The day I received the first copy of a book that took me three years to write, I cried.

But I didn’t cry from first glimpsing the book. Instead, I was brought to tears by writing this reflection. Writing this piece reminded me of where I came from, what it took to write this book, and why I wrote the thing in the first place. Here’s the story of how my thru-hiking memoir came to be:

FIRST STEPS

Immediately after finishing the Pacific Crest Trail in 2015, I attended a family wedding. My long, shaggy hair and animal-like beard attracted the attention of a bridesmaid sitting across from me. She asked me what the hell I was doing with my life. I didn’t know yet, but I had this inkling of an idea that I was going to write a book about my thru-hike. This was still a fragile idea to me, but her asking the question seemed as good of a time as any to speak my intention into existence. When I told her about my plan, she perked up.

“Have you ever done anything like that before? I mean, like, write a book?” she asked.

Without even thinking about my answer, I told her that no, I hadn’t, but I figured if you stick with something for long enough, eventually, you’ll reach the destination. I’d learned from the trail that any distance is walking distance if you have the time.

MAKING THE TIME

I first set to work in Austin, Texas where I stumbled upon cheap month-to-month housing. I knew that keeping my lifestyle expenses as low as possible would be essential if I wanted to keep playing this game. I worked part-time at a smoothie shop to pay the bills and spent the rest of my time focusing on the one thing I cared about most: writing.

Again, I had no prior experience with “being a writer”. But I found that by writing, by reflecting on my experience, I could learn about myself. In the beginning, that was enough to keep me going.

THE UPHILL CLIMB

Every single day, I drove eight minutes north to a coffee shop and posted up in one of their dimly lit corners where I subjected myself to countless hours of writing month after month. I found out that the hardest part about writing was actually doing the dang thing. For me, this meant getting to that shop, sitting down in that chair and opening my laptop. So long as I could get there and sit down, I knew I’d at least make some amount of progress that day. I even befriended baristas to avoid the shop’s minimum spending requirements in the hopes that I’d stretch my dwindling budget. Occasionally, I purchased a lone banana or a small cup of tea to rid myself of any accumulating guilt.

Learning how to write was much more difficult than I had ever imagined. Before I’d begun, I figured I’d write the book in a year, be done with it, and move on with my life. But I kept stretching the project further and further out into the future. The months turned to seasons, and before long, a year had passed and I was still grinding away with no visible light at the end of the tunnel.

The learning curves to writing felt steep to me. I wanted to do it right. I wanted to learn the rules of grammar and syntax and the structures and frameworks of story-telling and character development. And for the life of me, I just couldn’t figure out my voice. But day in and day out, I kept showing up to that coffee shop, sitting down with my banana and clicking away at my laptop keyboard.

The work didn’t end after I left the coffee shop. Writing had now become a full-time process. Instead of going out with friends, I read daily, both fiction (favs: Hesse’s Narcissus & Goldmund; Murakami’s Kafka On the Shore) and non-fiction (favs: King’s On Writing; How to Read Literature Like a Professor; The Elements of Style; and more).

I consumed hours of writer-centric YouTube videos (Ellen Brock and Like Stories of Old) and podcasts (Rocking Self-Publishing) during my drives to and from the HEB grocery store.

I tried my hand at writing fiction and short stories.

I joined Facebook groups for authors (20booksto50K), scoured their conversations for advice and reached out to well-established writers to absorb teachings on the craft.

I found a writing mentor who turned out to be a life mentor and learned a lot about the publishing business by helping him edit and re-launch one of his more successful sci-fi books.

I even spoke to a couple of best-selling thru-hiker authors who offered me so much inspiration along the way (thank you, Carrot and Kyle).

I forked over cash for manuscript edits, asked friends for feedback, and then struggled with how much I should listen to others and when to trust my instincts.

I managed isolation and day after day of doubt, confusion, and hopelessness. The writing was making hiking across the country–previously the most difficult thing I’d done in my life–seem like a walk in the park.

Writing reflected my own insecurities. I felt egoic for writing a book about myself. Who am I to write a memoir? And at age 27? What do I know? I wondered whether it would be “good enough”, what the critics would think, or if anyone would even read it. I wanted people to read it, all the while dreading the attention I might receive from putting myself out there. I thought often about how I wanted to remain small and invisible even after its completion.

I even questioned my own motives for writing in the first place: Why am I doing this? Is it for money? Recognition? To please others or make my parents proud? To attract a partner? To compensate for something else missing from my life that I didn’t know how to fill? Or because I really don’t have a clue about what else I should be doing with this one life I’ve been given?

Perhaps it was a bit of all of those things and more, but had it only been for these superficial reasons, I don’t believe I would have seen it through to the end.

So I ask myself: why did I keep going?

