From a modern English translation of lines 1-14 of the General Prologue of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.

An Appalachian Trail hike isn’t a pilgrimage, not in the sense Chaucer was waiting about, and not in the sense of the Camino . But it can be a spiritual experience. There’s lots of time for prayer, silence, and solitude. There’s time and opportunity for growth.

And a lot of people start their hikes in April. I started on 30 March, and there were already over 2,115 people who has started before me. That’s more than twice as many who has started by this time last year.

I’m trying to be ready for engagement as well as solitude.