In the thick woods of New Hampshire, a hiker known as Old School awoke at daybreak and lay still, listening to squirrels and songbirds chirp and trill. The leaves of maples and hemlocks stirred above; the sound grew louder and faded like a wave. Slowly, the man pulled the pants he'd been using as a pillow from under his head, coaxed them to the depths of his sleeping bag and eased his legs into them. Then he emerged from his tent into the chilly morning air, testing his body's willingness to take yet another long walk in the woods. The body consented, despite a kink in the right calf. It was late August in the White Mountains, where peaks of jagged stone have foiled fitter men. Old School -- also known as Billy Mason, a 48-year-old short-order cook from Virginia Beach, Va. -- had been trudging north nearly every day since March 3. On his back, he carried a 30-pound pack, which included a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, a tent, food, a water filter, but no camp stove. He'd deemed that unnecessary weight and unloaded it somewhere in Connecticut. G10 Ø

His 18-year-old stepson kept pace at his side. His wife had been there at the beginning, but she had returned home to tend to their younger teens. Other hikers were close at hand, too.

More than 1,000 people every year are drawn to the particular challenge that Old School had set for himself: to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, a 2,175-mile dirt path that runs up mountain peaks, across meadows and alongside streams from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.

Some of these through-hikers wear boots scruffy from years of wear. Others come with gleaming new equipment they barely know how to use. They are accountants, mail carriers, schoolteachers, retirees, recent college grads. But in the woods, where most take on trail names, they leave those old labels behind.

They come to strip life to the basics: up at sunrise, down at dusk, eat food, drink water. They come for the contemplative act of putting one foot in front of the other -- again and again and again and again -- following the white blazes painted onto trees and rocks that mark the Appalachian Trail. They come for the joy of exerting their muscles, meeting other hikers, merging with nature. Primarily, they come to see if they're up to the task.

Old School had his own reason.

In the so-called real world, Mason doesn't hike. Flatlands surround Virginia Beach, where he flips pancakes at an IHOP. Seeking out mountains is not his idea of fun.

But in 1996, a car crash left him in serious condition. "My right leg was smashed up real good," he said. Doctors warned he might lose it. As Mason lay in bed after one of four operations that saved his limb, he saw a TV show about the Appalachian Trail. It was the first he'd heard of through-hikers.

"I said, 'Lord, let me get well enough, and I'll hike the whole thing.' "

Ten years later in New Hampshire, Old School worked on fulfilling that promise. He tallied up his miles: 430 to go.

"It took so much effort to leave the real world," he said. "It disrupted so many people's lives. We put everything in storage, enrolled our kids in a different school, put bills on automatic payment. I can't go home and say my feet hurt."

That Americans romanticize life in the woods and revere the tenacity of those who try it comes as no surprise since pioneers and naturalists populate our collective psyche. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Daniel Boone, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Laura Ingalls Wilder: They all speak to the power of the American landscape and its ability to transform lives.

Devotees of the Appalachian Trail would add to their ranks another great thinker, Benton MacKaye.

MacKaye was an undistinguished public servant working for the Labor Department in 1921 when he published an article in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects proposing an ambitious undertaking: the building of a footpath that would scale Appalachian peaks from New England to the South.

At the time, mountain clubs already maintained hiking trails in New England, but none had thought to tame the tangled wilderness that covered much of the mountainous South. Still, the idea slowly gained traction.

In 1925, MacKaye brought together Forest Service and hiking club leaders in Washington, D.C., and formed the Appalachian Trail Conference. The group mapped a 1,200-mile course from North Carolina to New Hampshire.

By the time the trail was completed in 1937, with the help of volunteers and the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, the route had changed and grown significantly.

No one believed the pathway could be covered in one push; the trail founders considered that beside the point, anyway. Then in 1948, Earl Shaffer, who had recently served in the Army, achieved it, hiking from April through August. Out among the trees, following a sometimes poorly marked trail, Shaffer had been utterly alone.