![]() ![]() ![]() “Some people you encounter for a day others that you see more than that will most likely not be part of your life once you return home,” she says. “You learn to value people for who they are not what they are.” Jen says she has met interesting people on the trail. The trail also taught her to be happy with very little. All the scriptures about creation came to life,” Jen says. She loved being in nature and says hiking in the woods for long distances (called thru-hiking) allowed her to feel connected to creation. So she decided to re-gender the name and call herself Odyssa. She was a classics major and on the first four days of her hike, Jen says she compared the AT to Homer’s Odyssey several times. Some come to the trail with names in mind. It was a life-changing experience.” Even her name “changed.” Trail names, an Appalacian tradition, are nicknames hikers use in lieu of their normal identities. “I started on my own and did everything wrong,” says Jen. ![]() The longest she had ever spent in the woods was three nights. Jen, 21, saved all her money for the trip while she was in college, but says she was naïve. ![]() She decided to hike the Appalacian Trail (AT), which is 2,180 miles long and runs from Georgia to Maine, after college graduation in 2005. After college, Jen wanted to experience an adventure. “I felt at a young age that going into the woods was something fun,” says Jen. The Pharr family regularly took short day hikes. Jennifer grew up in North Carolina with two older brothers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |