Episode Details

Ben Cox has never really hiked alone.

He carries a permanent tramily with him — his grandfather, who died when Ben was 15 and left him a specific rifle and a saddle because Ben was his cowboy grandchild. The girl in West Texas who passed that same summer. The others who came after.

At 26, after a relationship ended and a work situation resolved itself, Ben bought a plane ticket to San Diego and hiked 2,650 miles north on the Pacific Crest Trail. He didn’t know a single soul when he started. He went anyway.

This is the story of what he was carrying, what the trail asked of him, and what he found on a Tuesday in Ocean City, Maryland when it was all over.

In this episode:

• The year Ben was 15 — two losses, one summer, and a campus in the Smokies that changed everything
• Alone in the crowd — 50 to 80 hours a week in public service and still somehow by yourself
• Three weeks from the breakup to the southern terminus
• The night the tramily fell apart and his grandfather arrived
• Freezing to death in his underwear in the Sierras — poles in hand, looking for a flat-ish spot
• What post-trail depression actually feels like when the trail is gone
• A banana milkshake, a tub of fries, and a woman reading a book on a Tuesday

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