Hello. My name is Greg Eriksen. On March 23, 2000, using the trail-name, "Trudge", I began a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I started near the middle of the Trail in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and headed Southbound for 1000 miles to the end of the AT on Springer Mountain in Georgia. Then I caught a bus back to Harper's Ferry and went Northbound to complete the 2nd half of the Trail. I reached the Northern Terminus on September 13th at the top of Mount Katahdin in my home State of Maine. Here is a map to help you better understand my route.
This "Writings" page contains an index to all of my letters, journal entries, and emails related to the Trail. They are listed in date order. Some of these things appeared previously on the website for my hiking club and on a friend's page. But you can consider this the complete and unexpurgated collection. There is a great deal of material here that was not published on-line before, including all of my journal entries, emails, a newsletter article, and some other miscellany.
The journal entries were a series of hand-written letters that I sent to my friend Don Myers, who was handling my mail-drops and gear swaps. Although these were letters to Don, I often thought of them as pages in a personal journal because they were the only record of my day-to-day thoughts and experiences on the Trail. I sent them to Don as a form of repayment in gratitude for his assistance, and as a way of keeping him informed of my condition and whereabouts. I want to thank Don for beginning the gargantuan task of transcribing excerpts from these letters while I was away. It was only when I returned and began to type the remainder up myself, that I realized how much work it was. As I said, these are the unexpurgated versions. I had chided Don about the need to be selective, but I have chosen to publish them here in their entirety, excluding only the logistical stuff regarding mail-drops and such.
In addition to emails and journals, the list contains items called "Updates". These were the group emails I sent out along the way whenever I could find computer access in a Trail town. They provide good general summaries of my status at that point on the Trail.
I realize there is a large volume of material here. To have it make the most sense, it would be best for you to read ALL of it, in the order presented. You might consider it as sort of a web-based book, requiring a similar commitment of time. But for those of you who have a life, I have tried to indicate the more notable items with a rating system. Reading just the ones marked with a, "!", or particularly those with, "!!", will provide you with a representative sample, and reduced eyestrain. Enjoy.
