WELCOME TO THE NEXT AVENUE SPECIAL SECTION
An Active Retirement on the Appalachian Trail By Susan Schaefer
2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail (AT) offered him an "epic quest," that included "physical and mental challenges, use of wits, sustainable over enough time to test my commitment and bring out both my best and worst," he says. Fetig began volunteering with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) in 2012, in part to prepare for that through hike, which he accomplished in 2014. “If this experience has taught me anything, it's the importance of finding a direction and focus in retirement. If you can do that, you'll never be bored.” Overseeing a trail section in Shenandoah National Park, Fetig now works with a PATC trail crew, helps with fundraising, and occasionally volunteers at the ATC visitor center, giving presentations and leading workshops on hiking. Working on the trail helps Fetig appreciate the complexities of managing it, describing it as "a system with many parts that all need to work together." Volunteers are one of those parts, and he says there is a role for everyone. "If this experience has taught me anything, it's the importance of finding a direction and focus in retirement about which you are passionate," he says."If you can do that, you'll never be bored."
Jim Fetig approached retirement the same way he approached the rest of his life: eager to test his mettle. As a soldier's son and later an Army officer himself, he has lived in 19 states and three foreign countries, traveled to 50 states and 44 countries, and had 64 permanent mailing addresses. After leaving the Army as a colonel, Fetig held executive communications positions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. He was a visiting fellow at the RAND Corporation and served as a foreign policy spokesman for the Clinton administration and chief of external relations for the Corporation for National and Community Service under President Obama. Despite years of desk jobs, Fetig is an avid outdoor enthusiast. He graduated from the Army's Winter Warfare School in Alaska, was certified as a winter operations instructor by the Minnesota National Guard, has lived on a glacier in Alaska, and skied northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area in mid-winter.
Read more stories like this on NextAvenue.org.
His happy place is outdoors, so his choice to kickstart retirement with a "through hike" of all
Photo credit: Jim Fetig
10
NEXTAVENUE.ORG
JULY 2022
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator