A 100-Mile Reunion Hike Along the Rugged Arizona Trail

After those first few miles of hiking, feet hot and sun high, I questioned our decision making and cursed Glen for dropping us off two miles from the correct trailhead at 1 PM in the afternoon. I questioned my decision to wear brand new shoes, to not train with a weighted pack, and to carry 14 pounds of water. And I also questioned my decision to hike with someone who had recently lived out of a backpack for six months. Unfortunately, imposter syndrome can even follow you to a remote trail in the middle of the desert.

After huddling under a bit of rare shade in a recent burn, we carried on to meet our goal of 13 miles a day.

The AZT winds its way through 800 miles of diverse scenery and history from Mexico to Utah, through desert, conifer and pine forests, saguaro cacti, meadows, sagebrush, the indomitable Grand Canyon, and past Humphreys Peak, the state’s highest summit.

In backpacking, the day-to-day can be distilled down to bare necessities–food, shelter, water–your hiking partner’s quirks and habits reveal themselves quickly, from their process of setting up camp for the night, what their poop schedule is, or how they handle trail absurdities and stressors. During our time on the AZT, these ranged from scant and truly terrible water sources filled with algae and floaters, trekking off trail through a burned ravine full of ash with thunderheads looming, hitching a ride in the back of an RV, stumbling upon a fresh deer carcass on the trail–presumably eaten by a nearby mountain lion—and dealing with an aching foot rash (mine, of course) that led us to cut off several miles just before the canyon.

Throughout, Sarah, trail name “Gilligan,” is calm and collected, whereas I have a tendency to let my anxiety run rampant. A seasoned professional, Sarah prefers listening to podcasts in solitude while cruising at a breakneck pace. I prefer chatter and creating loud sounds to stave off animals at whatever speed my body can manage.

However different our approaches, it was therapeutic to reconnect without fighting to hear over drunk patrons at a bar–what would have been commonplace for us a decade prior in Boston. We laughed about the dichotomy, and revisited nights in the office that led to tears and “using our mousepads as dinner plates at 2 AM,” as Sarah put it. Desperate to interact with another human outside of our quarantine bubbles, and with nothing but time on our hands, we exchanged life updates and opinions on vaccines, immigration, wellness trends, mental health, cancer diagnoses, disordered eating, the creative industry, and beyond.

We spoke about our insecurities, how we had admired each other from afar over the years, how refreshing it was to hike alongside another woman, and how insidious and ludicrous our internalized fears were. Then we curled up and cried in fits of laughter, covered in ash and freeze dried fettuccine.

Fortunately for us, we both preferred sleeping in and slow mornings with coffee. On our final day before hiking from Bright Angel Campground to the South Rim, we woke up to an emptied canyon floor around 8:30 AM, other hikers opting to depart before dawn to stay cool on the arduous 4,380ft climb up.

During the final three miles on the now-bustling trail, our pace aligned with two friends, Dave and Bill, who had hiked down to the Colorado River and were heading back up. We bonded over our shared fatigue–Sarah and I looked especially haggard and burdened by our larger-than-average packs, and Dave was bonking after only eating part of a granola bar. We struck up a conversation and eventually celebrated our respective journeys together over a kitschy steak dinner in town.

It was also a chance to celebrate my newly gifted trail name, “Sweeps,” which Sarah dubbed me due to my ash encrusted disposition reminiscent of a Mary Poppins extra.

At some point, one of our new friends mentioned how risky it had been for us to spend nearly 10 days together after 10 years apart. What if we didn’t get along? What if we realized we had nothing in common? When the idea of our trip was still budding, I knew how we had both survived the grind of our old jobs together–with humor–and it translated easily to hiking alongside one another for 100 miles.

Sometimes it seems like fate wills people back into our lives again, and sometimes it’s up to us to take a risk by asking an old friend to go for a walk.