This page contains two sections.  In the first, I make some general suggestions.  In the second, I give the responses I have made to some questions from visitors to this website.

• Insure your packages.
  At least if you're shipping anything that would be expensive to replace.  Otherwise the Post Office doesn't seem to have to take any responsibility at all for the items you entrust to them.  (Do I sound bitter?)
  
  
• Use hiking poles.
  They will save you time and time again from falling over and hurting yourself.  And the little bit of weight that they take off of your knees and other joints will protect you from chronic overuse injuries.  Even if you've never hiked with poles or a staff before, realize that going all day long, day-after-day, with a heavy load on your back is an alltogether different animal.  I believe the majority of thru-hikers would concur on this point.
  
  
• Brush your teeth.
  No, I didn't drill holes in the handle of my toothbrush to save weight.  And I carried travel-size tubes of toothpaste, where others might have done without.  But I thought 6 months on a steady diet of ice cream and candy bars was a long time to go without proper oral hygiene.  Even if there was no practical way for the rest of me to be clean, at least twice a day the inside of my mouth was.
  
  
• Break in your boots.
  The biggest mistake I made was not including any uphill climbs during my walks prior to beginning the hike, and I paid for it with blisters that took weeks to heal.  Ideally, you should break in two pairs of boots so you can have a replacement pair when the first ones wear out.  Since your feet are going to bear the brunt of the workload, you must take care of them.  I almost cried as I watched some poor girl in Damascus slowly stumble out of a restaurant on feet that looked like hamburger.  If you haven't solved your footwear problems in the first 500 miles, you're probably not going to.
  
  
• Drink plenty of water.
  I have tried to learn a thing or two over the years from the more experienced members of my hiking club, and every one of them has harped on the importance of staying hydrated.  Hot weather or cold, thirsty or not, I'm convinced it's vital to set for yourself a mimimum amount of water that you are going to consume each day - and make sure that you drink it.  I got in the habit of downing a full liter just before setting off in the morning.  It gauranteed that I'd soon be visiting a few trees off of the Trail, but at least for that time my system had all the water it needed to flush itself out.
  
  
• Take photos of people, not places.
  My biggest regret is that I could just never get in the habit of snapping pictures of people when they were around, and then they'd get ahead of me or fall behind and I'd never see them again.  The scenery along the Trail is indeed beautiful, but in most cases a photograph is never going to do it justice.  It's the friends met along the way that you're going to want a momento of.
  
  
• Take it one day at a time.
  Whenever it occured to me that I had 4, or 3, or 2 more months of hiking yet to go, I'd begin to feel overwhelmed.  So I just avoided thinking that far in the future and never planned ahead beyond how many days of food I needed to buy in the next town I was coming to.  What mattered is that I wanted to keep hiking TODAY.  And I tried to stay flexible enough that I could stop early or keep going without feeling like I was ruining some schedule.  Consequently, I wasn't plagued by thoughts of wanting to quit the hike.  But I heard some good advice from others that I will pass along:  Before you decide to leave the Trail, wait at least three days before making up your mind, and make sure that in that time you've had a chance to be warm, dry, rested, and well-fed.
  
  
• Hike your own hike.
  This is the ultimate piece of Trail wisdom and one which I felt duty-bound to offer.  But I find that someone, Jim "Bald Eagle" Owen, has already explained it better than I ever could, so I will simply refer you to his treatise, The Thru-hiking Papers - Part 3  (Alternate site: Thru-Hikers Papers), and hope that you will take it to heart, both on your hike and in your life.

Yes, it does feel weird to be home again, more so than I'd imagined.  It did not take me long to adjust to the comforts of running water, electric lights, a soft bed, even driving a car again, but it has taken me a few days to ramp up to the complexity of daily life.  Instead of having just one main task everyday, walking, I now have to motivate to handle a multitude of chores, errands and projects.  Of course, as always, TV is the main enemy of my getting anything done.
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I confess I must be gripped by nostalgia for the Trail, because I sure have expended a lot of time and effort creating a shrine to the memory of it on the web.
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I did a flip-flop, so I can't speak directly from experience, but I never let a little thing like that stop me from having an opinion.

My understanding is that a Southbound route is a tougher way to go.  You start off with a climb up and down Katahdin (though it's up to you how much of your gear you carry), which I found taxing even after being out for 6 months.  Then you enter the "100-mile wilderness".  Since you haven't had time yet to get your "hiker legs", you would probably not be able to do high-mile days through this section, like the Northbounders can.  Which means you'll take more days to do it.  Which means that you have to carry more food.  Which means that your pack is going to weigh more, which might slow you down further.  Once you get to Monson and resupply, you're not "out of the woods yet", so to speak.  Most of the Southern third of the AT in Maine is very challanging.  In particular, Mahoosuc Notch, is often described as the "toughest mile on the AT".  And then you hit New Hampshire and the Whites, with some hard climbs and descents.  So starting off Southbound from Katahdin is not the easiest way to break in.

Depending on when you start, there are advantages and disadvantages.  Some of the first Southbounders I crossed paths with had been hiking mostly by themselves and they sounded a little lonely.  But you might be seeking solitude, which is a lot easier to find as a Southbounder than starting in the middle of the pack down at Springer.  If you don't start too early, there should be other Southbounders around that you can socialize with.

If you start late, you run the risk of hitting some early Winter weather by the time you get down to the Smokies.  Another factor is that this year was good and wet in the Northeast, so finding water in places like Pennsylvania was no problem.  However, in a drought year, I wonder if the Southbounders have a greater chance of hitting dry springs because it is later in the season?

