Homesick on Trail, Trail Sick at Home
They say the grass is greener on the other side, and never have I experienced that more than after coming home from my thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail.
By Madelyn Dukart, a 2025 FarOut Scout
Photo provided by Madelyn Dukart
In 2024, I set out to hike the CDT. After having completed the Appalachian Trail a few years prior, another of the Triple Crown thru-hikes felt like a logical journey. I spent over a year planning the logistics of the trail, watching vlogs and reading articles about the unique challenges and opportunities presented by this trail. I scoured the FarOut guide of New Mexico. I never look too far ahead on the map at the beginning because I like to be surprised about what’s coming, but I knew every resupply stop from the Mexico border to Chama. I knew where to send boxes, I mapped which alternates I wanted to take, and I prepared myself for the long road walks and water carries to come.
What I didn’t plan for was a femoral neck stress fracture to take me off only a couple weeks into the journey.
Coming home from that brief stint on the CDT was devastating. I watched from home as my friends continued on while I wasn’t even allowed to walk around the house without crutches for over a month. When I was finally cleared to walk without support, I was given a strict progression. First, I was allowed to walk a half mile around my neighborhood, then I had to take the following day off. After that felt good, I was allowed to bump that number up to a mile. One day on, one day off. After I got up to five miles of even ground walking, I was allowed to begin my hiking progression. A half mile hike, then a day of rest. Another half mile, then a day of rest. Then one, then one and a half, then two. When my fracture area felt aggravated, I was advised to take a week off and then start a step back from where I’d gotten before the break. I remember the pure glee I felt when I did two days in a row of hiking for a total of seven miles.
Photo provided by Madelyn Dukart
I was determined to do a backpacking trip over Labor Day weekend. I did 25 miles over 2.5 days in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, and even though my leg was so exhausted by the time I got back in the car, I was the happiest I’d been in months. I felt like me.
From the moment I’d gotten off the CDT, I knew I was going to try the trail again the following year. This year – 2025 – that’s exactly what I did. I started from the beginning, wanting to complete this trail as a thru-hike and not a section hike.
For the first several months, I felt so at peace on the trail. Even on hard days, I reminded myself that I was doing the thing that I’d fought so hard for last summer when I could barely walk around my neighborhood. For the most part, I was having fun – more fun than I can remember having on any other trail.
Photo provided by Madelyn Dukart
Sometime in northern Colorado, that changed for me. I live in Denver, and being so close to home was challenging. My husband would visit on weekends, and every time he left, I had to reconcile that I was actively choosing to spend time away from him. My best friend got engaged, and I missed wedding dress shopping with her. Another friend had a baby, and I couldn’t support her little family when she needed it most. From several spots, I could literally see the Denver skyline. I could have stuck out my thumb and been home in an hour. And I was so surprised that I wanted to.
But I also knew that the version of myself who had been couch-bound would have given anything to be on the trail. And so I powered forward, hoping that Wyoming would bring enough distance to get me out of that mindset.
It did… for a little. But the closer I got to Montana, the more I wanted the end to come. Being on a thru-hike of this length allows a lot of time (perhaps too much time) for reflections, and my reflections kept leading me to the same conclusion: if my main purpose for thru-hiking is spending the finite time in my life in a way that I feel fulfilled, and I spent so much of it daydreaming about being home, then did the thing I wanted out of my life – at least for now – to be back in Denver?
Especially after the ordeal of last year, I wasn’t ready to quit altogether. Instead, I opted for the Super Butte Cutoff, or the Big Sky Cutoff, or whatever name you want to call the piecemeal series of trails and roads allowed me to get from West Yellowstone to Butte in a straighter line than following the continental divide exactly. To me, this let me fulfill both goals: getting closer to the end faster, and finishing the trail.
I got to the northern terminus almost exactly five months from when I started. Even now, months later, I’m not sure I can adequately describe (or even identify) the myriad of emotions that I felt at the Canadian border. But now that I’ve been home for so long, one thing is certain: I miss the trail every day, and I don’t feel as at peace at home as I’d envisioned when I was longing to be here.
I miss the freedom. I miss the simplicity. I miss the knowledge that I was in the midst of something special. Because, no matter how much we all bitterly complain about the hardships of the journey, thru-hiking is something special.
