- Associated Press - Sunday, October 5, 2014

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. (AP) - When Alex Cvetanovic was 7 years old, he gave his grandpa a shell.

“I was like 7 years old and he told me he was going to be leaving,” said Cvetanovic, now 14. “I found the shell in my room and I gave it to him just to remember me.”

“Grampy” Tom Brown of Sheboygan, who was 60 then, was about to embark on a quest to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, and he took little Alex’s shell along with him.

It took Brown seven years, but he finally completed the 2,180-mile trek about two weeks ago. He had Alex’s shell in his hand on Sept. 24 when he climbed the peak of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the northernmost point of the trail.

“It was very special and a little bit of a motivator,” Brown said. “Sometimes it’s those little things that get you through the tough times when you’re kind of lonely and tired.”

“When I first gave it to him I didn’t expect him to keep it the whole time,” Cvetanovic said. “It made me really happy.”

Hiking the Appalachian Trail wasn’t a lifelong dream for Brown, a retired teacher who started an outdoor adventure club at Sheboygan Falls High School in the last years of his career.

It was during that club’s activities - trips to the Rocky Mountains, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Boundary Waters - that the idea took hold.

“I was just coming into retirement and thought this would be something that would be a great challenge,” Brown said.

So he started planning, and in January of 2007, took off for Georgia to start the hike, which he hoped to finish that same year, Sheboygan Press Media (https://shebpr.es/YIkmRH ) reported.

Unfortunately, life intervened.

He was about three-quarters of the way through the hike in June of 2010 when he developed a painful condition in his knee, caused by the rough climbing and descending on the trail, which forced him to stop.

“It was really disappointing to have to get off,” he said. “My goal was to be a thru-hiker, which means do it in one calendar year. I became a section hiker - you finish the trail in sections. Which is fine, I can live with that. I didn’t want to be cripple when I got back, either.”

It was five more years before he could get back to the trail. In between, he was hospitalized twice, once after being hit by a car, his daughter got married and he participated a Race Across America bicycle race.

In 2012, he and a friend picked up the trail where he’d left it five years earlier and intended to hike 100 miles. After 50 miles, they gave up.

“Hurricane Sandy was coming up the coast and we wanted to get out of the way of that,” Brown said.

A few more 50-mile stretches followed, and then this year he decided he was ready to complete the trail.

“I’m 67, so the window of opportunity, every year it kind of shuts down just a little bit more,” he said. “I really did want to try to finish it up. The timing wasn’t perfect but it worked out real well. I thought, I’m feeling really good, healthy … this is it.”

Brown said he made some really good friends on the trail, but months and weeks can go by without any contact with other hikers.

That was especially true at the beginning of Brown’s hike, when he started at the end of January 2007, months before most other people got out there.

“I didn’t see anybody in a shelter or on the trail for about six weeks,” he said. “It snowed 5 inches my first night in the Georgia mountains. I thought, ’Here I am back in Sheboygan.’”

He didn’t spend every minute alone in the woods, however. Every three or four days or so, he’d come off the trail into towns along the way, staying in hostels or hotels, buying food and water that he carried in a pack on his back.

The communities along the trail are very supportive of hikers, he said. Residents often offer rides to hotels, hostels or grocery stores and offer moral support.

“There’s really a mentality out there of, ’We’re all in this together and let’s help each other out,’” Brown said. “There’s some places on the trail that you’ll come out and somebody’ll be cooking burgers and hot dogs just for the hikers.”

Even with support from his family, the communities along the trail and fellow hikers, the trail is a grueling adventure that tested Brown’s strength.

“I’m still sort of reflecting,” he said. “I feel really good about getting done, but there’s an emotional aspect. I probably was a little bit more emotional the last couple hundred miles knowing that there’s a possibility I’ll get it done.”

Reaching the summit of Mount Katahdin was especially meaningful, particularly when he sent a photo of himself holding the seashell to his grandson Alex.

“When I got up there, I was a little emotional, I probably shed a couple tears,” he said. “Right after I summited that evening, I texted the picture to him. I told him that really meant a lot to me and thanks for sharing that with me. He texted me right back. He was proud of me.”

And now Brown is resting up - “My knees are killing me. Other than that, I feel great,” - before he gets back out into the great outdoors.

“I don’t know that I’m going to ever do the long distance that I did before,” he said. “But I enjoy being outside. We’ll take a hike now and then. As long as I don’t have a 35-pound pack on my back, I won’t have a problem.”

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Information from: Sheboygan Press Media, https://www.sheboygan-press.com

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