Prior to reading it, Butzler didn’t even know what the Appalachian Trail was. The Bulldog had experience hiking when he grew up with some family trips and in the scouts, but it was nothing more than a few overnight trips here and there.

But something about that book drew Butzler to the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail at a young age. At just 10 years old, he began thinking about how cool it would be — notably eating junk food, sleeping under the stars and having a campfire every single night.

“Of course I romanticized it quite a bit, but that sense of adventure, of walking through the wild landscapes of my home on the East Coast, stuck with me,” Butzler said.

Every journey has a genesis; you can trace it back to sparking interest, and for Butzler, it was that day in fifth grade.

PHOTO PROVIDED Shown is a picture of Roan Mountain Balds covered in ice.

Fast forward to this year, and Butzler finally was able to do something that not many get to say they did: hike the Appalachian Trail from start to finish. 

“Growing up, I always felt that the United States didn’t really have the same kind of historically significant cultural pilgrimages that exist in other parts of the world like Europe or the Middle East,” Butzler said. “But discovering the Appalachian Trail changed that perspective for me. This long-distance trail helped me appreciate not only the physical challenge, but also the deep history, resilience and survival of the small Appalachian communities it winds through.”

Butzler noted that after high school, he went to college and assumed that a thru-hike would only become possible if he took a gap year and he was privileged enough to graduate a semester early and suddenly had that opportunity to do what he dreamed of.

The Appalachian Trail is 2,198 miles from start to finish. It begins in Springer Mountain, Georgia and concludes at Katahdin, Maine. It’s a wide arrange of scenery, weather and elevation throughout. And, because of the sheer size and scope of the trail and the rugged terrain, it can break a lot of hikers early on in the trail.

That was no different for Butzler. The Jersey Shore native admitted there were days he seriously considered quitting and times when the trail was mentally draining and physically exhausting with, as he put it, “no reward at the end.”

PHOTO PROVIDED Jersey Shore graduate and native Alex Butzler summiting Katahdin on July 14, 125 days after starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia.

And one of those tough stretches came after Butzler reached Erwin, Tennessee. Butzler was hiking nearly 24 miles a day and left town, climbing back up from near sea level in Tennessee to reaching elevations between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.

“It was raining, cold and absolutely miserable. The rain soaked me to the bone, and the only way to stay warm was to keep moving,” Butzler recalled. “If I stopped for even five minutes, I’d start shaking from the cold. That night, I camped two miles short of my goal, completely wiped.”

As if things couldn’t get worse, that following morning saw Butzler waking up to ice covering the front of his tent with temperatures below freezing and Butzler having to pack his site up with numb, bare hands.

That was when Butzler entered Roan Mountain State Park, which is considered a rugged stretch. Butler noted he was grinding through it before he entered what he referred to as Narnia.

“The humidity from the previous day, combined with the freezing overnight temperatures, had coated every branch, bush and tree in ice. I was walking through a tunnel of shimmering white, an entire forest crystalized. I’d never seen anything like it,” Butzler said. “Later, a top the Roan Balds, the wide open grassy fields were blanketed in ice as well. It truly felt like I was in another world. I stood there for 30 minutes in complete awe, just taking it all in.”

Those moments are what stuck with Butzler. There’s the rough stretches and brutal times, but there’s things others rarely get to see such as what Butzler experienced in Tennessee.

“You get those stories to tell people, to make them envy and appreciate the beauty that you witnessed in person.”

With the sheer distance of the trail, Butzler noted that he didn’t want to do big miles right away as the human body isn’t necessarily adjusted for that to begin. Butzler, like most hikers, built up to it over time on the trail. Butzler also noted that the only two things he thought about each day were where he was going to sleep, and what he was going to eat.

“Everything else can be thought about the moment of,” Butzler said.

The Jersey Shore native admitted that he wanted to keep the journey spontaneous when he hiked it and didn’t want it to feel like it was a schedule or a job where he needed to follow a strict plan. It was only toward the end when he had a hard deadline for graduate school that he started thinking more strategically about mileage and timing.

Among the more difficult portions of the Appalachian Trail — as if there are any easy sections — Butzler said were the Whites in New Hampshire and Western Maine, sections which are notoriously rugged and unforgiving.

“Unlike the southern parts of the trail that use switchbacks to ease elevation gain, the trails up north often go straight up the mountain: no mercy, no shortcuts,” Butzler said. “I remember having to literally rock climb with a 25-pound pack on my back going up South and North Kinsman, during the hottest week of the summer. Coupled with one of the descents going down a literal waterfall, it was not super fun.”

It was both a mental and physically tough time for Butzler. He tried to average 20 miles a day though the White Mountains, but the climbs became so intense that he’d have to hike at 5 a.m. and not roll into camp until nearly 8 p.m. when he was totally wiped and exhausted.

“I definitely had a few breakdowns in New Hampshire and Maine,” he admitted. “That part of the trail will humble you fast and you need to take it slow.”

Once Butzler reached Katahdin, Maine, he felt excitement for finally reaching the summit of the trail and concluding the nearly 2,200-mile trek. But, it wasn’t a big, cinematic, cathartic type of excitement for Butzler. And he admitted there was no feeling of zen or emotional breakdown at the summit.

“I was happy, I celebrated, but more than anything, I was just ready to be done. The trail had stopped feeling like a passion and started to feel more like a job,” Butzler said. “I was excited to move on, to find new hobbies, and to return to hiking in a more casual, entry-level way, without the pressure or weight of hitting big miles.”

However, reaching Katahdin was almost like reaching the last chapter in a book for the former Bulldog. Butzler noted it felt like he was closing a huge chapter in his life and, in a sense, completed his childhood.

“This hike was the dream I had ever since I was a kid, the one I would daydream about in school or college whenever life felt overwhelming,” Butzler said. “And during the thru-hike, life moved on: my friends graduated college, I got into a graduate program in a big city, people were growing older. I felt like I had lost the final thing tethering me to my childhood.”

When he reached that summit, the thought that went through Butzler’s mind was that’s it. You’re no longer a kid.

“I had fulfilled my childhood dream, and now the only place I can really reconnect with that part of myself is out there in the woods, beneath the green canopy of trees,” Butzler added.