The hardest part of anything is just beginning it. My first night camping was the hardest. I laugh now thinking about my cushy campsite at Katahdin Stream Campground with bear-poles, shelters, and people-galore. But that was truly one of the sadder, scarier nights for me. I literally set up my tent IN the shelter for an added layer of “false protection” from the woods. Still it is one of the nights I’m most proud of despite having hiked zero miles that day because I had made a goal and I was finally starting.
These photos are from my first day on the trail, which was fittingly one of the most difficult hiking days. Hiking up Katahdin is a challenge of a rock scramble in any weather, but I got it in a misty rain-fest. But my stubborn-self had decided I was starting that day, so there it was. I literally didn’t know what my end goal, the summit, looked like; but I did know from the white blazes that I was on the right path.