HEALING MYSELF

I believe the reason I kept coming back to this book time and time again is that I needed to heal myself. My experience of hiking the wilderness for six months straight had left me more broken than how I had entered it. The trail was such an immersive and rewarding experience, a high point in my life that I found incredibly difficult to leave behind me. A large part of my mind simply had not yet moved on. So, I sought the answers to my life by digging through my past, revisiting those experiences over and over again to wring dry every ounce of whatever was left in them. Surely, there must be something there I was missing, something I still needed to learn.

This deeply-rooted craving and unfulfilled desire to understand why I had hiked the trail, what I had learned, and if I could channel my trail experience to benefit the lives of others without them having to endure six months of walking took hold of me. These desires fueled my engine of self-discovery. And once it began turning, I could not stop it.*

*I cried after I wrote this sentence. An overwhelming sense of how seemingly little control I have over some of my life decisions suddenly washed over me. No matter how much I tell myself a story that my path is intentional and one of my own choosing, in the end, my desire to understand my life operated under the same underlying mechanisms as would the pursuit of any other desire. Once I allowed a thought to become my idea, it was already too late for me. Some ideas possess, and they don’t leave until you see them through, stumble across a better one, or let go of them completely. And sometimes, it feels like I don’t have much of a choice in the matter. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. I now see desires as a key part of my internal compass and I will follow them wherever they take me and learn the lessons I need to be taught.

The wheels kept turning, and there came a point where I grew so sick of the whole story that I just wanted to move forward with my life. I guess that’s the magic of reflection. In order to transcend our stories, we have to know them first. We have to be aware of them, write them down, and only after seeing how silly they really are can we re-write them and move forward. Art is a never-ending process. I could have kept working on this book for years, fixing sentences, rewording phrases. But there came a time where my body felt it was time to move forward and oh man did it feel good.

THE FINAL ASCENT

When I felt the book was about 90% done, I set a publication date for October 17, 2018—exactly three years to the day when I finished the hike. This way, I couldn’t keep prolonging the inevitable. Whether I felt it was 100% ready or not, the book would be for sale in the coming months and people could read it.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to self-publish through Amazon to retain complete creative control of the process, and save myself from having to deal with agents and read publisher rejection letters. Instead, I found a professional editor and a thorough formatter through an author’s Facebook group as well as a talented artist and fellow hiker friend to design the book’s artwork. Everything turned out more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

As for marketing, I spent time researching how Amazon’s algorithm works and discovered the company’s advertising platform to be nearly identical to Google’s, an advertising platform I had become intimate with during my years working at a digital marketing agency. I could hardly believe how my life had come full circle in such a way. I now had a marketing plan, the final forms of a book, and I was as ready as I’d ever be to launch.

THE LAUNCH

In the early months of writing, a dream came to me. I was surrounded by friends who had gathered together and joined me at a popular bookstore to support the book. This dream became a vision. I used it to motivate me during all the lows of this three-year process. Whenever things turned into a slog, I imagined how great this “launch party” would be.

But when the time came, I shied away from this dream. Once again, I told myself it felt egotistical and decided that I don’t like events being about me.

Then, pretty much out of nowhere, multiple friends began suggesting to me that I should throw a launch party. Another said she would be open to hosting. I guess it was meant to be. Thanks to all my friends, the event turned out to be even more amazing than even my dreams could conjure up, and it’s still one of my most fond memories.

Eventually, launch day arrived. My desire to remain invisible and my concerns of egotism shattered into pieces. Suddenly, I wanted to share my story with others. With the picture reframed, I felt thrown back into first-grade show-and-tell, but at a slightly greater age and a slightly larger classroom, ready to open up and stay vulnerable about all that unfolded. This unexpected shift reminded me of how silly it is to project my current experience of reality into fantasies of a non-existent future.

In the end, the book seems like a distant dream, one I’m grateful that I followed to its end. There are so many people to thank, but the book is where you’ll find the proper acknowledgments, the stories and lessons learned, and hopefully, some laughs and inspiration, too. If you get something out of it, consider sharing it with others and allow the dominos to fall.

If you decide to write a book yourself, know that your experience might be completely different from mine. If there’s one thing I can guarantee: you’ll face challenges. JUST KEEP GOING. It’s become clear to me that turning inward to reflect and uprooting our own suffering is not only for our own benefit, but for the good of so many others.

Some final words on the matter: Whether it’s hiking long distances or writing books, do not be distracted by achievements. I’m constantly reminded of the fleeting nature of achievement. What’s most important is how we feel inwardly about ourselves. This path is one we can walk today, right here, right now, in this present moment. I invite you to create space for yourself, to breathe, and observe what arises for you. This is the trail I’m currently most interested in walking, and it’s one we can all walk together. I hope you’ll join me.

Thanks for your support. Wishing you well today.

Love,

David