I’m not a very spiritual person, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to ask for a little help from above. On one mid-October day, I woke up with the intention of completing my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine by climbing up Katahdin where the northern terminus sign stood waiting. I found it only fitting that Katahdin should mark the end of my adventure, after all, it was here on a beautiful sunny day in 1983 where I had my first taste of traversing mountains.

I was six years old when three generations of my family came to Baxter Park together to tackle the climb. That successful summit included my two other brothers, my aunt and uncle from Spain, my father, and my grandfather, but not me. I was notified two miles into the hike at Basin Pond that that was the farthest I was to go on this day; and despite my pleas to continue on with the group, I returned to our rented cabin with my mother. Since that somewhat disappointing day, I have yearned to return to the mountains again and again. But Katahdin may just be the most special one of them all.

My father Darwin can be credited for introducing me to backpacking. He took me on my first overnight trip up Saddleback Mtn. near Rangeley when I was eleven years old. It was on this trip that I met my first thru-hiker (anyone who successfully walks the entire Appalachian Trail in the same year). He was a shaggy looking young man, friendly enough, but I was in complete awe that he had come all the way from Georgia. Ever since that trip, I obsessed about doing the entire trail myself one day.

If my father introduced me to backpacking, it was my grandfather’s sense of adventure and competitive spirit that pushed me further. The next summer my father, grandfather, and I, along with an older brother, took on the Franconia Ridge and summited Mt. Lafayette. We stopped to get out of the wind and to eat something before finishing off the last mile to the summit. Just as soon as we were done with lunch, my grandfather, whom we called Denny, stealthily took off hoping to beat everyone to the top. It was all I could do to run him down and catch him at the summit.

The next year my grandfather was seventy-two years old, and he made his last trip to Katahdin. He, my dad, and I, along with my great uncle and second cousin, reached the top in what was my first ascent.

My grandfather Denny had spent much of his youth in the mountains, but the sea came first. He was a lieutenant in the Second World War and took his love of the sea to extremes by navigating around Long Island, Manhattan, Nantucket, and back and forth between Connecticut and Maine. His greatest achievement however was when he captained his fifteen-foot outboard from Maine to Ft. Lauderdale. The image of him in the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper for accomplishing the feat is forever etched in my memory bank. The little green boat that made the journey was called “Tadpole” and this outboard became a part of my childhood. My siblings and I water-skied behind it on the Kennebec River where my great-grandfather had bought a large portion of land in 1946 that now five generations have enjoyed. Today the Tadpole, a Maine-built Corson, now 60 years old, sits waiting to be repaired in his daughter’s house at the end of the point.

I continued to hike with my dad. In 1991, we overnighted on Mt. Bigelow near Stratton, Maine. And two years later we took on the Mahoosuc Range near the New Hampshire border.

In 1993, my dad would take Denny on his final overnight near Old Blue Mountain. He had developed Alzheimer’s and by that point had become quite dependent. They both struggled on that hike – my grandfather from advanced age and the confusion that came with Alzheimer’s, and my dad as he tried to lead his fading father through the woods. They followed an old path that appeared out of use and were lucky not to get lost.

Denny died in the fall of 1998. I cried my eyes out from a continent away. It was the first grandparent I had lost. I was in the middle of a semester-long program studying history and ecology in Montana with a group of eight students and two instructors. We followed much of Lewis and Clark’s path to the Pacific Ocean as we paddled down the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, and hiked through the interlaying mountain ranges. I remember the day I heard of his death I was lying in my tent wondering somehow if Denny was with me in some way. I tried to feel him there. I wanted to go back to Maine for the funeral, but the logistics of getting there from the Montana wilderness were too difficult. I thought about the last thing he had said to me before I left weeks before he died. Despite his incoherent state in those last months and weeks (he had long since forgotten who I was), he turned to me in his hospital robe and said with such clarity and sincerity, “Good luck with all of your adventures.” Those last few words have gone on to define much of my life.

My father and I continued to hike together for a few more years. We found our way down the Grand Canyon in 1997 and went to the top of Mt. Katahdin in 1999 with my mother, two of my siblings, and a sister in law. But that proved to be the last hike with him for a while. My adventurous spirit kept me on the move and I lived in a number of different cities. But it wasn’t until 2006 when I moved to Switzerland that I picked up hiking again.

In 2010, after a number of years, my dad and I drove up to Mount Battie, near Camden, Maine and completed a short hike together. A few days later he suffered a major stroke. The stroke left him debilitated physically and it was an arduous effort to relearn such simple tasks that we take for granted – like swallowing or using the full capacity of our vocal chords.

In 2011, I found my way to Charlottesville, Virginia for a teaching job. I enjoyed living so close to Shenandoah National Park and completed the entire Appalachian Trail within the park. By the time I had finished, I had tallied over 500 miles of the AT, but my dream of completing the entire trail in one full-go would not ebb.

