W.r.t. the original comment/question:
"Most of the journals focus on town days, meeting people and eating! They all have limited time to write their journals, but I wonder why no more is said about the country they travel through?"

Yup, things do seem to get different on longer trips, but a 100 day trip with three short town breaks --- yowza, that's quite a long trip you took, with very little time off!

About the social aspect, I can say that it does have a powerful impact; I think I have a better social life overall on a thru-hike than in normal life, though the CDT is so unpopulated that it was an exception. I just find it wonderful to have an instant bond with people that I otherwise have nothing in common with, because of the one thing that we have so very completely in common.

As to the focus on food, once a person has lost all of their discretionary body fat (I think most of us carry at least some in 'normal' life, certainly to include me), and they're burning so many calories per day, it's hard not to obsess on food, either on trail or in town.

"Towns mess you up", is something one hears from thru-hikers a lot, and in part it's because they're trying to make up for a caloric deficit run while on trail, typically in a relatively short time. I think I've finally learned how to maximize caloric intake in town without walking out of town feeling ill --- too often. But it's hard. I've heard of thru-hikers taking a restaurant menu with them on trail and reading it aloud to each other at night; not sure how much that's "trail porn" (food lust) and how much it's sado-masochism.

Why folks don't write about the wilderness experience and scenery as much as one might think they would do: in part I think because after a time it all just becomes the normal backdrop, so that it takes relatively special stuff to rate a comment. Some people do a reasonable job of this; I certainly try to do so at least a bit, augmenting words with pictures if possible. And in general the pictures aren't necessarily representative of the "norm"; we all tend to take pictures of the unusual or special stuff.

For me personally, part of the issue is that I know so very little about flora and fauna, and ditto about the geology, history, geography, etc of the land I'm walking through on a long trip. It's another one of the compromises that one makes on a thru-hike, which for me is more like a quick survey, sort of like walking fast through a big store before settling down to browse a few aisles of special interest. I hope that some of the more "special aisles" on the thru-hikes I've done are places I'll someday be able to explore at a more relaxed pace.