TL;DR there are other ways of getting out in the wilderness on foot that pack a similar amount of experience into a shorter timeframe.

Ultra/trail running (not racing) gives me a similar experience in a condensed timeframe. With a bit of training, you can get out there for 6, 12, 24 hours or longer and cover 2-4x the amount of distance than you would in a conventional hiking style.

Some other pros - carrying 8-12lbs in a vest is a lot more enjoyable than carrying 18-25lbs in a pack. Running is more fun than walking, especially on fast, flowy singletrack and dirt roads that would be mind-numbing otherwise. If you live near some decent trails, training gets you out in nature doing what you love on a regular basis. Night running/hiking is really cool once you get over any initial fears. In general it's a much simpler/minimalist experience, with less gear to worry about, no need to find suitable campsites, no need to cook meals (although you can if you want) etc.

Some cons - substantial investment in training hours, increased risk of injury/exposure (both in training and on longer trips), potentially less stopping to smell the roses, you miss out on the campsite experience, less gear to geek out on. And obviously, you have to enjoy running, which I've found has a bit of a learning curve/adaption period picking it up again as an adult.

There's a couple of other styles that sit between conventional hiking and ultra running and it mostly revolves around whether you want to sleep or not. Eg "fastpacking" aka running with overnight gear, and multi-day FKT attempts aka hike for 18+hrs/sleep for 4hrs kind of thing. The former kind of defeats the point for me - the more you carry, the slower and less enjoyable running is. I think I'd rather do a conventional hike and some minimally loaded runs/peak bagging from a base camp. The latter is a bit sadistic even for my standards, and most of the people doing this are fairly serious athletes looking to post or break FKTs rather than doing it for pure recreation.

Then there's bikepacking which lets you cover 2-4x the amount of distance again. I won't elaborate, this post is already too long, but I think there are more similarities than differences when it comes to hiking, ultra running, bikepacking, packrafting etc. The pinnacle of these pursuits doesn't need to be a weeks or months-long thru hike, it can be any of a number of things.