Unable to find steady work in a dismal Florida job market, Dan Kearns did something a lot of gainfully employed Americans can only dream of: Ditch the straight life and hike the length of the Appalachian Trail.
Shouldering a 50-pound backpack, the 32-year-old construction worker hopped onto the trail in April at Neels Gap, Ga., joining other "through-hikers" bound for the AT's northern end point, nearly 2,200 miles away in Maine's Baxter State Park. He sold his car for $1,000 to finance the first leg of the trip, relying after that on handouts and the occasional farm job -- often backbreaking work weeding vegetable beds or rolling bales of hay.
"I wouldn't do this if I was employed," the New Jersey native explains. "I couldn't find any work, so I just decided to take a walk."
He also took a trail moniker, "Snipe," and joined two hikers in Virginia who called themselves "Angry Hippie" and "Dance Party." Over Labor Day weekend, the three trudged into Rutland, the final stop before the slog through New Hampshire's White Mountains and Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness.
An economist might have another name for Snipe and his fellow travelers: trailing indicators. Depending on one's level of optimism, an Appalachian Trail through-hiker is either a symbol of a jobless recovery or of a still-deepening recession.......
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Jeff
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