ASHLAND — You have to go a long way to top Mary Kwart’s accomplishments. So far, the 60-year-old has walked 20,000 miles — almost the circumference of the Earth — on isolated trails, in the heat, snow, rain and wind, mostly alone and loving it.

Kwart just completed hiking the 800-mile Arizona Trail, from Mexico to Utah. She did it in two segments: 130 miles over 12 days in March 2011 and the last, 670-mile section over 62 straight days this March through May.

Breaking a big route into smaller sections is preferable for long-distance hikers who don’t have the stamina, desire or time off to commit to months of nonstop walking. While some hikers can traverse the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to the Canadian border in seven months, Kwart finished it — bit by bit — while on vacations over 34 years. She tackled the segments during time off from her job as a U.S. Forest Service fire management officer in national parks, forests and wildlife refuges in California, Colorado and Alaska.

But since she retired and moved to Ashland in 2008, Kwart has had more time to devote to wearing out her walking shoes, which she does every 500 miles. She joined the Ashland-based Backpacking After 60 group and hikes with them on weekend trips. She teaches a series of classes on hiking strategies through Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and at the Greensprings Mountain Festival, which takes place on Sept. 8, and she blogs about her preparations and experiences on www.postholer.com/fireweed.

“Fireweed” is her trail name, which she gave herself because the fireweed flower is the first to return after flames have cut through a forest. When she hiked the Arizona Trail, she ran into people named “Yeah, But,” “Happy Feet,” “Elderly Ellen” and “Upchuck.” Each name comes with a story.

‘Older and wiser’

Kwart prepares for her grueling hikes by walking the treadmill at the Ashland Family YMCA. While people nearby are stepping leisurely enough on the rotating belts to flip through magazines, Kwart is hoofing it at a 3-mile-per-hour pace and on a 9-degree incline. Oh, and she’s bearing a 30-pound pack.

“I’m older and wiser now,” says Kwart, who went on her first long hike as a teenager, from the Bay Area to Yosemite in 1970, with a kid’s flannel sleeping bag and 2 pounds of sunflower seeds and raisins stuffed into an Army surplus pack. “I no longer think that my physical fitness can get me out of every situation. I give myself time to figure things out and not just go.”

Although the long hikes keep her fit, she says what she enjoys most is being a part of the natural world, winnowing her needs into a backpack and relishing the simple joys of an occasional bed, warm shower and cold beer.

Spiritual component

The trails she has traveled, she says, are not set up to be pilgrimages, like the Camino de Santiago in Spain, but she finds a spiritual component in each place. “The opportunity to concentrate one step at a time is lost in our daily life,” she says, “but when you’re out there, you have to pay attention to the world around you every moment.”

Long days alone, monotonous scenery, out-of-date guidebooks, miscalculated GPS coordinates and vanished signposts have taught her to be self-sufficient. “You have to deal with the weather and other stuff,” she says. “You can’t run away from it and that makes you resourceful.”

On the Arizona Trail, she had endless anxiety about being thirsty in the desert. She carried only about 2 liters of water with her because she didn’t want to be weighed down. Once, out of desperation, she pumped water from a puddle in a road while worrying that a four-wheel drive vehicle would drive over her.

She wrote in her blog about an experience she had days later at a rest stop: “I picked up my package at the marina — pretty surreal to be walking on top of water on the long floating dock, after stressing about water availability for days.”

But the bleak days she wrote about in her journal and later posted about on her blog were interwoven with days in which she appreciated the times she saw orange poppies, heard the sound of flowing water, experienced the peacefulness inside her tent and met helpful strangers along the way.

Finishing a trail

When she took her last step on the Arizona Trail, the party was equally simple. Her friends took a photograph of her and they drove to Page, Ariz., for fish and chips at Denny’s, a meal that Kwart described in her journal as “perfect.”

She says her reaction was different when she finished walking the Pacific Crest Trail because it was the end of a decades-long goal, starting with hiking 68 miles in 1976 and ending with a 1,000-mile trek in 2010.

“I saw the monument at the Canadian border and I signed the register,” she says, pausing. “It was an overwhelming emotional experience to finish.”

She says the period of mourning that a trip is over is short. “I immediately start reading journal websites,” she says, “and talking to other hikers and planning my next trip.”