Some people dream of taking months away from their jobs to hike the Appalachian Trail. For local photographer Carly Rae Brunault, hiking the trail from Georgia to Maine and meeting people along the way helped her deal with grief – and she’s since turned that experience into a book.

Brunault’s new book, “Trail Name Tales,” highlights a particular element of “thru-hiker” culture – namely, the unique nicknames that hikers give themselves (and each other). The book features photos of hikers along the trail with the stories about the origins of those names; the Instagram account @trailnametales, which has more than 16,000 followers, features even more hikers explaining their trail name origin stories on video.

Brunault, who grew up in Amherst and has been a working photographer in the Valley for about 12 years, hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in 2022. Though she’s a longtime hiker who grew up hiking trails in her backyard (and photographing nature while doing so), she underwent an Appalachian Trail hike as a way of coping with the loss of her longtime partner, also an avid hiker, who passed away at the age of 26 after his struggles with addiction.

While working through the loss, taking on bigger and bigger treks, Brunault teamed up with another photographer who also loved hiking to cover events like weddings. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the two suddenly had lots of free time. They’d half-joked that the next logical thing to do would be to hike the Appalachian Trail – and then that joke became a plan.

While she prepared for the big hike, she discovered One More Day on The Appalachian Trail, a scholarship program for first-time thru-hikers in honor of hiker Nate “El Chapo” Loftis, who died of an accidental overdose in 2019. His family wanted to help people who used hiking to heal, and Brunault fit the bill – not only did she lose a life partner to addiction, but she has a family member who’s been struggling with addiction for decades. One of her photography projects, “Dear Addict,” features letters that family and friends of addicts write to their loved ones.

Brunault didn’t originally intend to make a book out of her trail name photos – she just wanted to stay creative as she hiked since she was taking six months away from her photography business. Still, trail name stories seemed like interesting material with a natural catalyst: “It’s the first thing you ask people, so I just ran with that.”

Sometimes, hikers get their trail names for straightforward reasons: “My trail name is Toto cause I’m from Kansas,” said one; “I’m Rooster and I got my trail name because I like chickens,” said another. “My ringtone is a chicken and it goes ‘buk, buk, buk.’”

Sometimes, the reasons are funny: horticulturist “Disco” got her name from pointing to “that plant over here and that plant over there” while filming educational videos. “Stumbledore,” whose original trail name was “The Don,” got his second name from his wife. “Stumbling is part of doing the Appalachian Trail,” he said. “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

Other hikers get their trail names because other people say they bear a resemblance to a celebrity or character – Mr. Tumnus from “The Chronicles of Narnia,” for example, or the Wendy’s mascot (which led to the name “Frosty”). A hiker known as “Marky Mark” for his resemblance to Mark Wahlberg figured that name wasn’t too bad, all things considered: “Better I locked in this trail name before I pooped my pants or something and got called [expletive] Mcgee.”

Some trail names are more sentimental. “Fireball” wanted to pay tribute to her late uncle Fred, a hiker also known for his baseball pitching skills; “Tanager” got his name from carrying a seemingly injured bird to safety. Brunault’s friend “Newfound” took her name from the Newfound Gap in North Carolina, where she felt “instantly and inexplicably at home” on a road trip with her then-spouse in 2017.

“I knew, more than decided, that I would end up there one day,” she told Brunault.

Three years later, at the age of 26, her marriage ended, but she felt drawn to return to the Appalachian Trail.

“Newfound Gap became my North Star. As I navigated through my new life, it became the one thing that kept me going most days,” she said. “My marriage, and its end, had been filled with so much self-doubt and uncertainty. That moment at Newfound Gap had been a singular moment of clarity for me, long before I knew how much I would need that clarity one day.” Returning to the Appalachian Trail – this time, to hike the entire thing – was “my second chance at living life on my own terms.”

Naturally, Brunault has a trail name, too: Hippea, after the brand of vegan chickpea puff snacks. Before her Appalachian Trail hike, she got free samples of Hippeas at a vegan festival she was photographing in Rhode Island – enough to put in packages that she could mail herself along the route.

“When I got to Tennessee, I’m eating a bag of Hippeas, and I’m like, ‘I still don’t have a trail name!’ And my friend just looks at me and [says], ‘I think you do!’” Brunault laughed.

When Brunault came home from her hike, though she was dealing with “post-hike depression,” she felt changed for the better, with less anxiety and anger.

“I definitely had a lot of stuff to walk off, a lot of pain and trauma,” she said. “My body was actually holding onto a lot of emotional trauma in a physical trauma – I was dealing with chronic pain physically. That has since been gone. I don’t struggle with physical pain anymore, and I’m just more relaxed, in a sense.”

Three years later, Brunault said that despite the challenges, she’d hike the Appalachian Trail again if she could.

“The Appalachian Trail is really tough. There were times on the trail when I was hiking that I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ or actually in tears – ‘I just wanna get off, this is ridiculous,’” she said. “But something about hiking keeps you coming back, and that’s just hiking. It’s hard, but it’s so rewarding.”

“I would be like climbing an incline and really struggling, but I’m like, ‘I have been through much worse. I can climb this mountain,’” she said. “The reward is a very freeing feeling. Something about it keeps you coming back.”

“Trail Name Tales” is available on Amazon and Ingram Spark, and at Amherst Books, Book Moon in Easthampton, Federal Street Books in Greenfield, and REI in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.