About Me

Hi my name is James Smith. I am a senior at The Lovett School and am participating in a senior project. My good friend Ford Coleman and I are planning to hike the Appalachian Trail for 10 days. We will start at the beginning of the trail (North Georgia) and hike approximately 76.5 miles to the GA-NC state line. The idea of the senior project is to allow students to explore one of their passions. Both of us have a strong passion for the outdoors and the beauty of the mountains. We continuously go on hikes with our families; in fact, we usually go on hikes every weekend with us two and our dads. This further illustrates our passion for the outdoors and our unique experiences with the outdoors already. Senior projects encourage “service to others, moral and environmental awareness, and a sensitivity to issues of global significance.” We both have a keen understanding of environmental awareness and have a significant amount of respect for the protection of the environment. So, we believe we will be upholding the school’s philosophy of having awareness of the environment. Our project is based off the idea of experiential learning and how easy or difficult it will be to live in the wilderness with no methods of communicating with the outside world for 10 straight days.


We will be reading the book A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, in which he tells the story of him and his friend Katz attempting to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. We will take the stories that Bryson tells as insight into what we should expect on the trail, how we should prepare for our trip and most importantly the lessons learned on the trail.