoom interviews during days we would be going through town. This would typically give us reliable internet and a spot to sit down (looking at you McDonalds!). However, for our interview with the Trinity County RCD, we didn’t quite hit the mileage we thought we would to make it to the next town. To make matters worse, we were about to hike into a 30-mile section with absolutely no service. We had heard that one of the nicest AT shelters was coming up, so we decided to hunker there for a night and interview there the next morning.
Luckily no one can smell through the phone, but I can’t imagine what it was like to hop on an interview with recent college graduates to see that they were a bit muddy, disheveled, and not at all in professional attire. It was one of those moments that we really had to take a deep breath, laugh at the circumstance, and hope to be given a chance to shine. Despite the lack of hygiene and comfortable office space, the interviews went really well and we were so excited to learn about the different projects we could work on at the TCRCD. We spent the next few weeks chatting as we hiked about what life in Weaverville might look like. We interviewed with other amazing host sites, but our eyes were really set on Weaverville.
A few weeks later, we got the email offering us fellowship positions with the TCRCD! Now it was time to, well, keep hiking. We still had a couple months and almost 1,000 miles left of the AT. During this time, we applied for housing and began making plans for how we would get out west after we summited Mt Katahdin. Clay ended up contracting Lyme disease, which threw off our finishing date quite a bit. We finally made it to the end of the trail on August 24th! This gave us ONE WEEK to get to Ohio where all our stuff was stored, pack the cars up, and begin the 4-day drive to Weaverville. We finished the trail on a Saturday, and by the next Sunday, we were unlocking the door to our new home. A few days later we were officially starting our service year as Grizzly’s.
And now that brings us up to speed! I am specifically working with the TCRCD Fire Safe Council, where I have had the opportunity to connect with people in ways I never got to while working on my Masters. I’ve worked in farmers market booths teaching folks the importance of prescribed burns. I’ve gotten my wildland firefighting certification. I’m exploring the world of fire and how it relates to the communities (both human and natural) impacted by it. I feel like I am right where I belong, the culmination of all I have learned and observed being used in a meaningful way. While I saw myself as “feral” while hiking the AT, it gave me the chance to decompress after years of pushing myself academically. Taking time to reset was important for me to now show up with vigor, enthusiasm, and a heart fully open.
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