It had been a hectic final semester at MSU for John Stegmaier.

Balancing final classes, waiting tables and keeping up with an internship at a local newspaper, Stegmaier was burnt out by his graduation in May.

As other new alumni filled out job applications or prepared for graduate school, Stegmaier knew he needed a break.

An idea that had been in the back of his head for years began to take shape — leaving East Lansing to walk the Appalachian Trail — a more than 2,100 mile journey that stretches through the mountainous wilderness between Mount Katahdinin Maine to Springer Mountain in northern Georgia.

"I was always trying to get ahead, do the next thing that was expected of me," said Stegmaier, who earned an English degree. "I enjoy physical challenges and I wanted to see if I could do it — be one of the few people who could go all the way through."

During holiday break, five months after he began his journey, Stegmaier completed the hike and returned to his home in Brighton to begin reacquainting himself with society.

First steps

A nervous feeling began to build in Stegmaier as he waited out a thunderstorm the day he was supposed to start up the first mountain.

When he began hiking on July 28 from the northern opening of the trail in Maine, he met other hikers who had taken the more traditional route northward from Georgia. Many were close to finishing and warned him how late in the season he was beginning. Cold weather would soon creep into the region.

"That made me paranoid I was getting off to a bad start," Stegmaier said. "I kept saying, 'I'm anxious.'"

Soon, "Anxious" became Stegmaier's trail name, an alias hikers adopt to be more easily remembered by the people they meet.

"It turned a few heads now and then," he said.

Wearing bright orange shorts, a blue T-shirt and a blue bandana on his head, Stegmaier carried about 30 pounds of gear, including dried foods, a small cooking burner and a sleeping bag, strapped to his back.

Friend and MSU alumnus Chris Jolley drove 17 hours to Maine with Stegmaier in July to walk the first days of the trail with him.

"It felt like I was in the 'Lord of the Rings,'" Jolley said. "The landscape was somewhat like northern Michigan with pines, but the forest floor was covered in moss and gave it a mystical feel."

The two traveled through some of the most secluded parts of the entire path, and hiking was challenging, Jolley said.

"When I envisioned the Appalachian Trail, I envisioned a fairly wide path," Jolley said. "In reality, there was never a good place to put your food down. It was very narrow."

Between 500 and 600 hikers a year complete the 2,175-mile hike, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Web site, although many of these hikers are return visitors or complete the hike in pieces.

About 3-4 million hikers travel at least a portion of the trail each year and about 8,500 have completed it since 1936, according to www.appalachiantrail.org.

Solitary Strides

Stegmaier and Jolley made camps under a tarp that Stegmaier brought or slept in trail shelters, small buildings with three walls and a roof.

Jolley bid Stegmaier goodbye five days later and "Anxious" began the walk by himself.

"I can just remember that first evening thinking, 'Wow, I'll be on this trail by myself for five months,'" Stegmaier said.

He said he tried to walk at least 18 miles a day, but some days covered almost 30 and other days he covered no ground.

"It is strange to think about covering that much distance on foot, but you break it down into sections," he said.

Walking alone, he passed time singing and talking aloud to himself.

"It was very spiritual," Stegmaier said. "I learned a great deal about myself and about the country."

"I thought a lot about our servicemen," he added. "I thought, it's rainy, it's cold, I still have to walk eight miles, this gear is heavy, this is terrible and it seems like I have no way.

"But they don't have a choice; they have to keep going."

Stegmaier fell into the trail practices of depending on hitchhiking to get to nearby towns for supplies. About once a week, Stegmaier would hitch rides to towns and receive an occasional mail-drop of supplies sent from his parents. He'd find grocery stores, Laundromats and sometimes a library so he could use the Internet to chronicle his journey online.

"The trail journals were where we got the details," said Kathy Stegmaier, his mother and a social worker at an elementary school in Pinckney.

At school, she kept a small map tracking his progress on the trail and was surprised how much the students enjoyed it.

"At first, they said, 'Why would he do that?,'" she said. "But later they asked 'What does he do for food? Where does he sleep?

"They got interested in doing it themselves someday."

When John Stegmaier was in Virginia, his parents visited him and hiked with him a while.

"We really got a feel for how difficult it was," said his father, Steve Stegmaier.

Trail Family

On the trail, Stegmaier was surrounded by deep forest and would pass an occasional town. He said he had no problems with wild animals.