After four years of unsatisfying work and conjuring up childhood dreams, I decided to take the leap. I quit my job with the intention of traveling the world. I planned to go to far-off wondrous places like Nepal, Australia, and New Zealand, to name only a few. But the major undertaking would be to return from the round-the-world trip to complete what I had set out to do for many years – to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

My round the world trip was indeed amazing, and that’s a story for another time. A few weeks after flying back from Auckland, my mother and father accompanied me to the start of the trail in Georgia on April 14, 2016. My father, hoping to be a part of my hike in some way, tried to walk the first mile of the trail with me. He made it a few hundred yards before fatigue sent him back. It was the gesture that meant the most, although I had hoped to hike a little further with him.

The Appalachian Trail is a rugged one, short on easy, and heavy on the up and down. I can’t count many days on the trail that I would consider not challenging.

Having spent so much time on the trail previously in Maine, I looked forward to getting back there. I crossed into the state on September 24th on a chilly windy day where I traversed the Goose Eye peaks. The next day, I meandered through the most difficult mile on the entire trail, the Mahoosuc Notch; I pressed hard and the rest of the daylight hours proved to be the single most demanding day on my six-month journey. I raced against autumn and pushed to reach Katahdin before winter weather set in.

On October 13th I entered Baxter State Park with plans to reach the top of Katahdin on the next day. The weather called for a high in the forties at the base of the mountain but sunny skies. The evening before had been unusually warm and I shooed away bugs in a lean-to near Katahdin Stream Campground.

On summit day, however, the thermometer at the ranger station read 38 degrees, the skies were full of clouds, and you could hear the wind roll through the trees like vehicles on Interstate 95.

I passed two hikers who in their jeans and sweatshirts were shivering as they descended.

“Did you make it to the top?” I asked them.

“No, we’re not up for it. It’s so cold up there.”

Where was this sun that was forecasted?

A little later, a woman who was more properly dressed for the weather also passed on the summit and was coming down.

“The wind up there is just terrible. Hikers are hunched behind rocks waiting for conditions to improve.”

“Did you make it to the top?”

“No. I’ve been up many times before, but it’s not going to happen today.”

Still below tree line, I intended to wait until conditions improved above. But when two fellow thru-hikers caught up to me, I decided to stick with them as we met the wind head on. Katahdin is like no other climb on the trail. It’s long, it’s steep, and it can be quite precarious at times.

Before tree line, the amount of frost along the trail increased. When we hit tree line, the clouds only scattered enough to get brief glimpses of the landscape below. The wind pounded us with a consistent punch. I was wearing every piece of clothing I had with me, but the best way to stay warm was to keep moving, which we did.

The frost and the ice got thicker, and at times we slipped on unseen black ice. At one point up a tricky spot, one of my fellow thru-hikers started to fall back and I threw my hands up to catch him before he was able to regain his grip on the rock in front of him and carry himself up.

As we made the climb, memories of my previous trips to Katahdin came to my head. I thought of Denny. And whether for my own diversion, or for the possibility that it might actually help, I talked out loud to Denny and asked him humbly if he could do anything about these clouds. If the sun would break, not only would we get outstanding views, but it would make our journey to the top a much safer one.

At the Tablelands, visibility was low and our water bottles began to freeze. But we had come this far and the wind and cold seemed to be manageable enough. The terrain flattened out and the summit didn’t feel so remote anymore. But we couldn’t see the summit as we pushed ourselves into the wind. After a few moments however, the clouds pressing and progressing all around us began to break and patches of sun revealed themselves. And then, a magical moment, the summit appeared. I could see my final goal, after six months, ahead of me only a little more than a mile away.

The clouds put up a fight, but little by little conditions improved. It became quite evident at that moment that there would be no need to turn around on this day, that I would reach the summit, my third time, the most meaningful, but the first time without my grandfather or my dad.

I shared the moment with the two other thru-hikers, both young guys who embraced at the top after having spent every day together on the trail. The moment was theirs, but it was also mine. Three generations of Katahdin hikers, I the last. Maybe the next time, sometime, there will be a fourth?

The next day I greeted my parents in Millinocket. They had driven that morning from their home in Phippsburg to pick me up. Their house was built by my grandparents. My memories run thick of the constant chores my grandfather completed to keep the house in order. After all, he was a Navy man. (I could only dream of being that organized.) The days of recuperation after finishing the trail, with my Dad, along the Kennebec River, where I had spent so much time with my grandfather while growing up… a good place to rest after my journey back to Katahdin.

Tim Gillett teaches at The Storm King School where he serves as the Chair of the History and Social Sciences Department.