ntee of tomorrow. She promised herself that if she recovered, she would live her life in such a way as to die with no regrets. It was nine months before she could stand a

They were about 4,000 feet high, standing in a rockslide roughly three-quarters of the way up Mount Katahdin, the tallest peak in Maine, when they said goodbye. It was 4 p.m., with just a few hours of daylight left, and Stacey Kozel and her friend, Patsy Remington, decided to go in opposite directions.Kozel would go up and spend the night on the dark and foreboding mountain.Remington would go down and sleep.Kozel planned to find a place to hide from the elements among the giant boulders that were just above her -- a dangerous proposition on any night, and especially so on this October evening, with howling winds, plummeting temperatures and an angry rainstorm.Adding to the danger is the fact Kozel is paralyzed and walks with braces. But she was willing to risk a night alone on Katahdin because getting to Katahdins summit -- another mile and a half or so over extremely rugged terrain -- would allow her to complete the entire 2,189.1 mile Appalachian Trail, an impressive accomplishment for an able-bodied person and an unbelievable one for Kozel, a T9 quadriplegic. (She has regained enough use of her arms that she says shes functionally paraplegic, but her diagnosis remains quadriplegic.)If she finished, she would be the first person with her condition known to hike the entire the trail. If she didnt complete it, she would view it as a failure because she would be letting down thousands of people she so desperately wanted to inspire.Kozel had already climbed some 2,700 feet that day. She didnt want to go down and have to re-do that. Plus, she had already tried and failed three times to summit Mount Katahdin in the past year. As dangerous as it was, this was her last, best chance.Kozel didnt want Remington to stay up there with her, as it was far outside of Remingtons comfort zone, but Remington didnt want to leave her friend alone up there, either. But she knew better than to argue. You cant say to Stacey, No, stop, come down, Remington says.The plan was for Remington to hike down to Kozels Jeep (license plate UNSTPBL), sleep in there, and in the morning climb back up. She would find Kozel, and they would finish the climb together.After Remington left, the weather turned from pleasant to nasty, and Kozel changed her mind about that plan. She didnt want to wait that long. The cold, wind and rain made hypothermia a real threat, but if she kept moving, she would keep warm, or at least warmer. What if the rain didnt stop for hours? What if her legs swelled again, as they often had since she started the trail in March? What if she cramped up?What if this, what if that, what if the other?All those questions had made Kozel want to quit 1,000 times.Two years ago, as she lay completely paralyzed in a hospital bed, unable to even lift her head, she had looked out the window and longed to be outside and active. As bad as it was on Katahdin -- and it was really, really bad -- it was nothing compared to being unable to move. She had beaten total paralysis. She was determined to beat this mountain, too.So she pressed onward and upward, looking for the trails tell-tale white blazes, the spray-painted rectangles that direct hikers where to go. She got to the boulders. The metal braces on her legs kept them locked straight, which made climbing the boulders arduous.The sky turned black, the temperature dropped, and rain started pouring down. Her fingers were so cold she couldnt grip her poles. If I stay out here any longer, I might lose a few fingers, she thought to herself. Im hiking out here without legs, whats a couple fingers?Kozel climbed on. Could she make it? She didnt know. But she knew she couldnt stop.I remember holding her as an infant, says Mary Kozel, Staceys mom. I was sitting on the couch. I told her, Im going to raise you to be tough and independent. Now that I look back I think, Oh my gosh, I might have gone too far. I didnt realize what I was creating.Stacey calls her mom her hero and best friend. Theres other parents who would not be as cool as she is about my adventures, says Stacey, who has jumped out of perfectly good airplanes six times. She always tells me what she thinks, but she never holds me back.Stacey played any sport with a ball as a girl, and Mary could barely stand to watch. Particularly in soccer, Stacey played with a disregard for her own well-being. She would sacrifice her body, Mary says. As a parent, I would cringe. You need your body. The balls not that important.It was to Stacey. In softball, even if she played well, she still asked her mom to pitch to her in the backyard after games. She aspired to play sports in college, but her athletic career ended when she was 19 and diagnosed with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease, which results in the body attacking healthy tissue. The Lupus Foundation of America estimates 1.5 million Americans have lupus, and it affects each of them differently. For Kozel, the disease has ravaged her spinal cord, among other things.Shes had several flare-ups since her diagnosis and each time, Kozel, now 41, spent extended time in the hospital. Each time, she fought