How a hike changed a life

Chris Woodside (Photo by Dora Wilkenfeld)

By Samantha Henry and Justin Maher

She wanted to get away. She didn’t know it would change her life.

“The experience beat me down to who I really am,” said Christine Woodside of her hike over the Appalachian Trail. “No one thought it was a good idea. It just seemed like an irresponsible thing to do. Every time you do something weird and hard it seems irresponsible. But when you come out the other end, it’s a great thing.”

At 28 years old, Woodside quit her stressful middle-management newspaper job, and set off with her husband and another couple, to hike the Appalachian Trail –which is more than 2,000 miles, extending from Georgia to Maine.

“The first couple of weeks, we felt like we had bitten off more than we could chew,” Woodside said. “We got blisters; our muscles hurt. But, we were going to do it, so we had the desire to do it.”

After four-and-a-half months of rainy days, hot sun, and recurrent tears frustration and doubt, Woodside made it to Maine and came out knowing what she wanted to do. Along the way she had met a variety of people – “an underground community,” as she described it. She had the good fortune to meet another journalist, and through that contact, landed a job upon her return to civilization. From here, Woodside decided on environmental journalism as her career focus.

“I was never the same,” Woodside said. “[Hiking the trail] affected everything in my life from the way I was a journalist to the way I saw my sink at home: just turning on the water; a miracle!”

Woodside has since written over 100 articles for the New York Times, and has written freelance stories for many other publications. Currently, she is the editor for two publications: Appalachia, a bi-yearly compilation of essays mixing local and international experiences of the outdoors, and Connecticut Woodlands, a quarterly magazine. Woodside, who lives in Deep River, Conn., also continues to freelance for other publications.

She recognizes that environmental journalists are important to keeping the public informed about many pressing issues.

“We need people to inform the world, and the world wants to be informed,” Woodside said.

Woodside had set out on her journey through the Appalachian Trail as a journalist looking for a story, interviewing people along the way and taking notes. After the first month, however, she stopped, having realized that the story wasn’t the trail itself, but how the trail was changing her life.