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From Kel Bel to Meg Griffin to Toddler Snacks: An Origin Story
Allow me to introduce myself
If you’ve met me on trail you know me as Toddler Snacks, or formerly, Meg Griffin. In the real world my human name is Kelly. I’m a 34 year old New Englander, currently living in New Hampshire. I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2020, the Vermont Long Trail in 2021, and the Pacific Crest Trail in 2023. If I mathed the math right, I have over 5,000 miles of thru-hiking experience. By contrast, I have one paragraph’s worth (this one) of blogging experience.
Tell me without telling me you’re a ‘90s kid
Before I was the almost-triple-crowner I am today, I was a socially anxious, yet simultaneously bossy, imaginative child growing up in Connecticut. My pastimes included: collecting American Girl dolls, loving everything polar bears, hating on Barney, directing plays and dance recitals involving my little sister / cousins / whatever rouge kids from the neighborhood I could rope in, and running amok in the woods behind our house. My parents affectionately called me “Kel Bel” – and although I remember playing hours of The Sims on our Windows 98 desktop and overconsuming Nickelodeon cartoons on our 27-inch CRT TV – they raised me as an outdoor kid. I was on skis by age three, a snowboard by ten, and my family spent summer weekends hauling our camper all over the northeast.
Me, chilling in the woods, probably 6 or 7 years old? I had that same haircut on the PCT. I still wear bike shorts and find great satisfaction in matching my socks to my outfit. Not much has changed.
Me, just shy of age 9 (left) with my sister Susan, age 6 (right) on a family hike in 1999.
First impression of thru-hikers (pee-yew!)
My first memories of the Appalachian Trail were of visiting my Dad’s Aunt Barbie at her camp on Pleasant Pond in Maine. She would bake cookies for the thru-hikers and my dad and I would canoe across the pond, drop them off at the nearby shelter, and pick up the container from the previous batch. One time, a few hikers stayed overnight with us on the cabin floor. They smelled BAD (my dad laughs that one of them had turned down a shower). It never crossed my mind back then that someday I would be one of those smelly specimens.
Me on top of Pleasant Pond Mountain in Maine – LEFT: in 1994, age 3, RIGHT: on my thru-hike in 2020, age 29.
Backpacking is stupid and gross
My teenage years came with the usual angst and 2-cool 4-skool attitude. I dreaded the backpacking trips that were forced on us as campers at Camp Calumet in West Ossipee, NH. The day hikes were tolerable, but it was definitively NOT cool to like the overnights, and a social status enhancer to complain about them. My tentmates and I bemoaned the heavy, uncomfortable external frame packs that had been torturing campers since the Nixon Administration and the musty sleeping bags that smelled tainted of 30 years of sweaty boy feet and stale farts. We commiserated in our deep disgust of pooping in a privy and tried to assuage each other’s fears of getting eaten when our bloody feminine products inevitably became a bear attractant.
15 year old me in my tent at camp in the summer of 2006, sporting braces and an Abercrombie graphic tee. Probably waiting to get this overnight hike over with so I can crush on (but not talk to) this cute boy named Ben from across the room at the dance.
Life of the party
When alcohol showed up fashionably late in my life around age 20, my second decade took a turn into an – at first exhilarating, and later exhausting – whirlwind of partying. After college I worked as a tax accountant at a CPA firm. I led a dual existence as practical corporate girlie by day and wild party animal by night. I secretly loathed that job, its stress and long busy season hours, and lived for the weekends. It was an endless cycle of euphoria: uninhibited dancing in crowds to live music or hooting and hollering late into the night at house parties, followed by an inescapable doom spiral: crippling hanxiety, Sunday Scaries, unbearable Mondays. Repeat, ad nauseam.
Circa 2016 in the prime of my partying and bleached hair era. I may be smiling but I was suffering on the inside.
I need some hobbies
Likely in the throes of a particularly nasty hangover, I decided I needed a hobby outside of partying. My significant other at the time and I bought ourselves some Osprey packs and planned a backpacking trip in VT. We packed a far from ultralight load including at least three liters of water each (the concept of filtering from natural sources had not yet entered my awareness), and of course, boxed wine and a flask of whiskey. Because how could we possibly enjoy one Saturday night without booze?? I remember being breathless on the steep trek in and wide awake terrified of the unidentified sounds in the blackness of the night. But in the crisp morning, as I watched the sunrise over a small pond sipping from a Toaks cup of Starbucks instant coffee, I felt peace.
First voluntary backpacking trip as an adult in the Green Mountains of VT in 2016. Note the two full 1.5 liter water bottles I packed out because I didn’t know you could filter water.
Let’s hike the AT (like for real though)
I wish I could say that was the turning point when I stopped partying and became hooked on backpacking. It wasn’t. I partied for a few more years (the stray backpacking trip thrown in here and there) until I was truly fed up with my life circumstances. It was shortly after I had burned out working 27 days in a row one tax season when my future AT hiking partner and I, a few beers’ buzz deep at a local brewery, fantasized longingly about escaping the real world to thru hike. In an impassioned, half-inebriated spiel I said, “What if we actually did it though… like for real, quit our jobs and actually did it…”
Surprisingly, neither of us woke up the next day forgetting or dismissing the absurdity of that conversation. I spent the next year and a half secretly plotting my grand escape from the shackles of the accounting world. During my hour-long Amtrak commute to work, I read every book I could get my hands on about the AT, including Appalachian Trials by The Trek’s own Zach Davis.
