Comment by levolvel
The trail provides! Its wild how much of the peace and calm I brought back from the trail into my regular life. I live in a major US city and traffic used to drive me insane. Now, I could care less. I just chill and roll with it. I'm more tolerant of people. I'm never in rush to get anything done or get anywhere quickly. I appreciate all that I have and all that I don't need. It really was just what I needed.
Like you said, definitely privileged to be able to do this, but I also found that a lot of people hiked both the PCT and AT on a shoestring budget and made things work. Maybe not stopping in every town or not going out to eat as often. If a person is dedicated and there to get the experience, money only made it easier, but the experiences were all very much the same I found.
> a lot of people hiked both the PCT and AT on a shoestring budget
Agreed. I was one of those people. My budget for the entire trip, including a fair amount of equipment (I already owned boots), was $2000. This was in 2003. I worked a fairly low paid job (it was the best I could get) after college for two years in order to save up. I ended needing to dip into my credit card, which caused me a lot of stress, seeing as I did not have a job lined up after my return. The damage? $400. At the time that seemed like an unfathomable amount of debt, because I was living on very little.
My partner and I took advantage of a lot of charity on the trail (trail angels, kind strangers, etc). I would love to do something like that again (I’ve always dreamed of hiking the PCT) without such severe financial constraints. Still, there was not a lot of worrying on the trail. The stress did eventually come back after living for a couple years in Boston though!