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Would hiking more than 2,170 miles reinvigorate and refresh your career? Your life?

For Piedmont native Nathan Adcock, it has.

Adcock, 32, hiked the Appalachian Trail in five and half months last year, beginning March 21 in Georgia and ending Sept. 14 in Maine. The trail winds through 14 states, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.

To fund this trip, Adcock, a travel nurse, used savings and borrowed from his retirement. He also had to do a lot of planning to prepare for the nearly half-year trip.

"The biggest thing to prepare and the biggest thing to tell people who hope to do it is to learn about lightweight backpacking," Adcock said. "The less stuff you are likely to have, the more likely you are to succeed."

There's a big scale at the trail head in Georgia. Adcock was excited when his load, including water and winter gear, registered 30 pounds.

Adcock did practice hikes and read the experiences of other hikers through blogs and books.

Most hikers read "A Walk in the Woods," by Bill Bryson, but Adcock said the author didn't walk the whole trail. Adcock's pick is "A Walk With Spring," by Earl Shaffer, the first to walk the whole trail 50 years ago.

"It was like my second guide book to the [Appalachian Trail]," Adcock said of Shaffer's book. "As I was walking, I was reading how he experienced the trail."

Adcock encountered bears, snakes, rain, snow, thunderstorms, hills and valleys, but he didn't face them alone. He met hikers along the way who have become friends -- including Hotwheels, Shutterbugs and Hometown.

"I don't know what their given names are," Adcock explained of most of his newfound friends. Most through hikers go by code names, which they normally earn while on the trail.

But Adcock and friend Hometown decided they better get their code names settled before they started. Hometown is a fellow nurse whom Adcock went to nursing school with and hikes and bikes with often.

Hometown picked out Adcock's moniker -- SuperChunk. "I have an affinity for Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream, so it was a fitting name for me. I was big."

Before he began his trip, Adcock weighed 310 pounds. Even at 6 feet, 2 inches, Adcock said, he was overweight. In September, Adcock weighed 247 pounds.

Adcock also shared "trail magic," mostly random human kindness. Sometimes there were people who paid for a meal or gave a ride into town. People also offered a place for hikers to bathe and to wash laundry. Other times people would cook dinner or breakfast for the hikers.

This was a nice change after eating bagels and peanut butter, Cheese-Its and fancy sports bars. "I avoided simple sugars," Adcock said. "They would give me energy for awhile, but I felt I did better with complex carbs. Carbs like potatoes."

By the time he got to New York, Adcock said he was probably protein deficient. "I was really worn down."

But New York and Connecticut had "glorious delis" with meats, such as pastrami, not easily found down South. The delis gave him the nutrients needed to reboot. Some trail magic was God's work, he said.

Adcock and buddies Sampson and Bus Driver hiked through Massachusetts, Vermont and the lower section of New Hampshire in the rain and mud. "It was a continuous rain for a month or more," Adcock said. "Vermont has a lot of vegetation and lot of dirt. It was like a river, and it was wearing on us. We could keep our spirits up for awhile, but with a month of wet clothes and wet backpacks (it was hard to do)."

One night the trio were sitting in a shelter on the side of Mount Moosilauke, N.H., listening to the pounding rain. Adcock suggested, "Let's say a prayer and ask God for some sunshine.

"We woke up the next morning, and the sun was just shining. It was a glorious sunrise. It didn't rain significantly for the next 350 miles," Adcock recalled.

The inward changes, of course, aren't so apparent, but probably mean the most to Adcock.

"I've been a nurse for eight years. You see a lot of sick, sick, sick patients in (intensive care), and you see them for extended periods of time. For three to four months, in some cases.

"It wears on you as a nurse. It zaps your energy to take care of people for extended periods of time. Some don't naturally get well. It drains you emotionally."

The hike allowed Adcock to do something for himself. "It was a way to reboot and step away for a bit and come back refreshed."

Contact E.A. Seagraves at 883-4422, Ext. 241, or elizabeth.seagraves@news-record.com