Meg(atron) Griffin
On February 29, 2020, I began my long-anticipated thru-hike of the AT. The first couple nights I met my soon-to-be tramily and we quickly became a tight group of guys, plus me. (Hi Gooch Gang, if any of you are reading this!) One evening at a shelter, I mentioned I always sleep with my beanie on because it had been so cold at night. Someone said, “she never takes her beanie off like Meg Griffin!” Everyone also liked the secondary, subtle nod to the Family Guy character having only brothers, as I was the lone female in the tramily. I officially accepted it as my trail name. It got shortened to Griffin somewhere along the way, but the real OGs know me by its earliest iteration: Megatron.
Starting the AT in 2020 wearing my namesake beanie.
Toddler Snacks
Fast forward to July 19, 2020. I’m sitting around the campfire at Katahdin Stream Campground with my second tramily. We just crushed back to back 28s, no biggie. I’m housing a large Ziploc of gummy bears trying to eat my way through my food bag before our big finish on Mama K early the next morning. One of my tramily members says to me, “You know, if I got to name you, I would have called you Toddler Snacks,” referring to my on-trail dietary staples: Goldfish and Welch’s Fruit Snacks. I didn’t adopt the new name right then and there, but it definitely made me laugh.
Typical socked-in, big NOBO energy AT finish pic.
“Your case notes say…post-trail depression…? What is that?”
Life immediately post-AT was a dark time for me. In a matter of six months, I went from triumphantly standing in a raincloud atop the northern terminus sign soaking in (literally and figuratively) my biggest accomplishment to date, to explaining post-trail depression to a clinician at a drug and alcohol inpatient treatment center. I spent late 2020 through the first half of 2022 in and out of treatment centers, outpatient programs, and AA meetings fighting what had undeniably become a full-blown, dysfunctional addiction to alcohol.
During a year-long stint of sobriety, I managed to fit in a thru-hike of the Long Trail in the fall of 2021 with my now husband, Andrew. Memorial Day weekend 2022 kicked off my final and most frightening relapse turned bender turned psychotic episode turned hospitalization. I’ve been gratefully alcohol-free since June 4, 2022.
Me with my husband Andrew (trail name “The Show”) on one of our first backpacking trips together in the White Mountains in the summer of 2021.
Finishing the LT in October 2021 fully embracing my Meg identity in a pink beanie.
My IV during my two night hospital stay after my last relapse in June 2022. I took this picture to remind myself of a place where I hope to never be again.
New trail, new me
When Andrew and I set out on the PCT in 2023, I decided to roll with the name Toddler Snacks. My reasoning was partially for a fresh start; my off-trail life had changed immensely since my prior thrus and I wanted my on-trail identity to reflect that. I also found “Meg Griffin” to be a hit-or-miss reference when revealing it to other hikers. Half would start laughing hysterically. The other half would look at me blankly, likely wondering why I had just introduced myself so formally with my full birth name. I was tired of explaining it and wanted a more straightforward and silly name. Toddler Snacks gets a LOT of laughs, along with assumptions I was dubbed because I eat literal baby food or those smoothie or yogurt squeeze pouches. Fielding “is it because you eat those squeezy pouch things?” questions is the reality of the new name.
Finishing the PCT in October 2023.
Where will I be eating toddler snacks next?
In 2025, I have plans for two thru-hikes in the works. I’ll be taking on the White Mountains Direttissima as a little warm-up training snack (JK it is going to be a rude awakening after a sedentary 2024) for the main course: the Continental Divide Trail. I’m excited and honored to have been given the opportunity to share my trailventures in blog form this season here on The Trek! To stay updated on my journeys subscribe to this blog or follow me @keljens on Instagram.
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Comments 16
What a great intro ! Thank you for your vulnerability and congratulations on your sobriety. I look forward to seeing the CDT through your eyes.
Thanks so much, I appreciate you reading and your congrats!
Great 1st blog post…you are now an experienced blogger! Enjoyed the honesty and detail…look forward to following.
Haha I guess I am now! Thanks for reading!
Back to back 28s in the area right before katahdin? With that pace, you guys can throw in a nother hike somewhere in 2025 on top of the cdt.
Thanks for sharing your adventures
There’s surprisingly a lot of flat in the 100 mile wilderness – it’s not too hard to get through it in 4-5 days as a NOBO. We were in very good shape and very ready to be done by that point haha. Thanks for reading!
Great first post. Good luck on your CDT hike. David Odell AT71 PCT72 CDT77
Wow, an OG triple crowner!! Thank you!
As another alcoholic (no alcohol since 1987) your no BS open honesty will inspire others to face down their demons. I admire your courage. Hike on.
Thanks! I’m all for recovering out loud. Congrats on almost 40 years alcohol free, that’s amazing!
Awesome intro. Love the idea of the Whites Direttissima, Way to go on being sober. Hemingway changed my life when I read, “Alway do sober what you said you’d do drunk, It will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
Stay off the White Mts. high peaks todays weather :
High: Starting around 10 below then falling through the day to around 15 below
Wind: W at 80-105 mph w/ gusts up to 120 mph increasing to 90-110 mph w/ gusts up to 140 mph
Wind Chill: Falling to 55 below to 65 below
Thank you! I’ve never heard that quote before but I love it! I’ll definitely be inside today, I’m very much a fair weather winter hiker. I don’t go out in extreme cold or snowstorms like some of the other crazies up here haha.
Such a great intro, Toddler Snacks! Welcome to the team 🙂
Thanks Jess! 🙂
The CDT is my favorite to read about. I think because it’s the wildest. The animals & the heights & seems like the most untouched scenery-wise.
I used to live in Montana-Idaho area & Wyoming & wanted to live in Colorado at 1 time. All this area & I only went on short day hikes – now 71 so it’s easier to read others adventures & it’s way more fun than watching TV! I wish the best to you & your husband!!
Thank you! Happy you can hike the CDT vicariously through The Trek blogs! I’ve visited CO a few times, but never any of the other states. I’m excited to experience hiking through them!