Some evenings, he'd watch the sunset from a mountaintop or watch the moon rise over a lake, he said. Other days, he'd pass Civil War battlefields and graves.

One November day, he discovered a monument for a man called "Uncle" Nick Grandstaft who "lived alone, suffered alone, died alone."

"It was fairly sobering to read that while hiking alone," Stegmaier wrote later in the journal entry. "But then I remembered how much fun I have in my own company and also the anticipation of my friends' visit."

More fascinating than the scenery were the people he met along the way, Stegmaier said.

While hitchhiking, he said, strangers would offer to let him stay in their homes or barns for the evening and would feed him for the night.

Stegmaier made friends with other hikers, including Tataruga, a Brazilian woman who lived in Oregon and was making a "thru-hike," which means hiking from Maine to Georgia or vice versa.

"We'd have big conversations in the morning and less talk in the afternoon as we got tired," he said. "It was nice to have someone else to bounce ideas off of."

When Thanksgiving arrived, a hostel owner in Tennessee hosted a Thanksgiving meal for hikers.

A few of Stegmaier's friends traveled to see him for the holiday and shared stories with one another.

"We created our own family," he said. "It was one of the highlights of the trail."

With the goal of finishing the trail by Christmas, Stegmaier pushed forward through cold and wet weather. But about a week before his scheduled plane flight home and less than 100 miles out, he got severe food poisoning and spent a long, "miserable" night in freezing rain and wrestling with the decision to cut out a portion of the trail in order to keep on schedule.

"It was a depressing thing, I was grappling with it," Stegmaier said. "You walk that way — orthodox — and for that to happen at the end."

He eventually reconciled himself and hitched a ride about 30 miles, allowing him to recover and warm up in hotel room, before finishing the final miles of the hike.

As Stegmaier climbed the final mountain on Dec. 18, his father stood waiting for him at the top.

"He had his tell-tale bright orange shorts and his gaiters on and I saw him 150 yards down the road," Steve Stegmaier said. "I yelled out, 'Is that you Johnny?' He yelled back, 'It's me, Pop.'

"I wouldn't have missed it."

Back to civilization

Now that he has returned, Stegmaier said he's adjusting, but his body is still healing physically. At home, he continued to recover from the food poisoning and to reintroduce fresh foods into his diet.

He said he also had to work at getting used to the pace of everyday life. One day he took the car to the shop and another, he helped work on his uncle's basement.

But simple things, such as driving, were surprisingly hard to get used to, he said.

"It's the speed," he said. "The other day it was foggy on the expressway and I could only get up to 65 miles per hour."

He said he felt more dangers Christmas shopping than he felt hiking through the deep woods.

"Coming back out of seclusion of humanity and going to the stores, there are people all over the place and lines," he said. "It was a strange experience."

Even though he's been home for three weeks, things haven't returned to "normal," in the sense that he no longer feels the stress that used to be a big part of his life, he said.

"It's a feeling of freedom really, and it's something that is important to me — to live a less restricted life."

Epic tales

In the living room of a small East Lansing house one night during winter break, a group of friends waited to welcome Stegmaier home and hear about his adventures.

The hiker was reuniting with his friends for the first time in five months and was greeted to cheers and surprise at his new beard.

"Hey buddy, how was your walk?" asked his friend Ryan Hoeft.

Hoeft made home-brewed beer as a gift for Stegmaier and named it, "Appalachian Trail Ale." The group poured some drinks and gathered to hear about the trip.

The trip wouldn't be for everybody, Stegmaier said, explaining he graduated college without any debt and had previous hiking experience.

"It was kind of a self-involved experience," he said. "The nature of the journey causes you to introvert and reflect over your own life; your priorities.

"I was stepping out of the familiar, taking a minimum four months of depending only on me."

Occasionally, Stegmaier said he still needs a taste of nature and seclusion and takes walks by himself in the forest near his home.

"I like to go out in the woods as often as I can. It's just nice to reconnect with the way my life had been for five months and re-establish that feeling with nature," he said.

Going on the journey left him changed and Stegmaier said he doesn't regret taking the trip.

"I'd put it on my résumé," Stegmaier said of his trip. "It's such an important part of who I am now.

"It's enhanced who I am."

To read John Stegmaier's firsthand account of his five-month hike on the Appalachian Trail, visit www.trailjournals.com and search for his trail name "Anxious."