Episode 87 of the Tom Rowland Podcast is my conversation with Jessica "Dixie" Mills of Homemade Wanderlust, the biosystems engineer who walked away from a steady career to complete the Triple Crown of long-distance hiking. The Triple Crown means finishing all three of America's great trails — the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail — nearly 8,000 miles in all. What floored me is that Jessica had never spent a single night backpacking before she stepped onto the AT. This is the story of how she did it anyway.
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The Triple Crown of long-distance hiking means completing all three of the major American thru-hikes: the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. Together they add up to almost 8,000 miles. Jessica "Dixie" Mills hiked the AT first, then the PCT, then the CDT, earning the title of Triple Crowner — a distinction relatively few hikers ever achieve.
No. Jessica told me she had never been on a single overnight backpacking trip before she started the Appalachian Trail. She had done day hikes, but she had never loaded everything she needed into a pack and walked with it overnight. She researched gear through countless online reviews, bought most of her kit in the months before her start, and learned the rest on trail — a mindset I related to immediately as someone who jumped into saltwater fishing the same way.
Jessica went to Auburn University for biosystems engineering and worked for the Department of Agriculture in Alabama. Hiking the Appalachian Trail was something she had wanted to do since she was a little girl, after seeing a trailhead sign as a kid and learning people walk it from Georgia to Maine. A chance meeting with a man who had hiked the AT reignited the dream, and she decided to quit her job, cash in her retirement, and go.
The Appalachian Trail took her roughly six and a half months. She finished late in the season on a snowy, icy Mount Katahdin in Maine — and she did it without crampons or microspikes because, at that point, she did not even know what they were. By the time she summited, most of the season's hikers were already gone, so she finished largely alone.
The Sierra Nevada on the Pacific Crest Trail. 2017 was a record snow year — roughly a 200% snowpack — and the real danger was not the snow itself but the snowmelt. Streams that are normally cute little trickles became raging rivers. Jessica had to swim across a couple of them, and on one solo crossing she made it halfway, felt her legs giving out, and turned back. She rates those river crossings as the scariest moments of all three trails.
On long trails, hikers go by trail names rather than their given names — it is part of the culture of the community. Jessica Mills is known on trail as Dixie, the name she carries through her Homemade Wanderlust YouTube channel and her hikes. She explains the trail-name tradition and her own in the conversation.
Her advice is to stop making excuses and just start. She told me she does not think it is ever too soon to start planning for something different, and that too many people — especially as they get older — talk themselves out of quitting a job or starting a business. Whatever the thing is, she says, quit making excuses and do it.
I left a guaranteed path to become a fishing guide because the fishing was the thing I was going to do regardless of what anyone thought. So when I heard about a woman who quit her engineering job, cashed in her retirement, and walked from Georgia to Maine without ever having backpacked a single night, I knew I had to talk to her. Jessica's story is the same shape as a lot of the best conversations I have on this show — someone who decided the conventional version of their life was not the one they wanted, and then went and did the harder thing. I wanted to hear how she actually pulled it off.
This is the part that hooked me. Jessica had been on day hikes, but she had never put everything in her pack and walked with it overnight before she started a 2,189-mile thru-hike. She told me she researched obsessively, read a million gear reviews, picked up some pieces from thrift stores, and just hoped it would work. It is exactly how I started in saltwater fishing — I did not really know what I was doing, but I was going to do it anyway. Her honesty about learning on the move, and about the gear that did and did not survive contact with the trail, is worth the listen. Press play to hear how she prepared.
Jessica describes the timeline with a clarity that surprised me. She knew around August she was going to quit, gave notice in November, had most of her gear by February, and was on trail by March. The decision traces back to a chance encounter with a stranger in town who had hiked the AT — a moment she calls a seed that got planted, then fertilized, then watered until it grew into the whole rest of her life. She talks about analysis paralysis, about how many thru-hikes die on the couch in the planning stage, and about deciding to go alone when nobody would commit to coming with her. Hear the full decision in the episode.
▶ Watch the full conversation on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
When I asked Jessica about the most dangerous stretch of all three trails, she did not hesitate: the Sierra Nevada in 2017. It was a record snow year, around 200% of normal, and she explained something I had not thought about — the snow itself is not the killer, the snowmelt is. Trickling streams turn into raging rivers, and she had to swim across a couple of them. On one solo crossing she made it halfway, felt her legs giving in, and made the hard call to turn back. The way she describes reading those rivers, getting over the passes early while the snow was still firm enough for spikes to bite, and deciding when to push and when to retreat, is the heart of this episode.
Jessica is candid about the fear that came with going solo, and about her mom telling her she did not want her to go alone but knew she was going to do it anyway. She talks about the strange mix of wanting the solitude and being afraid she would never see anyone, about finishing the AT essentially by herself because she was so late in the season, and about the community of hikers and trail names she found along the way. It is an honest portrait of doing a hard thing without a guarantee that anyone has your back. Listen to how she handled it.
The day after this conversation, the line I kept coming back to was Jessica saying it is never too soon to start planning for something different. So many people talk themselves out of the thing — they are too old, too settled, too far down another path. She just quit and walked to Maine.
I also keep thinking about the river she turned back from. She is clearly someone who finishes what she starts — she has nearly 8,000 trail miles to prove it — and yet the wisdom that kept her alive was knowing when to retreat. That balance between relentless drive and honest risk assessment is something I have seen in every serious outdoorsperson I have ever interviewed.
Listen to the whole thing. Whether you ever set foot on a long trail or not, the way she made the decision to go is worth your time.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Jessica "Dixie" Mills is a Triple Crown long-distance hiker and the creator of the popular Homemade Wanderlust YouTube channel. A biosystems engineering graduate of Auburn University who once worked for the Alabama Department of Agriculture, she left her career to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 2015 despite never having spent a night backpacking, then went on to complete the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail — nearly 8,000 miles total. She is known on trail as Dixie, and through her videos, ebook, and community she has become one of the most recognizable voices in the thru-hiking world, encouraging others to stop making excuses and chase the lives they actually want.
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