By Lisa Price

People who are hiking the Appalachian Trail — whether they’re out for a week or six months — usually have a trail name. The trail name is a nickname, chosen by the hiker or bestowed on the hiker. Hikers keep track of each other by stopping or staying in the trail shelters, which have notebooks in them called registers.

Three Amigos was the trail name I chose when I started the trail in Springer Mountain, Georgia. I was hiking with two dogs, hence, Three Amigos. Plus, I thought, people who read the shelter registers may think that the Three Amigos are three people traveling together. I reasoned that could contribute to our overall safety.

I kept that trail name for four years, as I continued to chip away at sections of the trail, traveling from Georgia to Dartmouth, New Hampshire. By then, one of my dogs had died from cancer and the other was simply too old to hike. I chose a new trail name, Dogless, when I set off into New Hampshire.

As I headed into the White Mountains I was wearing a black cowboy hat. My hiking boots were new. It didn’t take long before the cowboy hat had completely lost its shape. The curled brim was gone; it had achieved a conical shape. By Maine, my boots had deteriorated to the point where they were held together by duct tape and string.

I traveled the last 100 miles with two women from New Jersey, Noel and Caroline.

“Hey,” Noel said that first day, “You know what would be a good trail name for you? With that stupid black hat and the duct tape holding your boots together? Scarecrow.”

“My trail name is Dogless,” I said determinedly. But it was too late. Other hikers had overheard what she said, and I became Scarecrow.

I began to think about scarecrows as I trekked through the wilderness. They’re not real, of course, and we know that farmers and gardeners use them with great success to scare away crows — hence their name. As I hiked toward the end of the Appalachian Trail, I thought about all the things that had scared me in my life to that point, and there were a couple of main ones — I’d been robbed at gunpoint, I’d laid awake at night worrying about paying bills.

Injury. Debt. But were the biggest fears in life nothing more than scarecrows? Even in a farm field, the scarecrows don’t work to instill fear forever. Sooner or later, a bold crow lands on the scarecrow, proving that it isn’t real.

By hiking the trail, I’d faced down some of my scarecrows. That first night of hiking, years ago, lying in a tent in Georgia, I’d spent basically sleepless. I’d had a knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Bills? Well, I’d left all my possessions in one of those rental spaces and had no job. But once I’d spent months living out of a backpack, I’d realized how few possessions anyone really needs.

After finishing the trail and regrouping in Pennsylvania, I traveled back to Maine, where I found work at a newspaper. I also found a one-bedroom cabin for rent. Should I really make this move? I was thinking. I lingered in the house, aimlessly opening kitchen cabinets.

In one, I found a tin bucket that I still treasure. It is a “Wizard of Oz” bucket. On the side of the bucket facing me, when I opened one of the cabinets, was the scarecrow.