Readers share their tales from the trail.

Kristina Dean was 31, with a good job and a mortgage. But she gave it all up to fulfill a dream: thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. “I knew that once I traveled on foot for seven months that I could go anywhere and do anything,” she said. Dean started backpacking in 2001, as therapy. Only 25, [...]

Before I even knew there was a name for it, I was a trail runner. The first time I can remember running on a trail I was eight years old. My family had moved out of the city into a trailer park in the country. Other kids would roller skate or ride their bikes around [...]

I’m not much of a spectator—I’d rather be part of the action. Last year at my wife Natalie’s debut marathon, I jumped in and escorted her the final 13 miles on her way to a magnificent Boston Marathon qualifying performance. Natalie, the self-proclaimed non-athletic girly-girl, was going to the long-distance running mountain top. She was [...]

I was heading out for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. My girl friend woke up before dawn to drive me to the trailhead at Springer Mountain, Ga., but we got lost, so she dropped me at Cooper Gap, 10 miles north of Springer on the A.T. I was planning on staying right near Cooper [...]

I was hiking in the Raven Cliffs Wilderness a couple years back with my girlfriend Deana and two friends. There was a sweet smell in the air characteristic of the north Georgia mountains in late summer after a rain shower—some perfect combination of the damp earth, old wildness, and the fragrance of native flora like [...]

I was nine years old and sitting cross-legged in a two-person vinyl boat, which was tied to a dock on the Chesapeake Bay. It was late August, when the clouds roll thick and the humidity smells like salt. I was with my friend, Meagan, who was (she said) on her way to becoming an Olympian [...]

Best Run Ever Bill Gentry, Grottoes, VA My buddy Bob and I traversed the Greenbrier River Trail, a 77-mile rails-to-trails park that runs from Cass to Lewisburg in West Virginia. Here are a few of the highlights: The crunch-crunch-crunch of a couple hundred thousand footfalls. The simple solitude of the Greenbrier River, at times a [...]

- John white, Charlottesville, VA My friends and I were seated in a circle around a blazing campfire in the woods of West Virginia.  We were busy celebrating the tough 1.1 mile hike endured that day by consuming everything we had labored to bring, including those golden liquids that sloshed so enticingly every step of [...]

-Eric Angevine, Charlottesville, VA When I was a kid, the first snow of the season was always an event in my house. Even at midnight, my mother would sneak into my room and press my shoulder through the mound of blankets, gleefully whispering: “Wake up—it’s snowing!” Seen through the mists of time, every childhood snowflake [...]

-Eric Angevine, Charlottesville, VA When I was a kid, the first snow of the season was always an event in my house. Even at midnight, my mother would sneak into my room and press my shoulder through the mound of blankets, gleefully whispering: “Wake up—it’s snowing!” Seen through the mists of time, every childhood snowflake [...]

-Eric Angevine, Charlottesville, VA When I was a kid, the first snow of the season was always an event in my house. Even at midnight, my mother would sneak into my room and press my shoulder through the mound of blankets, gleefully whispering: “Wake up—it’s snowing!” Seen through the mists of time, every childhood snowflake [...]

I was hiking along a trail in Pisgah National Forest, when suddenly I heard a snuffling sound behind me. I turned around and saw a coal black dog emerge from the brush. He looked to be of mixed Labrador and traveling salesman ancestry, and he was moving kind of funny. As he emerged fully I [...]

Click here to submit your own ‘Campfire’ story and be entered for a chance to win gear from Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine. Tri, Tri Again Peter Walton, Roanoke, Va I looked in the mirror and saw 27 gray hairs (yes, I counted). I was about to turn 30, and to commemorate the occasion, I decided [...]

There’s no doubt about it: I thought we were going to die at the top of that mountain.

The Secret Cabin Tyler Currie, Thurmont, Md. Two summers ago, on a whim, I stepped off a familiar foot trail and climbed up an embankment deep in the forest. At the top I found a decrepit little shack among the trees. It was a minor miracle that I had never before stumbled across this sorry [...]