Made for Walking

Rambling through one of Earth’s most ancient mountain ranges, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail offers nearly 2,200 miles of unspoiled nature to the millions who hike on it each year.

Within easy reach of large East Coast metropolitan areas, the Appalachian Trail — often called the A.T. — provides peace, gorgeous scenery, and a break from the stresses of modern life. These stamps attest to the beauty and variety along this uniquely American, century-old footpath.

USPS art director Antonio Alcalá’s home state of Virginia is home to more than a quarter of the trail’s length. Alcalá has hiked various Virginia segments, plus portions in West Virginia and Massachusetts. But it’s not just home-state pride that elicits his assessment of the Virginia stamp photograph – “So perfect!” It depicts one of the most iconic sites on the trail, McAfee Knob, a rocky mountaintop outcropping that rewards hikers with spectacular 270-degree panoramas. 

“Of all the iconic locations along the trail,” says Mills Kelly, an Appalachian Trail historian and author, “McAfee Knob in Central Virginia might just be the best known. It’s certainly the most photographed. Because the Knob is more than 1,600 feet above the valley floor, the views are pretty spectacular,” he says, “especially in the fall.” 

The perfect trail mix

One of the challenges Alcalá faced as he composed the A.T. stamp pane was “to balance the kind of imagery used to represent the trail,” he says. "Scenic vistas, waterfalls, wooded trails — I wanted to make sure the sheet looked balanced and appealing.” 

“If the pane was a single long strip, I definitely would have had the stamps run in the order in which the trail crosses each state,” says Alcalá. “But because it’s a grid, there is no single way to arrange it to convey the trail in order.”

Thru-hikers, those who trek the entire trail within a single season, generally take the linear approach, most often setting off in Georgia in early spring to reach Maine before winter sets in. But the stamp pane’s jumbled order of states is just as fitting, since most hikers approach the trail piecemeal, by accessing any of its many entry points. 

Kelly confirms: “The vast majority of A.T. hikers are casual hikers out for a few hours, a day, or maybe a weekend. The thru-hiker cohort is probably around one-tenth of one percent of all the hikers who set foot on the A.T. in any given year.” 

Through the green tunnel

Alcalá designed The Appalachian Trail stamp pane to include a photograph from each of its 14 states. But there’s one extra; the first of the 15 stamps isn’t state-labeled. It represents the so-called “green tunnel,” an affectionate nickname — if sometimes grumbled by hikers — for stretches through dense forest. 

Trekking below the treeline, “Sometimes it feels like all you can see are the leaves of the trees surrounding you,” says Kelly, who fittingly named his 51-episode A.T. podcast The Green Tunnel. “After a while,” he says, “it can seem like everything on the trail is absolutely the same. Just mile after mile of green.” 

But Alcalá appreciates that stamp’s verdant mystery. “It perfectly captures the feeling of hiking on the Appalachian Trail.”