APPALACHIAN TRAIL – Anyone who is heading out to hike the Appalachian Trail in Maine might run into an Old Town resident who’s been trekking the trail for five months.

Arick McGowen, 24, started hiking the AT March 3.

“He just crossed into Maine Saturday night, the evening of July 26,” said Carol Roderick, McGowen’s mother. “He plans to be at Baxter peak on Katahdin at noon Saturday, Aug. 16. I hope to drag myself up the mountain to be there.”

Roderick works at Indian Island School and has a map of her son’s progress on a wall, with dated sticky notes dotting the trail from where he started at Springer Mountain in Georgia to Maine.

The Appalachian Trail is a continuous marked footpath that runs from Georgia to Mount Katahdin, a distance of about 2,160 miles.

McGowen, the nephew of Bangor Police Chief Don Winslow, is taking a six-month temporary leave of absence from his job as a foreman at H.E. Sargent in Old Town for the trip. His mom said it was while her son was in college that the trip came to him.

“It was a dream of his for a while,” she said. “He planned it out for a couple of years and did it.”

The trip originally started as a group project.

“He started out with two others,” said Roderick. “He waited for them for five days in Tennessee, and at that point they decided it wasn’t going to work hiking together. He just has longer legs. He’s hiking with a group now, that I think is from Virginia, but I don’t know any thing about them.”

McGowen, who is a University of Maine graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Parks and Recreation, is hiking at a good pace, his mom said, and he should be arriving ahead of his original schedule.

While on the AT, McGowen has acquired the trail name “The Wicked Wizard.”

“He’s made a name for himself because he reads while he hikes,” said his mom. “He just finished a book. He left it at one of the shelters for the next person.”

Eaton Peabody firm administrator Stanton McGowen, Arick’s dad, said he didn’t believe the trip would take place when he first heard about it.

“I wasn’t sure that long trek was something that Arick or somebody else could stick with,” he said. “He and his friend Chris were talking about it and I didn’t think it would come to pass. They really put it together and put it together well, actually. I was really pleased that he was able to do it.”

The hiker was able to visit with his parents when he got into New England.

“We visited him in North Adams,” said his father. “He looked great, fit. He was really enjoying what he was doing and seemed to be having a great time.”

Along the AT, Arick has been able to contact his parents, grandparents, girlfriend and friends on the phone and via the Internet whenever he stopped in towns the trail intersected.

“About once a week he could phone,” his mom said. “He also had access to e-mail in the local libraries.”

Roderick said her son is trekking the 2,160 miles just for a personal accomplishment.

“I heard from him last night [July 31] and we’re meeting him on Aug. 8 in Monson,” she said. “We’re going to take a little side hike to Borestone Mountain – that’s where my new husband and I got married.”