for months to recover. Each time, she lost a little bit more mobility. The most recent flare-up, in March of 2014, was sparked by a car accident, and it was, by far, the worst. For a while she couldnt even lift her head.Stuck in bed, with nothing to do but think, Kozel recalled her time as a nurse working with dementia patients. That was the best job she ever had because she received as much care from those patients as she gave them. She remembered the regrets those patients described to her -- of broken relationships that were never mended, of long-desired vacations never taken, of living as if theres an endless sea of tomorrows.If lupus taught Kozel anything, its that theres no guarantee of tomorrow. She promised herself that if she recovered, she would live her life in such a way as to die with no regrets. It was nine months before she could stand and more than a year before she could walk with confidence again, and even then she needed braces. She attacked her recovery with the same passion she attacked sports, sometimes leaving exhausting physical therapy and going home to work more to make herself better.Kozels ferocious fight against lupus helps explain how a paralyzed woman could even think about hiking the Appalachian Trail, let alone try it. To strangers, the idea is shocking. To her loved ones, its decidedly less so. They all knew better than to try to talk her out of it, though some asked if she was sure it was a good idea.She just smiled and relished the challenge before her.Appalachian Trail by the numbersThe Appalachian Trail starts at Springer Mountain in Georgia and slices 2,189.1 miles through 14 states before ending atop Mount Katahdin in Maine. To hike the entire trail is at least as much of a mental challenge as a physical one. Being alone in the woods, shut off from all of lifes demands, is mesmerizingly cleansing ... until it gets massively boring and not showering becomes OK.Day after day, Kozel walked until it was almost dark, took off her braces, crawled on the ground to set up her tent, slept, woke up and did it again. Because lupus has also struck her digestive system, she subsisted largely on peanut butter crackers, water and Gatorade. Lupus also has diminished her lung capacity, so she lost her breath frequently. She calls herself a freeze baby, and to fight the cold (and try to put down more miles every day), she walked through the night at least 10 times.When the hike was difficult, which was often, she reminded herself of how far she had come already. I had to have that conversation with myself: Youre not in the hospital bed. Its a good day, she says. The worst day on the trail is still better than the best day in the hospital.She was by herself for her walk in the woods, but she was never really alone. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy estimates 3 million people hike part of the trail every year, and 3,064 hikers registered to thru hike this year, an increase of 1,137 from the previous year. Kozel cant recall spending a single day literally alone.Normal rules of society do not apply on the trail. People could walk shoulder-to-shoulder in a group in New York City for three blocks and never say a word to one another. On the trail, theyd be friends within minutes. Kozel says the best part of the hike was the people she met. Its an amazing community out here, Kozel says. Everybody helps each other out.News of the kindness exhibited in the close-knit community comforted Kozels mom in the long months that she was gone. Mary Kozel was as OK with her daughter hiking the Appalachian Trail as a mom can be. After a lifetime of seeing her daughter overcome challenges, Mary was prepared for an adventure as audacious as this one. Still, the thought of her paralyzed daughter alone in the endless wilderness scared her. It didnt help that all the stories people told Mary about the Appalachian Trail had bears in them. They thought it was funny, she says. I didnt.Kozels first bear scare came just a few days into her hike. As she lay in her tent, her braces standing in the corner, she thought about all the warnings about bears, and how she hadnt seen any, and how the hype hadnt amounted to anything. Suddenly, she heard a rustle, her heart leapt into her throat and she thought a bear was about to rip her to shreds.Her scream echoed through the woods.Then she realized the rustle was just the noise of her braces falling over, and she was worried her scream of terror had ruined other hikers peaceful evenings.I was like, SORRY! ... Sorry ... sorry ... sorry .... she says.Weeks later, as Kozel hiked with her trail family in Virginia, she turned a corner to see a mama bear and two cubs. Hiker code says not to run, but to make yourself as big as possible and make a loud noise to scare the bears away. Her companions turned around and ran. Kozels paralysis makes it impossible for her to turn around quickly, never mind run, so she crossed her poles across her chest and made a noise that she intended to be a yell but that came out sounding like a squeak. It should not, she says, have scared a bear. The mama bear and her cubs backed off.When Larry Schulte (trail name, Windy, because he talks so much) saw Kozel and her braces on the trail one day, he thought of his own ACL surgery.