![]() At the time, he had no idea how many thousands of miles of hiking still lay ahead of him. ![]() This is what everybody in the world needs, to see something like this.’ ”Īlready cultivating a practice of mindful presence on the trail, he never put in headphones until well after the halfway point, just taking everything in. “I was like, ‘oh my God,’ ” he says, “ ’this is what I needed. He witnessed the mountains coming to life. Spring came in gradually as he traversed Georgia and picked his way through the Smokies. What’s undeniable is that on the AT, he finally felt free. Looking back, he wonders how the trail may have affected his nervous system, his fight-flight-freeze response, or his neuroplasticity. His educational and vocational background make him uniquely qualified to speculate about the specific type of healing that thru-hiking can stimulate. He didn’t realize quite the extent of what he had to process until he got away from it all on the AT. During those years, he took on a lot of vicarious trauma from the cases he worked. Grizzly Smurf worked in that field for 14 years. The average burnout rate for a CPS Investigator is 18 months. (It wasn’t until a few years ago that they were finally reunited.) Even as he spent his days working with children and families in the foster care system, he spent his spare time attempting to reconnect with his own biological mother and sisters, from whom he was separated as a young child. He helped keep kids out of foster care and helped others transition safely back into their homes.Īt the same time, he was on his own journey of discovery. ![]() Grizzly Smurf aided a lot of families throughout his career, as complicated and messy as the work could be. He was well-suited to the role and went on to become a supervisor. The job was taxing and often thankless, but his passion for service and personal connection to the work kept him committed. In a span of just three days during his second year on the job, for instance, he had to remove five kids from their homes and responded to two incidents involving a mother’s overdose and a toddler with a fractured skull, respectively. He often worked intense cases involving severe abuse and neglect. Grizzly Smurf’s WorkĪs a CPS investigator and in-home high risk worker, Grizzly Smurf interviewed children and family members, frequently visiting homes, schools, and jails, and attending court hearings. He was going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. So when bureaucratic complications disrupted his planned career shift out of the family services department and into more mental-health–focused work, he seized his opportunity to find out.Īfter leaving his position in the middle of February, he started hiking north from Springer Mountain on March 28, 2019. ![]() The thru-hiker was talking about flying over the “roller coaster,” and he wanted to figure out what she meant. By then, he’d learned that nature was healing him in ways he’d never before experienced. One day, he met a woman who was thru-hiking the AT. Grizzly Smurf spent some time running around the woods as a kid, but it wasn’t until 2016 or so that he started hiking and getting to know the wilderness better. Growing up, he was always an athlete, but never a Boy Scout. He got older, got his degrees, and started his career as a social worker in Northern Virginia, where he had grown up. “It is different when you’re adopted,” he told me. Later, he was transracially adopted as a biracial kid to white parents. As an infant, he himself was placed in foster care and separated from his sisters. NEW STYLES ADDED.Grizzly Smurf’s personal background led him to a career in Child Protective Services (CPS) and, eventually, psychotherapy. ![]()
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