Sebastopol family embarks on six-month Appalachian Trail trek

Lying on the carpet next to her bunny Cinnamon Toast, 5-year-old Sabina Malone unfolds a long map, measuring at least half her size.

“We're going from here all the way to here,” she says, smiling and running her finger across the map.

Her older sisters - Josie, Harper and Maya - all laugh. The trail running from Georgia to Maine seems almost easy on paper.

But for the next six months, the Malone family will hike 2,200 miles along the Appalachian Trail, embarking on the most epic journey of their lives - something they will remember for generations to come.

“They've been preparing for this since they were in the womb,” says their mother Jamie, 42, who earned her Appalachian Trail name, “Sunshine,” 20 years ago while on a solo mission to raise more than $10,000 for her brother Kyle who was suffering from a brain injury after a 1995 car accident left him in a coma.

“We've been dreaming of this for so many years. Ever since they were born, we've been talking to them about this journey. We're ready for this - but then you start to think, are we really ready?”

On this day, less than a week before they pack up their 2003 Volkswagen Van and hit the road, they're surrounded in their living room by loaded backpacks, packets of dried food and boxes upon boxes of supplies, guides and maps.

“The dehydrator started humming in August,” says their father Chris, 43. It helps that Jamie used to work on an apple farm and has dehydrated enough apples to cover every week on the trail.

Friends gave them extra produce from their gardens to dehydrate. Prepping beans and soups, Jamie learned to dehydrate eggs with polenta or beef with bread crumbs to keep them moist.

Start from Georgia

The first stop would be Los Angeles, to drop off their dog, Otis, with a caretaker. Then they would head onward to the South, where they set out from snowy Springer Mountain in northern Georgia on Feb. 28 to begin their long northward trek.

Along the way, they will make 32 stops to resupply with food and essentials. They'll average around 15 miles a day at a pace of around 2 miles an hour.

Some days, they'll only travel 2.5 miles into town to pick up a food drop. Other days, they'll log 24 miles in the flat country along the Connecticut River.

And they'll take regular breaks for diversions in National Park Service Junior Ranger programs, family horseback rides and an Easter weekend side-trip with her parents in Virginia. Relatives on the East Coast have volunteered to drive their van to designated meeting points along the way.

But let's backtrack for a second - did we mention Sabina is only 5 years old? And Josie is 8, Harper is 10 and Maya is the oldest at 13?

Training for years, they've put in the hard work. But they never really called it “training.” Instead it's been a love of nature and the outdoors, instilled at an early age.

When Maya was 10 months old, they took her camping for three weeks on 36 acres they own in Colorado, living in a tent with no running water or resources. Every year, they try to take the family there for a few weeks in the summer.

Local experience

Some of their favorite Bay Area hikes over the years are Crane Canyon Regional Park, east of Rohnert Park, and Mount Hood Regional Park, near Kenwood.

They've logged weeklong sprees hiking and camping all over Point Reyes National Seashore. And at Henry W. Coe state park, near Morgan Hill, they did 27 miles in two days, with an 8,000-foot elevation change.

On a recent gear test in the pouring rain, while crossing Azalea Creek near Hood Mountain, the Malones failed miserably. Or as Harper put it, “We were sopping wet everywhere!”

That's why they're nearly ecstatic when a package arrives at the door in the middle of our interview. It's a new set of rain jackets, supplied free of charge from Marmot, the outdoor wear company based in Rohnert Park.

As the kids try on their gear, Chris hands over his phone and says, “Can you take a few photos?” adding that he recently opened his first social media account.

Their trail strategy comes down to morale and teamwork. “You've gotta try to keep things positive,” says Chris, who works in the wine industry.

“There are gonna be tough times and you've gotta know that going in. But we have to all work together. We're gonna have bad days; I'm gonna have bad days, but we have to all help each other.”

The payoff will hopefully last a lifetime, he says. “It's going to give them such confidence in their life and set them up with such a character-building experience.”

The Malone daughters are also embracing the journey as a chance to raise awareness and funds for some of their favorite causes.

Sabina is supporting the Redwood Empire Food Bank “because food is very important for people,” she says.

Josie has collected more than 300 pairs of shoes for Soles for Souls, a Nashville-based nonprofit that has distributed over 30 million pairs of shoes in 127 countries since 2006.

Her goal is to collect 2,000 pairs of shoes by the end. A budding chef, Harper has raised more than $500 through bake sales to support Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue and Appalachian Wildlife Refuge.

An avid horseback rider, Maya is raising money for CARMA (California Retirement Management Account), a Southern California nonprofit that rehabilitates retired California thoroughbred racehorses.

Since they won't have a lot of time for haircuts along the trail, each daughter lopped off their hair, including Maya whose hair once came down to her waist. They're donating it all to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that turns ponytails into wigs for cancer patients. And as a family, they're raising money for the B-Rad Foundation and its mission to take underserved kids into the wilderness.

Education, adventure, service

Building upon her Appalachian mission 20 years ago, Jamie has tried to instill “three main things - education, the adventure and service. It goes back to that question, ‘What are we doing in this world?' We're here to make a difference.”

It's what she did to help her brother Kyle, who died in 2017. In 2002, she and Chris paddled the length of the Connecticut River to raise $30,000 for Casa Colinas, a rehabilitation hospital that facilitates outdoor adventures for its patients.

A hand-drawn picture of Kyle is featured on the “Awaking Dreams” T-shirts the Malone kids designed to go along with their website (awaking-dreams.com) and fundraising network.

Their goal is to make it back to Sonoma County in August before school starts.

“One of the most important things for me is that they stay connected with their classes,” says Jamie, who is a credentialed teacher, a lifeguard at Ives Park pool and serves as director of Earth Camp every summer.

Each daughter will fulfill an independent study with their school, enhanced by firsthand experience and study of local history and the natural environment in the 14 states they pass through.

That means Sabina will be writing postcards to her class. And Maya will be taking breaks to Skype book reports to her classes.

They've been talking to teachers and school officials since Maya was in kindergarten, and were told they shouldn't take her out of 8th grade or high school.

So they decided it was now or never.

“When I come back, I'll have to go back to teaching full-time to pay off the debts,” Jamie says.

“People ask, ‘Why would you want to go into this kind of debt or why do this?' And I say, ‘Really it's about putting time in. It's not about taking time off. We're putting time into our kids; where we're going to be more present than we've ever been before with them.”