I don't mean to discourage you from doing a Southbound hike.  I just wanted to caution you about some things to consider.  A lot depends on whether you are limited to a particular start and finish date by outside factors.  If you can't start until June, then you pretty much have to do a Southbound hike, or some kind of flip-flop.

Actually, there is a very good discussion of all these alternatives on the ATC (Appalachian Trail Conference) website, in the section called "Alternative Itineraries".  It was from this site that I got the idea for the particular variation of a flip-flop I ended up doing.
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I bought my map sets from the ATC Trail Store on their website.  If you are planning to hike the Trail I strongly urge you to become a member of the ATC.  Doing so before you buy your maps entitles you to a discount.  I opted to buy just the maps and not the trail guides.  I divided the maps into about 4 groups.  I carried a few at a time and sent the rest of a group ahead of me to the next town in a "bounce-box".  I mailed the used maps home because I wanted to keep them.  When I was about at the end of a group, I had my "mail-drop guy" send the next group to me, took some, and put the rest in the bounce-box again.  Some thru-hikers choose not to carry maps or the Companion and just follow the white blazes.  At the very least I think you should plan to carry the Data Book.  It gives vital distance info re: roads, towns, shelters, campsites, and water so you can plan your hike and resupply points as you go along.
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I think a general comment I could make is that the AT is not the place to go if you are seeking solitude.  The reason I started the hike in WV instead of GA is because I didn't want to be in the middle of a mob of people.  But, though I didn't really keep count, I bet I only had a shelter to myself about 4 or 5 times during the whole trip.  Initially I didn't see many people on the Trail, but there were always some - section hikers, day-hikers, and weekenders.  And as I moved further South, I began to encounter more and more thru-hikers heading the other way.  When I flip-flopped and started going North with everybody else, I think I preferred seeing some of the same faces now and again, and getting to know people better.  Even if you are amidst a group of hikers heading the same way to the same destination for the day, you can easily spend most of your hiking time by yourself, if that's what you want.
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I tended to go into a town to buy food, get a meal, shower, and do laundry on about every 6th or 7th day.  Carrying more than 6 days of food was just too heavy.  And, about that time, the urge to become clean again was overpowering.
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I just recently read that Earl Shafer, who I greatly admire, thinks that the Trail should be hiked from one terminus to the other - either North or South - because dealing with the weather is part of the experience.  I have a typically abstract, objective way of looking at things and to me it didn't matter what direction or sequence I did the Trail, as long as I walked all of it.  Everyone has to find their own answer to the "purity" question.  Personally, I chose not to blue-blaze or slack-pack, though I hold nothing against those who did.  Decide what is meaningful for you and don't care about anything else.

I have no apologies for the fact that my route may have made things a bit easier on me.  I hiked the Trail to experience it, not to suffer as much as possible just so I could brag that I survived it.  My prime motivation for my route, however, was to avoid becomming part of a mobile mob.  I didn't want to be competing with my fellow hikers all the time for shelter and tent space, and trying to beat them into town to grab that last motel room or package of ramen.  But you might want to talk to some Northbounders to find out what it was actually like.  Having to crowd into a packed shelter on a rainy night, or getting to know tons of people might have been some of their favorite experiences.  I know that by the time I flipped, I was really looking forward to meeting people long enough to get to know them.
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Unfortunately for me, I didn't have a loved one to leave behind at home, so I can't offer first-hand advice regarding your spouse.  It is an issue.  On the one hand, you don't have to deal with the complications of finding someone to watch your house, pay your bills, deal with your mail.  But the person left behind has to be quite understanding and supportive, not to feel some resentment.  And you have to be honest with yourself about how you're going to deal with missing that person's companionship for so long.  I heard several guys say that the hardest thing they had to do during their hike was to get back on the Trail again after a few days visiting with their wives.
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Maybe it's that I'm willing to take a risk in order to make my life more worthwhile.
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I turned 41 in March just before I started the hike.  I considered this my second mid-life crisis and I don't want to place any limit on how many more I might have.

I would like to put your mind at rest on this point.  The people hiking the AT are a very mixed bag.  You are NOT going to feel out of place just because you are forty.  There are partyers on the AT, but since beer is heavy, they are only going to be drunk in town and you can avoid them there if you wish.  And as the summer wears on, they are likely to go broke and probably drop off the Trail.  I found I enjoyed both the company of people that were younger than me and also people that were older than me.  It really just depended on the person.  It takes a fair amount of effort and compromise to stay together with the people you want to be around, so it's not that difficult to get ahead of or stay behind the ones that annoy you.
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I'd like to respond to your question but I'm not sure I know the answer myself yet.  In some ways I think I might have to live out the rest of my life in order to judge how the 6 months spent on the AT fits into it.  I do know that I've satisfied my curiosity to find out what it would be like to do it (duh).  I have increased my level of self-pride (which many religions would say is a bad thing) by facing up to a difficult challenge and persevering through it.  I have added a rich set of images to my pool of life experiences that I would not have had if I had stayed home.  I have tried to make contact with some of the people I met this summer, so I'm hoping some friendships and communication will continue, and I would find value in that.

"Worth" is a very subjective term.  It also seems to imply a comparison or equation.  "Worth it", as opposed to what?  Continuing my life in the humdrum little rut that I was in?  It's hard enough to evaluate in hindsight the costs and rewards of the actions I actually take.  The best I could do is guess about the unmade choices.
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