Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.

When you picture a through hiker, what comes to mind?

Scruffy beard, dirty clothes, lots of body odor. You probably also assume that if someone is doing

a through hike, they are an avid hiker. And, let's face it, more than likely, you assume they're white.

None of this was true for today's guest. When Derek Lugo decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, he was a suave New Yorker,

clean, manicured, accustomed to life in a big city.

He was not a hiker, and he had never camped.

But one day, he decided to hike all the way from Georgia to Maine. He wrote a memoir about

his experience on the A-T. It's called The Unlikely Thru Hiker, and he joins us today to talk about it.

So I'm curious, what made you want to hike the Appalachian Trail as somebody who didn't have backpacking

experience didn't really wasn't really outdoorsy like what went into that decision I'm a big

reader and about 15 years ago maybe a little bit longer someone handed me a book and said read this

it's it's hilarious,

you're going to love it. And it was a walk in the woods by Bill Bryson. And yes, it was hilarious.

I loved it. It was entertaining. But the one thing that stuck out was this thing, this trail,

that he made sound so hard. And throughout my life, I've been all about challenges and for me it was

just a challenge and it was more so a challenge because I had never done anything like that

before so I said why not I'm sure people do this all the time turns out you know normally

if you do a through hike you've hikediked it before. So in my mind, it was,

I had just came back from Italy. I spent almost a year there. So when I came back, I had

several months to just do whatever I wanted to do. And hiking the Appalachian Trail was one of those things where it was almost like a

pipe dream where, yeah, I'll do it one day.

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