Episode #480 - Anna McKinney Smith (Magic)
Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis
Steve Adams
4.8 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anna McKinney Smith, a 2021 thru-hiker, is our guest today. Anna found her people out on trail and, more significantly, she also found her person, who became her husband.
Anna referred to having a "common purpose of forward momentum" that appealed to her, and she has since been a writer for the Trek and opened her own blog about hiking, called Magic in the Mountains. Here's the link. Magic in the Mountains.
You can also follow Anna on the Trek at Anna McKinney Smith, Author at The Trek and on Instagram at Instagram (@annamckinney22) . She'll be hiking the PCT with her husband this year, so follow along.
Dave, Beth, and Andrew continue their way north, with Dave about to pass the 500 mile mark–a special milestone–and Beth and Andrew completing two weeks on trail. All is well, though Andrew had a "bit of a day" recently!
I used my hike earlier this year on the South West Coast Path in the UK to help raise money for my absolute favorite charity, Parenting Matters, on whose board I've been privileged to serve for over a decade. You can learn more about the hike and the organization–and donate–by visiting Hike with Steve - Empowering Parents, One Step at a Time | Parenting Matters %. I hope you want to support this critical mission.
Don't forget. Our entire series of videos from our Woods Hole Weekend in 2022 is now FREE and available at my YouTube page at Woods Hole Weekend - Trailer There, you'll find all sorts of tips and tricks that our guests took away from the weekend that helped them with their own hikes this year. Check it out.
I often ask listeners for ideas on who to interview, and I'm sure several of you say, "I could do that. I've got an awesome story to tell." You're the person we need to hear from. If you'd like to be interviewed on the podcast, just register as a guest on the link below, and I'll be in touch. Come on the show!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the Hiking Radio Network, where we taught the walk with shows by hikers |
| 0:05.3 | about hikers for everybody. Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine. |
| 0:34.0 | Hey guys, thanks for tuning in again to the Mighty Blue podcast. I am Mighty Blue and each week we bring your hikers both on and off the trail with stories that I know inspire some of you to get out there and try this old backpacking thing yourself. As you're learning, backpacking does so much for you and it's only by doing it that you can find that out. |
| 0:52.4 | Our main guest today is Anna McKinney Smith or Magic. Anna hiked the trail in 2021, kind of stumbling into it really when she headed out there with three of her friends. All of them made it to the end by the way, which is a bit special. But on the way Anna met the bloke who would become her husband and she fell in love not only with him but she also |
| 1:11.2 | fell in love with the trail and the community of hikers. We'll hear from Anna in a moment. Dave |
| 1:16.4 | Santee is closing in on 500 miles already and by the time you hear this he should be in or around |
| 1:21.6 | the Grace and Highlands passing that important milestone. Meanwhile Beth and Andrew are two weeks into |
| 1:26.9 | their hike and they continue to have a blast. |
| 1:29.1 | Though, as you'll hear, Andrew had a 24 hours during which anything that could go wrong did go wrong. |
| 1:35.8 | We'll hear from the two of them after we hear from Dave. |
| 1:38.8 | I should say at this point that my Camino hike looks like a go, so I've been experimenting with ways in which I can get the show |
| 1:45.2 | to you of not only my Camino but keeping up with Beth Andrew and Dave. We used FaceTime this |
| 1:51.0 | week recording the call. It generally worked okay. In fact their end of it sounds fantastic though mine |
| 1:57.5 | wasn't as good. With Dave I used my Apple AirPods and that didn't capture my voice all that well. But the sound with Beth and Andrew is much better. Don't worry, I'll eventually get it right. So let's move on and meet another of those intrepid young women. This is Anna McKinney Smith or Magic. Oh, I should point out, by the way, that Anna appears to be sitting in a park somewhere. |
| 2:18.3 | I'm not entirely sure why that happened, but you're going to hear some background noise, but the conversation is fine. |
| 2:24.1 | Here she is. |
| 2:28.4 | We've got another of those phenomenal young trail women on the show today. This is Anna McKinney Smith or Magic. Hey, Anna, |
| 2:35.5 | thanks for coming on the podcast. Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Great trail name, by the way. Why |
| 2:41.7 | magic? So I feel like a lot of people usually have pretty interesting trail names where they have a |
| 2:47.8 | really cool backstory. My story is just that I got a lot of trail |
| 2:53.1 | magic or people said that I got a lot of trail magic in the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. |
| 2:58.1 | Well, a young woman got a lot of trail magic. How unusual that is. It's shocking. I don't think |
... |
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