What Benton MacKaye did not anticipate was anyone touched with the desire to walk continuously from end to end. No one did until 1948, when World War II veteran Earl Shaffer lugged his army rucksack from Georgia to Maine. Shaffer’s accomplishment came to be known as a “thru-hike,” and everyone who does the feat is called a “thru-hiker.” This story is about the year I became one of them.
