In 2015, I hiked over 800 on the Appalachian Trail. While that didn’t technically make me a thru-hiker, for those two and a half months I lived just like one. It helped that I spent my days with them - people who had started in Georgia and were making their way up to Maine. My section had begun in West Virginia, so I missed out on the entire southern half of the trail. When thru-hikers would reminisce about their early days on the trail, they would often wax lyrical about the famed Smokies…