My Road to Damascus
And on we go. Our tribe of disparate souls moves steadily north, a community sharing the good with the bad and brought together by a common desire to get to Mount Katahdin in Maine or as far as our wills, our bodies, and our wallets will take us.
Welcome to Virginia! I am in my fourth state, as the Appalachian Trail left Georgia, and wiggled along the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, and, at Mile 464, into Damascus.
The Road to Damascus has been fraught with peril and adventure, although some of the most beautiful spots of this part of my hike were hidden by brutal weather that gave me some of the most difficult hiking I have faced in my 30-plus years of backpacking.
This 200-mile section of my hike – from Hot Springs, NC to Damascus, VA -- has also brought me great new friends and traveling companions, amazing and challenging trails and wonderful campsites. I have stayed in a shelter only a few times and spent most nights in a tent. Strangely, I find it impossible to sleep in a bed and find comfort only in my sleeping bag and my one-man Hubba tent. Go figure.
I leave refreshed and far lighter than when I arrived. I celebrated getting to Damascus with a new pack shipped from home, making a modest investment that dramatically enhances my chance of getting to Katahdin. Thanks to my friends and technical advisers at The Backpacker in Columbia for their help with this amazing trip. Billy and Adam and the others have been generous with their advice and counsel, and I could not have been as prepared as I have been without their expertise. Thanks, guys!!
Early in the hike, I carried more than 50 pounds, but have consistently downsized and sent stuff home. Fully loaded, my new gear weighs 34 pounds and the new Osprey pack will be great in the summer weather ahead. I will drop even more weight by shipping home winter clothes and switching to a lighter summer sleeping bag.
So many memories:
o Chow Hound and Chuck Wagon, a married couple from Vermont, knew that I was running low on food as we neared Erwin, TN and resupply. They shared some snacks with me beside the trail late one morning and that afternoon, I rounded a curve to find a surprise. Sitting nicely on a tree limb hanging over the path was a bag of trail mix with a message: “Grasshopper. Eat Me!"
o Twice I have run across Cimarron, an 88-year-old hiker, who continues his effort to be the oldest hiker to complete a thru-hike from Georgia to Maine. In a world filled with youngsters, it’s good to feel so much younger than someone else on the trail.
o I accidentally left my trail guidebook at a biker bar after a burger and two beers one afternoon in Hampton, TN. I had returned to the trail and after a six-mile hike over Pond Mountain to a road crossing the next day, I hitched back to the bar, retrieved my book, ate another burger and drank only Pepsi before hitching back to the trail and another six miles of walking.
o I keep running across Oatmeal and Reese, two guys from Columbia, showing how small the world really is. They are headed back to South Carolina so Oatmeal can recover from shin splints.
o About 15 miles south of Damascus, there is a lovely meadow designed to be accessible for those in wheelchairs or otherwise physically challenged.” A wide and graded path wends through lush green grass and offers wonderful views of the mountains. I was lucky to be there when the sky was a brilliant blue.
o Trail Angels from a local Baptist Church brightened one afternoon with a trail side box filled with ice cold colas and cookies. What a wonderful and refreshing surprise.
o Milkweed Puff, 50, from Iowa, gave me an idea for a new adventure for next year. Last year he canoed the length of the Mississippi River. How cool is that? It took him 121 days. He is also a martial artist and we worked a bit of tai chi together. Regrettably, he left the trail in Damascus and is headed to Kansas.
o I have been hiking with Buckeye, a 69-year-old retired science teacher and track coach from Ohio who completed a thru-hike in 1999 and has the mentality and body type of a long distance runner. He stunned me the other day by referring to me as “wiry.” We had breakfast before he left the trail for home -- he had wanted to hike four states and did what he set out to do.
o My weather delays made me fall behind my young friend Strider, but he was in Damascus when I arrived and we will leave together today.
o I went to the medical clinic in Damascus to use their scales and weighed a surprising 182 pounds, which is maybe 20 pounds lighter than when I started.
But The Story of this section of my merry woodlands adventure has been the weather.
Beauty Spot Clearing was the most terrifying. The fog rolled in as I neared the bald summit 12 miles into my day. First came thunder and lightning and torrential rains -- and then hail. There was nowhere to hide, but I threw aside my hiking staff and huddled beside a tree; I shivered and I prayed.
Other hikers said lightning struck a few hundred feet from me, but I didn’t see it as my head was down and my eyes were shut.
Water filled my boots and I was soaked to the bone.
The nearest camp site was more than a mile away, and I trudged along as soon as the weather broke. I had hoped to make it over Unaka Mountain and wrap up a 17-mile day but I was shipped by the weather and grabbed the first flat spot I could find.
I woke in a panic in the dead of night, clawing at my tent as though fighting to find a way out of a coffin. It was 4 a.m.; I made it out but could not see for the fog or cloud that covered my campsite and the mountain.
Rattled, I struggled the next day, carrying wet gear and a wounded psyche. I hiked another 12 miles before stopping near an appropriately-named Greasy Creek Gap campsite, and pitched my tent at a wet and muddy spot. I was wet and miserable.
This was the lowest point of my Appalachian Trail adventure. That was 80 miles ago, but the memories are fresh and will last.
But I rallied. I prayed and decided that the demons of doubt were testing me and the devil was trying his best to get into my head. I would rely on my faith in God and my faith in myself.
I headed north to climb Roan Mountain as the rain continued a slow drizzle and I gained about 2300 feet of elevation in a three-mile hike to the Roan High Gap Shelter, the highest shelter on the entire AT. It was a cold place, but dry, though a bit grim.
I had looked forward to this part of the trail for weeks before I entered the woods because of pictures I had seen of the rhododendron fields and high altitude meadows.
No chance.
The next day's 16-mile hike over the mountain and the up and over the bald mountains was ridiculously hard, though a hostel, a hot shower, clean clothes and marvelous food awaited me at the end of the day.
Fog cut visibility to a few hundred feet and cold winds shipped rain across the open spaces. There were endless climbs leading to a long downhill trek over slippery roots and rocks and a muddy trail.
I had made it this far through a three-day weather crisis with continuous prayer and variations of a hymn of praise asking for the Lord's help -- "Holy, Holy, Holy. Lord God Almighty. Help me climb this mountain, and bless me as I go. Or, "Bless me as I hike this trail, I praise Thee as I go."
The doubts and panic and despair from the Beauty Spot Clearing hailstorm and my nightmares vanished.
My trail journey continues the spiritual quest that I began last summer at Mepkin Abbey. That retreat started me backpacking for the soul, and the spiritual theme of this thru-hike is: “Following The Cross and White Blazes.” I read, reflect and work on my relationship with God and Jesus Christ. I am reading the New Testament and Proverbs over the next miles and have learned much from another small book -- More Than a Carpenter, which provides proven historical documentation to Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection and the accounts in the New Testament.
Coincidentally, as I neared Damascus, I read an account of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. An enemy of early Christians, he was "blinded by the light" in an encounter with the risen Jesus, who rebuked him for his plans to arrest Christians in Damascus. Three days later, Jesus sent Ananias to Saul to heal his blindness, and Saul became Paul the Apostle, a leading disciple and Christian leader.
Looking back to Beauty Spot Gap through that lens, the lightning that flashed and terrified me brought me back to my religious reflection.
My spiritual work has served me well.
This story is being finished in the Washington County, VA public library, but written the very old-fashioned way -- with a pen and in a notebook as I camp alone downstream from Laurel Falls.
I stop now for ice cream before headed back to the trail for the next adventure. Bless me as I go.
-30-
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