After 40 years of marriage, they’d unwittingly learned a lot about how to navigate their future, too.īoth Ken and Marcia came from in outdoors outposts of the American West. As the decade ended, Ken and Marcia-into their sixties by that point and dubbed “ Gottawalk” by fellow hikers-trekked nearly enough to circumnavigate the Earth. Then, in 2005, they became the first two people to complete a continuous hike of the 5,000-mile American Discovery Trail, a cross-country route that cuts through major cities and small towns, across towering mountains and into vast prairies. By 2003, they had completed the Triple Crown of American Hiking, moving some 8,000 miles along the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest Trails. In that moment, neither Ken nor Marcia knew that, during the subsequent decade, they would become two of the most extreme hikers in the United States. “But about 1,000 miles in, we said this is it-backpacking.”
Did we want to cruise like seniors do, or build a cabin in the forest?” remembers Marcia, an orchestral flutist and music teacher. “The plan was to hike along and talk about what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. What was the point, after all, of staying in? His wife of 32 years, Marcia, agreed, with one steadfast caveat-only if they trekked the entire Pacific Crest Trail together. His retirement accounts flourished in the second Clinton term, so he wanted out. He had since become an in-demand database analyst on the West Coast, consulting for large companies that paid well. More than three decades earlier, Standard Oil had recruited Powers out of college in Idaho as a computer programmer, luring him to California. Just before Ken Powers turned 55, in the fall of 1999, he had what may be the most coveted mid-life epiphany: he no longer needed to work.