For decades people have sought their purpose in life by heading to the Appalachian Trail, which begins in North Georgia. Nate Olive of Chamblee hiked 2,174 miles to Maine, a feat that became a mere steppingstone to a pioneering adventure in the great outdoors.

The 27-year-old University of Georgia graduate is now on his third and most groundbreaking long-distance hike [Completed Sept. 28, 2004]. He and Sarah Janes, 23, his girlfriend and fellow UGA alum, are attempting to become the first people to hike the dangerous, rocky coastline of the western United States.

They began their 1,800-mile odyssey in early June on the tip of the western "ear" of Washington, and recently crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. They expect to reach Mexico by October --- tides, health and good fortune permitting.

"We're next to the biggest wilderness in the world, the Pacific Ocean," Olive said by telephone from northern California.

Armed with moon and tide charts because the West Coast Trail is not a continuously marked pathway, Olive said he and Janes "constantly skirt the high tide line as it ebbs and flows. Sometimes we are in a little cove and the tide will come up the cliff wall, and if we had to turn back we wouldn't be able to because the tides seal off the exit.

"There are sneaker waves --- rogue waves --- that can come any time, and if the cold water flipped you off a rock you are going to go hypothermic very soon. We always have to watch out."

Olive and Janes hiked 2,638 miles on the inland Pacific Crest Trail last year, traveling along the spine of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas.

"Nate and Sarah are really like pioneers on the Oregon Trail," says Al LePage, executive director of the Oregon-based National Coast Trail Association, who has been working since 1995 to link 14,400 miles of beach with existing trails through state and national parks, national forests, Indian reservations, back roads and highways.

"You see, not only will they be traveling a comparable distance, but they will be the first people to initiate a new hiking 'triple crown,' too. Long-distance hikers who usually have completed the Pacific Crest, Appalachian and Continental Divide trails are considered as having done the 'triple crown.' Well, this is the new triple crown."

Olive's mental toughness and transcendence are his main assets as they cover about 18 miles a day carrying everything needed to survive in the outdoors. His journey is supported in Atlanta by "Team Wookie" --- a play on his trail nickname --- made up of friends and his divorced parents. They take care of his dog, Mojo, help post his journal entries and photographs to the Web site trailjournals.com/westcoast.

In Oregon, they had to strip and swim across a river, risking hypothermia. They had to bushwhack through rainforest in Washington.

Just before reaching the California border, they forgot about the tides and scrambled to the narrow edges of high rocks.

Sometimes the deep sand feels as if they are plodding through snow.

"If you think about how hard it is, you are going to go out of your mind," Olive said.

Just when they might be feeling discouraged, something will remind them why they are there. Maybe a seal will pop its head up or a bald eagle float by.

Some people known as "trail angels" have offered them food, shelter and boat rides across river mouths. "Usually, we don't feel danger on the trail," Olive said. "I think, when you approach people in a genuinely friendly way, they act the same way in return."

Competition with self

A sense of adventure came to Olive through family and choice. The grandson of overseas missionaries, he began hiking with his parents at a young age in North Georgia and returned to the woods for solace after they split up.

The former "Mr. Chamblee High School" in 1995 was also shaped by two car wrecks involving high school friends. One almost died, and in the aftermath persuaded Olive to hike the Appalachian Trail after college graduation in 2001.

"I was a little bit disillusioned with what the world had to offer, that cookie-cutter track how a guy is supposed to grow up and get a job, get married," Olive said. "I was a little unsatisfied with that approach, but didn't know what I wanted to do. [The Appalachian Trail] opened the world up to endless possibilities. It taught me a lot about how I can really achieve what I wanted to do, as long as I can identify the steps I want to do and gather the tools. It gave me a lot of self-confidence about walking my own path."

Another friend, Josh Price, died in a 1997 wreck, and Olive walks to raise awareness of the nonprofit Welcome Home Ministries that the Price family set up to benefit medically fragile foster children. The Price family, who have adopted or fostered more than 50 children, was the subject of a May article in the AJC. Raising awareness and more than $10,000 so far has added to Olive's sense of purpose.

"There is a competition with myself and being diligent and keeping up that walk ethic," Olive said. "So I do have a sense of some kind of competition even though it's not with another person."

Olive met Janes, who is from Louisiana, through an environmental club in Athens, and she joined him for 400 miles of the Appalachian Trail. In 2002, they hiked the 500-mile Colorado Trail from Denver to Durango. "We both have a strong passion to walk through nature and simplify life," he said.

On this trip, he has whittled the essentials to 15 pounds --- much of it camera gear, not counting water and mostly dehydrated food. Their stove is made of V-8 juice cans and runs off denatured alcohol. Instead of a tent, they carry a tarp. Janes, a certified wilderness first responder able to deal with medical emergencies in remote places, carries a 12-pound pack.

"This may be kind of too poetic or extreme, but you can see his heart in his eyes," Janes said of the way Olive is transformed by hiking such distances. "He soaks in everything around him, like a sponge, and he's so well at expressing it in his words and his art, which is his photography. It flows through him and out of him without much being altered. . . . His passion is his experience and sharing it, and that's what drives him."

His parents pray for him daily and try not to worry.

"Sometimes when he is talking [in his journal] about walking on the ledge over the ocean that barely had room for their sandals, under the crumbling wall, yeah, I get palpitations in my heart," said his mother, Bobbi Matthews of Chamblee. "I work in a counseling center. I have seen it all and it makes me so happy when I read his journals or talk to him and hear him talk about the completion, the happiness he has. He's right where he wants to be."

"As he started on this trek, I thought this is either total irresponsibility or something truly great," said father Tim Olive, a photographer in Midtown. "I really believe he is a true pioneer. Explorative self-expression is a great part of who we are as Americans."

They pooled $4,000 to finance this four-month trip. Olive, who has a masters in recreation ecology, receives some money from doing research along the trail, part of a National Park Service contract. In Mexico, they will work for the government on ways it can attract ecotourism. Olive plans to publish a book of his writings and photos called "Dancing the Tidal Line" that he hopes will guide others.

"I hope that this will lead to more people getting out of their cars and taking a stroll and really soaking in, breathing in every moment that this beautiful world has to offer," Olive said. "I hope it will not only enhance others' experience, but inspire and encourage others to provide the opportunity to promote the West Coast and other long-distance trails across the country. Whether for a day or several hours or half a year, there are endless lessons available to learn on the trail which can really do a lot for a person."

The tide was flooding fast --- heaving its breathing layers onto the sands, where they sped along and exploded into the rocks. . . . We timed [our route along the ocean] to the steady sea pulse, reading each rush, curl, and withdraw of the waves. . . . [It] tested our limits near to the ends as we climbed across a rock face. She [companion Sarah Janes] stopped midway and told me she could not continue. The next hold was beyond her reach, and she did not trust my hand to compensate. Against my pleading, she descended the rock to the corner of the point, waited for the right wave to withdraw, and leapt in the knee deep water, running instantly from a crashing wave that would have put her and her pack underwater. Yet, her long stride outmatched the wave speed, and I let out an immense sigh upon hearing her sandals slapping the wet beach.
--- excerpt from Nate Olive's journal from July 11, when he and companion Sarah Janes were crossing from Oregon to California in their continuous hike of 1,800 miles along the West Coast.