Changing Expectations: The Evolution of My Hiking Goals

Rebecca Sperry

It all started with a solo hike up a tiny mountain in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire in 2015. It was a warm day in May. I wanted to go hiking and my husband didn’t. That first solo hike sparked a fire in my soul and I was hooked. A self-proclaimed non-athlete, I never expected that over the next six years I would become a professional hiker. And while my hiking goals have changed over the years, the main reason I hit the trails hasn’t.

In New Hampshire we have an obsession with hiking lists. There is the New Hampshire 48 4000’er list (arguably the most popular), the 52 With a View, The GRID, Tracing, you name it, if there is a way to create some sort of hiking goal, we’ve got it. When someone finds themselves setting foot on the trails in The White Mountains on a regular basis, they can’t help but be made aware of said lists. That is exactly what happened to me after that fateful day in 2015. At some point on a hike I was asked if I was working on “The 48” (the nickname for hiking all of the 48 4000’ers).

While I’m not a very athletic person, I am an incredibly goal and list driven one. Once I found out about this list, I was determined to hike all of the peaks on it. From 2015 until 2018, hiking all of the 48 4000’ers was my goal. I would spend weekends and summer breaks working on hiking all of these peaks and in early 2018, I finished on top of Mount Lafayette on a windy, socked in, winter day.

Throughout the two and a half years that I worked on The 48, I was already setting my sights on a new goal, though. As much as I loved New Hampshire, I didn’t feel like a part of that hiking community. While day hiking was great, I had found a new goal, one that would take me out of my home state, onto a longer adventure.

In 2016, shortly after discovering peak bagging and the lists of New Hampshire’s hiking community, I stumbled upon the then named website Appalachian Trials and was blown away. There were people who would backpack for months, walking the spine of the Appalachian Mountains! Thru-hikers, they were called, and I became enamored by this population. While I worked on The 48, my heart was being pulled towards thru-hiking and after finishing The 48 in January 2018, I was ready to set out on a longer adventure, thru-hiking the Long Trail in Vermont.

This plan didn’t come to fruition until 2019. By then I had hiked the remaining nineteen peaks in Vermont and Maine, completed the New England 67 list, backpacked the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, and was working on the New England 100 Highest list. My thru-hike attempt only lasted a few days, turning out to be much different than I had imagined it to be, but regardless of calling an end to my thru-hike, I found solace and joy solo backpacking northern Vermont. Regardless of what the reason was for me being outside, deep down all I wanted was to spend time in the wilderness. The lists and the goals were a means to an end, and the end was to be outside among the trees.

From my thru-hike attempt in 2019 I transitioned to a less popular hiking goal in New Hampshire known as red lining or tracing. This goal would take me all over the state, hiking every inch of trail covered in the White Mountain Guidebook, over 1,400 miles of trail, and became my main focus for the next two years. As 2020 progressed, and I worked on tracing The Whites, though, I received a cancer diagnosis and had to reassess my hiking goals. Once again, I pivoted and found joy in hiking trails closer to my home, in southern New Hampshire, and despite having to pause my attempt to trace all of the trails in The Whites in a set amount of time, I hiked every week of treatment, fifty-two weeks straight between 2020 and 2021.

Now, with treatment complete, I find myself pivoting again, and will be exploring trails in other parts of the country. My eyes are set on the south and I am looking forward to seeing what the trails look like outside of New England in 2022. 

Over the last (almost) seven years I never would’ve imagined that I would have hiked as much as I have, seen the places I’ve seen, or done the things that I’ve done. It all started with me taking a leap, stepping out of my comfort zone, and solo hiking Mount Major in Alton, New Hampshire in 2015. My goals have changed, I’ve accomplished some and not others, but the reason that I continue to hit the trails isn’t because of lists or long trails anymore. 

I hit the trails because while everything else was in complete chaos for me while in cancer treatment, there was always one thing that I could count on to be there and that was the trails and hiking. We don’t know how much we love and need something until it is torn from our hands. I refuse to let hiking be taken from mine. I hike because it’s my favorite thing to do. I hike because I need it. I hike because there is nothing that can compare to how I feel when I’m out there in the wilderness, surrounded by trees. Regardless of what list or goal I set for myself, the main reason I hike is to be outside doing what I love. I continue to pivot, find new lists, new places to explore, but while one foot may be pivoting, the other remains firmly placed on spending time in the outdoors being at the heart of why I will never stop hiking.