Portraits of Adventure / BTA / Meg Dailey
Meg Dailey
Shawnee Wilderness, OH
March 2026
Meg Daly walked into the interview and said "oh, good luck" before I even got started. She's thirteen.
She is the reason her dad Jesse is out here at all. She dragged him hiking when she was young, and he went along with it. Then she decided she wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail and dragged him onto that too. We’re used to hearing this story go the other way around, parents dragging their kids into activities.
She finished two years of schoolwork in three semesters so they could leave on time. Jesse got injured halfway through the first year and they had to come back. You can bet the first thing Meg asked when they got home was how to go back and finish. They got 1,000 miles the first year and 1,200 the second. She was eleven when they started.
Coming out when school allows, Meg now helps maintain a section of the Buckeye Trail. Her two jobs are swamping (clearing logs after her dad cuts them) and painting blazes. Sometimes she shows up to school with blue paint on her hands. Nobody there knows she does this except her National Junior Honor Society advisor, because she uses the hours, but she said she'd keep doing this even if she didn't get the hours for it.
When I asked if she was teaching anyone what she knows, she said she didn't think anybody wanted to learn from a thirteen-year-old. Her dad immediately listed the people she'd taught. Including a guy who complained at Trail Fest about a section being in rough shape, then came to a work party and ended up taking tips from Meg on how to fix it.
Meg has found a community she wasn’t expecting outside of school, other people who enjoy hiking and want to help maintain the trails they enjoy. She wants to hike the rest of the Buckeye Trail in time, but for now has work to get back to.
More from The Buckeye Trail Association
Explore other Chapters
