From comedian Sally Chaffin Brooks comes a memoir about the thing she can't seem to shut up about— her life changing thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

25-year-old Sally has no reason to upend her comfortable, conventional life to spend 5 months hiking the Appalachian Trail; no reason except that her charismatic best friend, Erin, asked her to come along. A woefully out-of-shape Sally quickly realizes she may not actually be prepared for the realities of thru-hiking— brutal weather, wrong turns, and painful blisters have her wanting to quit almost as soon as she starts. But out of loyalty to Erin, or maybe the sinking realization that her life needed upending, Sally sticks it out. As she and Erin trek from Georgia to Maine, they collect a ragtag band of hikers and together stumble from one hilarious (and sometimes scary) predicament to another. By the time she reaches Maine— accompanied by Erin, their crew, and a guy she's maybe (definitely) falling in love with— readers will cheer for the stronger, more self-assured Sally that has emerged and wish they could start the laugh-out-loud, life-affirming adventure all over again.

Excerpt

JUNE 10, 2006, OREGONIA, OHIO

“Wow,” my mom said again, wiping tears from her eyes.

We stood with my dad in the empty hallway, taking a beat before we opened the double doors and I walked down the aisle. “I just can’t believe my baby girl….”

“... farted like a truck driver in her wedding dress?” my dad cut in.

“A truck driver?!” my mom retorted. “I was going to say earthquake!” Her body shook with laughter.

“You guys done?” I fixed them both with what I hoped was an annoyed look, but found it near impossible to pull off stern with four feet of tulle attached to the top of my head. “You try wearing shapewear all day and see what happens.”

My mom hooked her arm through mine. “You’ve always had impeccable timing.”

“We should go before I pass out,” my dad said as he took his position on my other side.

“Glad to see you two getting along,” I took a deep breath and squeezed them both close. “Okay, let’s do this.”

We were still laughing as we walked through the doors, a sweet mandolin tune playing courtesy of a childhood friend’s bluegrass band. I vaguely registered the friends and family, all turned in their chairs to watch me parade to the front. I focused on my fiancé, who, I noted thankfully, looked excited, albeit slightly uncomfortable, in his brand-new Men’s Warehouse suit. I caught the eye of Erin, my maid of honor, who was giving me a “holy shit, this is happening” grin, which I returned with “I know, can you believe it?” crazy wide-eyes.

It was fitting that Erin was going to be up there with us. I mean, of course she would be, we’d been best friends since the moment we’d met playing light-as-a-feather at a seventh-grade sleepover; but really, she was the reason I was getting married at all. Without Erin, I never would have hiked the Appalachian Trail. And without the Appalachian Trail, I never would have met this wonder of a person that I was about to vow to love “til death do us part.”

March, 2002, Chicago, Illinois

It all started with a phone call. I was, as I typically was in those days, stuck in Chicago traffic when my best friend, Erin, called from her house in St. Louis.

“Dude, I’m going to hike the fucking AT!” Erin blurted as way of a greeting. By AT, she meant the Appalachian Trail—an almost 2,200-mile hiking trail that runs from Georgia to Maine.

“What? When?” I asked, mentally screaming “MOOOOOVEEE” to the car in front of me.

“Next year, probably February or March.” Erin was in the process of studying for the MCATs and was hoping to go to med school the following fall. She would be able to take the five months needed to hike the entire trail in the spring of 2003, assuming everything went as planned.

“That’s really great, dude. I’m excited for you,” I told her. We talked some more about her plans; me, inching along in traffic on my way back to my office in downtown Chicago; her, sitting on her porch in St. Louis getting ready to bike to the hospital where she was working as a nurses’ aid.

When Erin finally got off the phone so she could get to work, telling me she had to go “wipe old-ass butts,” I was still about five miles from the office, which meant probably another hour in the car. I was working for a non-profit based in down‐ town Chicago called Best Buddies where I would set up programs in area high schools to pair kids with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities in one-on-one friendships. I loved my job, but it required me to routinely travel out to schools in the Chicago suburbs, and I often spent hours at a time in my ‘86 Honda Civic that had no working stereo or air conditioner, driving out of and back into the city. The silence in the car gave me a lot of time to think.

I thought about Erin’s plans. I decided I was jealous. The previous summer, right after I graduated from college, Erin, her older sister Cara, and I spent a month backpacking the Long Trail, a hiking trail that traverses the Green Mountains of Vermont, from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border. It was my first long-distance hiking trip, and I hadn’t been prepared for how hard it would be. Before that trip I was more of a summer camp counselor, car camping, day-hiking type of outdoorswoman, not a “carry everything I need for a week on my back and hike up and down mountains all day” type. Cara was a for-real outdoorswoman; a “moved to New Hampshire to live with her fiancé that she’d met thru-hiking the AT” kinda gal. I’d grown up idolizing Cara, and the chance to spend a month with her and Erin was a dream. But in the minutes after the three of us had reached the Canadian border and completed the Long Trail, but before I collapsed with exhaustion, I swore I would never do something like that again.

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About the Author

Sally Chaffin Brooks is a writer, stand-up comedian, and podcaster. A reformed lawyer, Sally has released two chart-topping comedy albums (Brooks Was Here, Street Bird) and co-hosts the comedy podcasts The Ridiculist and Dumb Love. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son, and heads to the mountains as often as possible. Going to Maine is her first book