Appalachian Trail: Start of my “Journey of a Thousand Miles”

Never underestimate the power of synchronicity to realize your dreams!

P. Venkat Raman
4 min readSep 26, 2021
A walk on the serene Appalachian Trail, easily accessed from the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
A walk on the serene Appalachian Trail — Photos by Author

One of the earliest features of the USA that I came to know about was the Appalachian Trail. But it would take 45 years before something came off that knowledge!

When my friend, Doug Greene, reported recently on his travels on the Pacific Crest Trail with gorgeous photos, it had an immediate effect: I wanted to experience that myself first-hand.

But the challenges of such a hike brought me down to earth.

Then I discovered that our trip to the Sundial Bridge actually put us across the PCT! Sadly, we had crossed it while we were on the highway and didn’t even know that we did.

So, a new possibility dawned on me. I wanted to be on the lookout for sampling the trail in segments. I can drive to various points where day trips along the trail would be feasible.

Long before knowing about the existence of the PCT, I had heard about the Appalachian Trail. Only, walking along that trail was just a distant dream; I had always considered it to be too remote and beyond my reach. But the curiosity always simmered in my mind about what that would be like.

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P. Venkat Raman
P. Venkat Raman

Written by P. Venkat Raman

A tortoise among internet marketing hares. Slowly inching toward the goal.

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