Minneapolis mail carrier Scott McLaughlin walked the same five miles every day for years in the Lowry Hill neighborhood. So what was his dream for retirement?
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Turns out it was to keep walking. McLaughlin left his U.S. Postal Service job in January 2024. By that March, he had embarked on a six-month hike along the West Coast’s Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). The 2,650-mile-long path connects Mexico to Canada via a long series of mountain ranges.
“For me, it was just a good challenge — one where I don’t know if I’m going to make it,” McLaughlin, 61, said during a recent interview at his home in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood. “Sometimes, something is presented in your life where you’re like, ‘I just have to do this.’”
Inspired by movies like “Wild,” based on Minnesota native Cheryl Strayed’s hike along the PCT, McLaughlin said the craving to do it himself grew in his mind in his last few months of delivering letters. In the two years leading up to retirement, he said, he practiced with 50 miles hikes that only left him with a desire to keep going further, he said.