Trekker takes his family along on AT journey

Tim Pettingill, hiking the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, is being accompanied by an unusual support crew and, serendipitously, has found that he is not alone as he hikes during a pause in his so-called normal life.

“Most people are in transition of some sort,” Pettingill said of other hikers. “They’ve been laid off, or they’re between careers, or they’ve retired or they’re young and right out of college,” said Pettingill, himself between careers. He even encountered a homeless woman.

“I kind of got burned out on what I was doing,” he recalled. His, Sybilla, asked him, “Why don’t we do something a little unusual?”

He went back to school at the University of Maine at Augusta, earned an associate degree in applied science and now hopes to become a lab technician in a hospital. He had been a district care provider for an agency that works with autistic children, working in group homes for 14 years.

Pettingill, 49, of Lisbon Falls, Me., which is about an hour north of Portland, Me., planned his hike for three years and has a support crew that is the envy of other “through-hikers.”

His wife, Sybilla, and their two home-schooled sons, Benjamin, 13, and John, 11, are shadowing his arduous days on the trail, driving ahead and resupplying him every few days. They’re making the parallel trek in a 1988 Ford Sportsmobile van, and the family stopped last week at the Long Mountain Wayside on U.S. 60.

Other through-hikers call it the “blue van hostel” when they gather around to meet the family, Sybilla Pettingill said.

The top pops up and has bunks for the boys, and the back of the van has a couch, an oven and a foldout double bed, though it is lumpy, Pettingill ruefully related.

It is softer than the floors of wooden shelters where hikers sleep, though, and beyond the convenience of having his family with him, the trip has become a family adventure.

It’s much more fun that being “trapped” in Lisbon Falls, Benjamin said, pausing from reading a history book. “We saw a couple of female moose along the side of the road” and was one of the highlights so far, John excitedly recalled.

Pettingill, whose trail name is Cargo Pants, has hiked 1,300 miles so far. Last week, he stopped after 14 miles, after having climbed the summit at The Priest, which is 4,090 feet, before descending into Amherst County from Nelson County.

He has lost 45 pounds in his more than three months on the trail, including 25 the first three weeks.

“My feet finally feel great,” he said, though he’s mindful of his knee and an ankle. “It starts to wear in ways,” he said.

He is focusing on his journey, and not whether he can find a job back home when he’s done.

“I’m trusting God that there’s a job,” he said.

Pettingill hopes to finish the week before Thanksgiving.