hiking

"To walk for three or four hours without checkpoints, without seeing soldiers ... it makes you feel, somehow, you can feel some free," says a hiker. There are scores of Palestinian hiking clubs.

Rhys Hora hopes walking the some 2,2000 miles from Georgia to Maine will nudge him out of a rut. Sara Leibold did it in 2011 and says adjusting to the solitude, and then life afterward, are difficult.

North Carolina's State Parks Department wants residents to start off 2017 on the trails.

In recent years, the man-made piles of rocks have become steeped in controversy, with some declaring them symbols of unity and others saying they're "pointless reminders of human ego."