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“There will eventually be somebody who walks the Appalachian Trail more times than I have,” says Doyle, who led the Southern marching band as a drum major and played on stage with the Crescent Players. “But it won’t be somebody who’s walked the trail, raised a family, and had the same priorities I’ve had.” While repeatedly traversing the valleys and mountains between Springer Mountain in northern Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, Doyle also raised two children, earned a teaching degree and a Ph.D., and built a successful career as a faculty member and program director at various colleges and institutions, including George Mason University and the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia. His journeys began at Southern, where he earned a degree in elementary education and a double minor in music and psychology. “The four years I spent at Southern were the four most conventionally productive years of my life,” he says. His impact on Southern was equally dramatic; his show-stopping performances as the band’s drum major — complete with high kicks and midair splits — are the stuff of university legend. Doyle “convinced individuals with no interest in football to come to the games in the early seventies just to see his high-stepping antics,” wrote Professor Emeritus of History Thomas J. Farnham in his centennial history of the university. Doyle’s commitment to making an impact ultimately led him far beyond campus. During his junior year, he participated in a work-study scholarship program tutoring orphans in Jamaica. A year later, while teaching the poor in West Virginia, he met and befriended Don West, the Appalachian poet and activist. Doyle credits West with inspiring him to seek a life of service to others. Today, Doyle enjoys a cult-like following among folks who want to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail. For 54-year-old Doyle, teaching the trail isn’t just a calling; it’s a mission. “As an educator, I believe a society in which people’s dreams are fulfilled is much stronger than a society where people’s dreams are squashed or unfulfilled,” he says. Doyle first committed to the “trail service,” as he calls it, in 1973, after completing his first and only solo “through-hike” on the trail. (“Through-hike” is the term used for walking the entire length of the trail, all 2,174 miles from Georgia to Maine.) At age 23, midway through a graduate program in higher education at the University of Connecticut, Doyle finished the rugged journey across 14 states in a record 66 and one-third days. Before the expedition, he had dabbled only in day hikes and short weekend excursions with friends from Southern and UConn. “My goal was to do the trail in the shortest time, not for publicity, but because I needed to do something that no one told me to do, something that offered no academic credit or other external reward,” says Doyle, the first college graduate in his working-class family from Shelton. “I felt I’d had it too easy in my life,” he adds. “I wasn’t sure I came by things on my own merit.” Doyle’s feat enticed the media. Hometown newspapers followed his odyssey, along with the United Press International and the Associated Press. When he returned home to Shelton and Storrs, Doyle lectured about the trip to groups.
While another hiker eventually outpaced his record, the fundamental impact of the journey proved less fleeting. “It set me free and I wanted to share that,” Doyle says. “I felt the most productive thing I could be doing as an educator was these expeditions.” Within a year, Doyle developed an interdisciplinary program at UConn to prepare students for a 110-day trek on the trail. A meticulous planner, he timed the trip perfectly to begin the day after finals and to end a day before the start of the fall semester. He repeated the group expeditions from Storrs in 1975, 1977, and 1980, using the 1975 journey as the basis of his doctoral thesis. With the exception of one expedition, all were completed by every participant. “It was a remarkable achievement,” he says. In contrast, the Appalachian Trail Conference estimates that only about 15 percent of the several thousand hikers who attempt a “through-hike” each year actually complete the journey. Doyle remains committed to helping hikers beat the odds. About once every five years, he leads a new group of approximately 20 adults from Georgia to Maine. Each journey begins with about two years of preparation, including practice hikes, lectures, pep talks, and Doyle’s original Appalachian Trail stories. Doyle has offered the training program on college campuses and, often, from his home at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. His sixth group expedition, which will include his new wife, Terry, is currently preparing for a 2005 hike. His ever-present goal is to ensure that everyone who commits to the expedition successfully completes every step of the 2,174-mile journey. “When they start, some people have never hiked a day in their lives,” Doyle says. The intensive preparation period is part physical, part logistical, but primarily psychological and emotional, says Doyle. “When you’re on an expedition like this, it’s not the sleeping bag you carry that’s going to get you from Georgia to Maine. It’s more heart than heel. “It’s about cooperation versus competition,” he continues, recalling expeditions in which participants worked together to help a hobbled friend. “Everybody helps one another finish. Everyone buys into that.” In between group expeditions, Doyle tackles segments of the trail alone or with Terry or a friend. He will visit parts of the Appalachian Trail this spring to check in with Forest, his 18-year-old son, who embarked on his first solo “through-hike” in April. “This pilgrimage comes at a good time for him,” Doyle says of his college-bound son. Doyle, who developed a passion for folk dancing through his Appalachian experiences, teaches education courses at Lees McRae College in North Carolina. He plans to return to the Appalachian Trail as long as he’s physically able. Although the trail remains unchanged, each outdoor venture offers a new experience. “I do it for the meditation,” he says. “Everybody needs it. Some people meditate every day or night. I compress everything.” And keep walking. Warren Doyle is a life member of the Appalachian Trail Conference and the
Appalachian Trail Long Distance Hikers Association. Doyle was featured
in Sports Illustrated in 1995. His expeditions have also been the subject
of a documentary film. |
hen Warren Doyle ’71, came to the proverbial fork in the road, he didn’t choose one path. He took both. While cultivating a successful career in education and enjoying family life, he also managed to pursue the road less traveled — literally. Since 1973, Doyle has walked all 2,174-miles of America’s most beloved footpath, the Appalachian Trail, a record 12 times — logging some 26,088 miles in the process.