John Turner lives and writes in Blue Ridge, Georgia, which is conveniently an hour’s- drive from the Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
“After I retired, I was looking for something to do, and I found the perfect solution for both the exercise and the solitude I needed after a career in journalism followed by state government – the 2,198-mile Appalachian Trail.”
One thing led to another, which is how big things sometimes happen. After hiking Georgia’s 78 miles of the A.T., John kept going north on the A.T. More mountains, more miles, more states.
“Partly it was curiosity – what’s over that next mountain summit? Partly it was the challenge because the Appalachian Trail in the South is not easy. Every summit is followed by a gap, and after descending into every gap you find yourself climbing toward another summit. Hikers call them PUDs – pointless ups and downs. But after I hiked enough of those miles, somewhere up in North Carolina, I discover there was a point – the trail begins to beckon to you, to beguile you with its rhythms of forest and sky, to seduce you into ignoring the rain, the mud, and the aching muscles. The next thing I knew I was in Virginia. And then Pennsylvania. And on and on until on August 24, 2022, I had hiked every one of those 2,197 plus miles from Springer in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine.”
Hiking led to writing, or maybe for John his writing led to hiking – either way what came from that five-year long section hike of the A.T. was a memoir, “Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail ~ Walking On through Self-doubt and Aging,” published by the University of Georgia Press in 2024. And there was more – “Killing the Buddha” was awarded an IPPY Silver Medal for Creative Fiction in May of 2025. My memoir of my A.T. section hike, Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail ~ Walking On Through Self-Doubt and Aging, was published by the University of Georgia Press. Available now from U.G. Press, Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
But that memoir wasn’t the end of the story, just as completing the Appalachian Trail wasn’t the end of John’s hiking. Now the genre is fiction, and the ideas flow from John’s many years as a newspaper reporter, editor, magazine editor and columnist. From being a husband, a father and a grandfather. And from a deep love of America’s democracy, our natural environment, and the long journey we are all walking.
