With forty pounds of camping and hiking gear strapped to my back, I began reconsidering what had delivered me to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Watching sweat pour from my best friend’s head, I can see he is considering the same thought.  

Standing in this space, outside of my car, took months of planning and scheming, but it all began with a red envelope from Netflix.  

I don’t know what made me add Into the Wild to my Netflix queue. As a Pearl Jam fan, perhaps I learned Eddie Vedder contributed to the soundtrack. As a fan of Sean Penn’s work, maybe I wanted to see the product of his work as a director. Whatever drew me to this film, I would never be the same.  

It might sound hyperbolic, but this is one of those films that changed the entire course of my life. It opened the door to the idea of moving to Seattle. It planted seeds for an idea that would morph into an attempted thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. It made me deeply question society and what I wanted out of life. It also gave birth to an unforgettable road trip stretching from Oklahoma to the Smoky Mountains to Washington, D.C. to New York and back home again.  

As soon as the credits rolled, we began scheming. It was instantaneous. Over the next few days, we devised a plan. We wanted to get outside. We wanted to explore. We wanted to reconnect with ourselves and do so with nothing more than the tools on our back. After countless hours of conversation, we decided on the Smoky Mountains. From there, we would explore our nation’s capital and her biggest metropolis. The last stops seemed like a natural contradiction and a fitting period at the end of a life-affirming trip.  

Over the next six months, we trained as best as we could. Oklahoma is flat. Training is hard in such a place. We researched gear, spent hours in conversation with friends who knew hiking better than we did, and gobbled up everything we could find about backpacking in the Smoky Mountains.  

Before we knew it, I packed my little yellow car with gear. We drove east with tax refund checks, burning holes in our pockets and the promise of adventure. As we drove through Memphis toward Knoxville, the scenery grew greener and more mountainous. The landscape was changing dramatically, and soon we would too.  

Parked at a ranger’s station, we picked a simple and unassuming trail; something perfect for two boys from Oklahoma. Hours later, we found ourselves parked at a trailhead. With gear loaded on our backs, we walked away from my car into our own version of the wild. What waited for us on the other side changed my entire life.  

Many things about this trip did not go according to plan. Hiking around the Smoky Mountains was more strenuous than we thought. I locked my keys in my car at a campsite on the second night. My camera didn’t survive a creek crossing. We missed our train from D.C. to New York. Matt Patt ran out of money somewhere in Pennsylvania during the return home.  

Despite these challenges, I remained changed. A deep love of travel was unlocked. A desire to explore all our national parks became a personal goal. On this journey, I found the courage to leap beyond my expectations. Over the course of the next three years, I would do exactly that as I began writing a new story in Seattle.  

My first impression of the Smoky Mountains is simple. It is a national park that changed my life, and I can never repay it.  

Be good to each other,  

Nathan