Life after the PCT: Thru-hiking was the best career decision I ever made.

10 years to the day before I wrote this, my wife Angel and I arrived at the Northern Terminus in Canada after hiking the PCT from Campo. 

11 years ago I was 34 years old, stressed out but optimistic, and one and a half years into my career as a nurse. I’d retrained at midlife, sick of a decade in low-paid nonprofit work. I’d scored a good paying job at a prestigious hospital, and I liked it. 

Angel was also a nurse, but she’d been working full time in the field since she was 22. She was burnt out and floated the idea of hiking the PCT. She needed the break, and was enchanted by the romance. 

I was dubious. For the first time in my life, I was feeling the dignity of making enough to cover our bills. I was worried about giving that up. I was worried about paying for six months off. I was worried about letting go of a good job in a field full of bad ones. After more than a decade of scrapping to get our money in order, we were finally in a position to start getting ahead, paying down debt, maybe even buying a bigger home (we’d been shoved into a 600 square foot condo for most of our adult life). 

The short version of the story is that she brought me around and we quit our jobs to hike the PCT.

The longer version is that I was totally right. It ruined our careers. 

And, I mean, thank God for that. Life after the PCT is so much better.

Career lessons from life after the PCT

Quitting is always an option

One thing that happened: after we decided to go, we had to save up enough for the trail. In about 8 months, we saved enough money between us to cover 6 months without working. Which is to say, we taught ourselves that it was possible to never have to work more than 8 months in a row again, if we didn’t want to. 

As an adult, sometimes you think you’re trapped. You forget that it’s possible to take a break. The process of breaking down the cost of the trail into small chunks, taking those chunks out of every paycheck, and having them add up to one of the best experiences of your life is quite the object lesson. A lot is possible. At any given moment, if you really want to, in 8 months you could be doing something completely ridiculous.

After you learn that, no job ever really feels like a trap. You can always quit. Right now, or worst case scenario, in a couple of months. 

The outcome has been that, across the last decade, neither one of us have stuck around in a job longer than we’ve wanted to. We do have the advantage that we are nurses, so options are plentiful. Still though, a lot of life is about this realization. You don’t have to work. You can do other things, like go be a dirtbag.

You won’t need to work as much after the trail.

Another thing that happens on a long trail is that you realize you can be happy without much at all. When that happens, working for more stuff seems counterproductive, if work is not something you otherwise want or need to do.

Before we went on trail, we were always frugal. We were both raised as working class Midwesterners in small town Ohio. 

However, on trail this thing happens to you. You have to carry everything on your back, so every possession becomes a burden that you weigh against its utility. Every purchase becomes a cost/benefit analysis. Every day when you pack and unpack, you’re reminded of what you need and what you don’t. 

Prior to the trail, I always felt like I shouldn’t be materialistic. I shouldn’t want more stuff. Secretly though, I did. I wanted a nice house, hip clothes, a good haircut, that sort of thing. I’m not sure why. I just did. On trail, something happens and you realize, wait, no. I genuinely don’t want those things. Extra stuff just makes life harder. 

It’s weird, but that feeling never really seems to go away. Even 10 years later, the buying impulse just isn’t very strong anymore (although I will admit to a lingering desire to binge on restaurant food at every opportunity.)  

Some things are great. Some things are necessary. But it’s a common experience to come back from the trail and clear out your junk. We have way more money now than when we hiked, but our car is 26 years old. We’ve moved into progressively more modest spaces (except for the opportunistic times we’ve found a great deal on somewhere nice.) Currently we rent a studio apartment for $800 a month and have the flexibility with our landlords to travel as much as we want, and avoid paying rent when we’re gone. They ask us if we ever plan to move out or buy a home (we are 45 years old, after all), but honestly we can’t imagine giving up this sweet of a deal. 

From a career perspective, this really creates problems for greedy employers. We don’t have to work very much to cover our expenses, so it’s hard for them, because they have almost no control over our choices. In the 10 years since the trail, neither Angel nor I have worked full time positions for more than a few months at a time, outside of the Covid years when it seemed like the right thing to do. Nursing is a burnout role in the best situation, but for us, the trail eliminated the materialistic need to keep striving for higher pay. Job’s giving you problems? As Ice Cube said in Friday, “Bye Felicia.” 

Life is a daring adventure, or nothing at all…so why are we working again?

That’s a quote from Helen Keller, applied out of context. Here’s what I mean: 

I asked Angel what she thought about this article topic. A year after returning from the PCT, she went back part-time to the job she’d had before the trail. She said, “When I came back, the thing that stood out was that nothing had changed. I’d lived a whole life, and here everything was exactly the same. People were the same. The problems were the same. The complaints were the same. Nothing had changed. I couldn’t imagine sinking back into that.”

When that happens, you realize you have a choice: keep going to a job where nothing changes, or live a whole life in six months. Every day it feels like a decision. After coffee and breakfast today, would you like a daring adventure, or nothing at all? 

I’m probably being unfair to the working world. Some people like it. It’s how the world keeps going. 

But also, you start to wonder. Doesn’t the world need explorers too? People carving out a different way of being? 

So, that’s what’s happened. Instead of becoming people who defined our identities by our jobs, work became a means to an end. We’ve used paid employment to cover the bills, but more importantly we’ve used it as a vehicle to do the things we want. We’ve taken contracts in Las Vegas to be near family, and Seattle to be near friends. We’ve gotten licensed in New Zealand in order to travel abroad. 

In between, we’ve traveled for three months on average every year. We’ve learned Spanish. We’ve hiked part of the Continental Divide Trail and Te Araroa, walked a Camino, and biked around Taiwan.

10 Years after the PCT our careers are messed up in the best possible way.

Paradoxically, all of this time freedom has ultimately paid off financially. Angel spent a bunch of her free time learning how to invest and managing our money carefully. (When your income is low, the impulse towards saving and investing comes naturally.) Across the years, investments have appreciated, but our need for income has stayed roughly the same (factoring in inflation). That's given us the flexibility to do productive things we actually want to do, which also makes us a bit of money. I’ve written four books. She’s started two businesses–the current one (Nurses Investing for Wealth. Shameless plug) is producing enough that currently, neither of us really need to work in an actual job anymore. I pick up shifts because I want to. She teaches nurses to do what we’ve done–manage their finances and shift their mindset to turn a brutal, burnout career into a path to get the things they want out of life.  

None of that would’ve happened if she hadn’t talked me into quitting my job to hike the PCT 10 years ago, I’m sure of it.

So, if you’re out there debating a thru-hike, and are worried that it’ll have a negative impact on your career, I can reassure you that the PCT completely messed ours up. 

Also, you should absolutely go for it.

The Dirtbag's Guide to Life is full of a lot more practical lessons from the trail. Check it out for concrete advice on how to quit your own job and build the life that you want.