Terry Cunningham doesn’t remember exactly when or why she and her daughter Megan began talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail.
The Homer Glen woman’s best guess was that the family — husband Lee and daughters Megan, 29, Melissa, 28, and Kelsey, 24 — were familiar with the trail because of family camping trips, she said.
“We must have crossed it from time to time, been places where we crossed it and said, ‘Oh, it would be very neat’ (to hike the Trail),” she said.
What Cunningham thought were just “lighthearted” comments became reality in 2006, she said, when Megan came home for Christmas with a hiking guide book and a water bottle as her mother’s gifts and “out of the blue,” announced she and Cunningham were going to walk the Appalachian Trail in the summer, Cunningham said.
She wasn’t surprised.
“Of anyone else in the family, Megan was the one that enjoyed it the most and really liked camping and hiking and rock climbing, and she was the outdoorsy one,” she said.
Cunningham said after a spring of “planning, researching, training and buying equipment,” the two completed a one-week, 65-mile leg of the trail in June, 2007. Cunningham “was hooked,” she said, so much so that when Megan, who became a lawyer and married, could not accompany her mother on the annual adventure, Cunningham went alone.
She hasn’t missed a year of hiking the trail since 2007, and has traveled about 60 percent of its nearly 2,200 miles, she said. She plans to finish the remaining 40 percent over the next four years.
It’s a mission Cunningham, 61, has every intention of accomplishing, she said, and it’s been the inspiration for another.
The trail has motivated Cunningham to educate, encourage and support others who have a desire to hike any trail or to just enjoy the great outdoors.
Cunningham will make her first public presentation about her experiences on the Appalachian Trail from 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 13 at the Homer Township Public Library, 14320 W. 151st St., Homer Glen, as part of the library’s “Armchair Travelers” program.
Her video presentation and her talk will cover all aspects of the hike, from training and equipment to native vegetation and panoramic views, she said. Cunningham will give tips about preparing for the hike, including informative books to read; describe the beauty of nature there, such as rhododendrons and azaleas blooming along the trail in Tennessee and the “surreal” wild ponies in southern Virginia; answer questions about her personal experiences on the trail and share the hike’s many benefits.
“I’m hoping to do it again,” Cunningham said about her first lecture. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for several years.”
Cunningham said an important part of the presentation will be about the many interesting people she has met on the trail. She said people called “trail angels” offer hikers food, transportation or lodging and give whatever support is necessary.
Others are fellow hikers from diverse backgrounds and cultures, Cunningham said, who may not look like “a lawyer from D.C.” because of the “scruffy” appearance most hikers take on after days on the trail.
“I’ve met a lot of amazing people,” she said, acknowledging that meeting people is an occasional but welcome diversion from the solitary nature of the hike.
“A lot of people start with a partner and end up walking alone,” Cunningham said.
Locally, Cunningham is happy to walk with like-minded people. She recently founded the Southwest Suburban Weekdays Wood Walkers (www.meetup.com/Southwest-Suburban-Weekday-Woods-Walkers), a hikers group that offers local hiking on less-challenging trails for all ages and fitness levels and a chance to see the beauty of the wilderness areas in the Chicago area.
Cunningham has an interest in helping children discover the great outdoors, too. She volunteers for the Chicago-area forest preserves’ Mighty Acorns program, which introduces fourth- through sixth-graders to nature and conservation.
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“It’s important to me now … to try to get kids outdoors again,” she said.
Cunningham said that many children in the 1950s and 1960s spent vacation time “camping with the family pop-up tent.
“We went all over the country,” Cunningham said. “We saw every Indian reservation, every national park and that was very common then that families did that, and it really instilled a love, I think, of the outdoors that a lot of kids anymore don’t have.”
Cunningham, who is known as “Midwest Mama” to her fellow hikers on the Trail — many of whom also are known by “trail names” — has yet to face her biggest challenge, she said. The final leg of the journey will be in Maine, where she will have to navigate the “100 Mile Wilderness,” an area where there are no supply posts for the entire distance.
The end of that road is Mount Katahdin, a 5,270-foot-high mountain that is “straight up,” Cunningham said.
“That’s like the goal,” she said.
But she doesn’t intend to achieve it alone. The plan is for mother and daughter to end their hike along the Appalachian Trail as they began it — together.
“I don’t think I can do it alone,” Cunningham said. “She knows I need her help.”