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There’s a place on Earth where everyone is rooting for everyone else’s success, age doesn’t matter, no one is judging appearances and there’s an equal playing field for all.  

Ryan Hegarty ‘21, an Environmental Studies graduate who is now a research assistant for the ������ Maple Project, visited this place, the Appalachian Trail (AT), last year. The journey changed his life.  

The AT spans 5 million steps through 14 states with an elevation gain equivalent to summiting Mount Everest 16 times and it’s the world’s longest hiking-only footpath.  

Some days reminded him of Christmas as he hiked through spruce forest. Other days, he wore a sweat-drenched shirt that never dried as he battled a heat wave through Vermont. Fresh strawberries never tasted sweeter as he devoured them sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store with all he needed to survive fitting into a backpack.   

Only 25% of through-hikers – those attempting to hike an established trail end-to-end –complete the trail. The challenge made him want to lace up his hiking boots even more.  

The simplistic lifestyle also called to him. “There were no emails, meetings or traffic. I was totally disconnected,” he said. 

He grew up in Pennsylvania 90 minutes from an entrance to the AT and loved exploring the great outdoors as far back as he can remember. Hiking all 2,197.4 miles became a dream.   

“Every through-hiker you meet is so happy and enjoying life so much,” he said. He decided he wasn’t going to just listen to all the great stories. He wanted to step into his own story, and he wasn’t waiting until retirement.  

During the maple sugaring offseason, he took a leave from work to enter the trail in Pennsylvania for a flip-flop through-hike. On Memorial Day he headed north to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Then, he’d return home to hike to Springer Mountain where the trail ends in Georgia.  

The Latin name for red maple, the most common tree that Hegarty taps on ������’s campus, is Acer rubrum. Acer means rugged. Acer with an o, Acero, became Hegarty’s trail name.  

He reached the northern terminus, completing the first 970 miles through seven states, on July 24, 2024. His dad and brother met him in Acadia, and he returned home to begin his southbound hike. 

Although he was far from ������’s maple grove, he discovered that life on the trail had striking similarities.  

The weather dictates everything, and he learned that “simple doesn’t mean easy.” 

“If it was a rainy day, I had to embrace it. You learn quickly that you have to embrace the uncertainty and the unexpected. Every day was different on the trail,” he said.  

In theory, tapping a tree to harvest and boiling sap into syrup sounds simple. But the weather doesn’t always cooperate. 

Sap doesn’t flow until there is a freeze-and-thaw cycle. Configuring the spider web of blue tubing that connects the tapped trees to a vacuum pump for collection requires creativity and hard work.  

For example, he suited up in waders and crawled through a storm drain to extend the vacuum tube to a new section of forest as the adopt-a-tree program grows.  

“When you’re hiking the trail, you’re spending long hours talking with the people that you’re around and building a community. It’s kind of like the Maple Project when you spend hours sitting around the fire boiling the sap and sharing stories,” he explained.   

Most through-hikers start their journey in Georgia in the spring, so when Hegarty got back to the trail in August to head south, he didn’t cross paths with as many hikers, many already above Pennsylvania.   

In mid-September, he and a fellow hiker started tracking a developing storm off the Gulf Coast and decided to get off the trail to be safe. 

“We thought the storm would pass and we’d be back in a few days. We woke up to an apocalypse,” he recalled. 

That apocalypse was Hurricane Helene.  

Two days before the storm hit, Hegarty had stayed at Uncle Johnny’s Hostel in Tennessee, which was flattened, and walked over