It's inevitable.

Seems only to take a warm, sunny day or two in April, blue skies overhead, the smell of moist earth underfoot, long views through the bare tree branches.

Spring fever, yes, but worse.

Springer Fever.

As in the overwhelming desire to return to Georgia and the top of Springer Mountain and begin walking north on the Appalachian Trail. And to keep going for months on end all the way to our own Mount Katahdin.

Have you got a bad case of Springer Fever?

It's real, I tell you.

And when the "fever" hits, it hits hard.

You start making cryptic notes on cocktail napkins over a beer. Calculating. Scheming. Dreaming.

You start looking around you and wondering just how quickly could you pack up your worldly goods and empty your bank account and make for the trail.

For those of you who suffer this annual affliction you know what I mean.

For everyone else, well, find an ex-AT thru-hiker and ask them.

Their eyes will be wide and deep and their gaze far off. Their speech rapid and often garbled; all you can make out is something about mail drops and pack weights and maps, or whatnot. Their empty hands will tremble, longing to grasp a pair of trekking poles to help scratch their way up mountain upon mountain.

Yep, that's an AT thru-hiker in a full-on bout with a nasty case of Springer Fever.

The cure?

None.

Excepting the precious opportunity to make a second thru-hike (something we babble about annually also).

So there you have it. Springer Fever.

Do you have it?

If not, I hope you get it. Store your stuff. Pack your pack. Go south. Walk north. Get off the radar screen of mainstream life for awhile. And onto the the life-changing, life-sustaining AT. It's a choice with a big, big upside and very few downs. Go.

Worried? Scared? Fraught with indecision? Too much 'can't' when there should be 'can'?

Write me. Buy me a beer. I'll sketch the entire trip out for you on a cocktail napkin. That's not to minimize the enormity of such an expedition. It's to minimize the fretting, and to get you out the door. It's the going that matters. If need be you can make it up as you go. But go.

And then, when you're perched atop Springer Mountain, mind and body afire, about to step off on your life's dream hike, and you sign the register and scribble "GA --> ME" after your name, you'll go "Oh yeah!".

Trail Head "a few years ago" about to head northbound on the AT.