The Wall, the Vortex and the Ice Cream Man
Waynesboro, VA. June 28, 2011 -- Just outside Daleville, I hit the wall.
The re-supply and blog-posting there had been exhausting. Up very late writing; terrible sleep because I was in a bed indoors and not a tent; up early as usual, but at a computer, not a campsite. After a late start and five miles into what was supposed to be an easy 15-mile day, I crashed and burned.
I dozed at a shelter before slipping into my tent for a three-hour nap. It was a combination I knew well – the letdown after a writing project and a psychological payment due for my celebrating 700 miles when I still have so very far to go. I was physically tired from hiking very difficult and rocky trails and mentally whipped from living in the woods for so long
My body had been telling me something, and I promised myself at the beginning of the hike that I would listen to it when it talked. My body – and my mind – have been talking to me a lot for the past 200 miles. Some of it hasn’t been pretty.
Somewhere north of Damascus, the Virginia Blues grabbed me and the adventure of a lifetime became a full bore struggle. Routine climbs became agonizing and long hiking days became even longer.
But here I sit in Waynesboro, VA after a Zero Day, not hiking at all. With my first shower in 12 days and a shave, I am a happy man. I have been thrilled by an unexpected package at the post office, brownies and a terrific paperback from two tai chi buddies in Charleston. I have pigged out with friends at Ming Chinese Garden, where we enjoyed a marvelous buffet and a bottle or two of beer.
Pun not intended, however, I am not out of the woods yet. I have labored, but worked my way through it and, as I write, I am on the edge of the Shenandoah Valley and eager to start hiking some of the most beautiful ridges of the Appalachian Trail.
Physically, and mentally, I am ready to go walking again.
My feet hurt, but that’s normal because of the continued pounding and the jolting downhill hiking on roots and rocks. I lost the nail on the second toe of my right foot, but its successor seems to be holding up well.
My ankles are fine now, after a few days of pain. My right ankle was very sore and I worried about it on an 18-mile day, then it felt better the next day (16) and better still the day after (another 16) although my left ankle started bothering me a bit. It is easy to roll an ankle or take a nasty spill out here, and I worry about my feet, ankles and legs because injuries are, of course, a hike killer and I have come too far to be taken out by injury.
Long-distance hiking is as much mental as physical and that night a few miles north of Daleville at the Fullhardt Knob Shelter, I was a bit of a mess.
Another beautiful summer evening passed quickly as I chatted with another thru-hiker and some other folks on the trail for short hikes. Sleep consumed me again by 9 and I was out again until 6 a.m., when I awoke groggy, but ready to hike on.
Determined to make up for lost time, I forced myself to hike 20 miles that day – and I made it! I camped alone that night and hurried along the three miles down to Jennings Creek the next morning because of the Trail Magic that was supposed to be waiting. Word on the trail was that a veteran thru-hiker was entertaining at the creek, cooking burgers and hot dogs and offering beer and soft drinks to hikers headed to Maine
With little warning I was sucked into the vortex.
Pancakes were on the griddle when I walked into camp around 9, and hikers were getting up and stirring about, recovering from the excesses of the night before. Pancakes led to hamburgers. Hamburgers led to chili cheese dogs, and when one session of Trail Magic ended early in the afternoon, another party started, as another hiking veteran was bringing in more beer and hot dogs.
Hikers marvel at a vortex, when, despite the good intent to hike 20 miles, they get snagged for a Zero Day at shelters or towns, but the Trail Magic at Jennings Creek was the mother of all vortexes.
By mid-day 20 hikers were sucked in to share a Zero Day of relative indolence, sloth and gluttony. It was fantastic. We laughed, shared stories, talked about bears and snakes and Trail Angels and our feet and our blisters. Some slept, others played cards, but mostly we ate – and drank, deciding uphill hike facing us after Jennings Creek could easily wait another day.
The Aussies, Slider and Stroller, were there, and Slider was his usually entertaining self; Stroller permitted herself a single beer because she found out 500 miles back that they are expecting a baby on Christmas Day.
Katie (a.k.a. Queen Ferdinand) from Maryland and Harmony, her friend from Alberta, were there, excited to be getting off the trail a week later for a night being entertained by Katie’s Mom. The Safety Tribe, a mixed bag of hikers (Sunkist, Sage and Hawk Run) I had known since April wandered in -- and stayed. So did Napalm, Dingleberry and Duct Tape as well as a couple of homeless men who seem to be wandering the trail somewhat aimlessly.
Someone counted 18 tents near there that night, but I know I was the first out the next morning, breaking camp at 6:30 for that dreaded climb and vowing to pay penance making it 18 miles to a campsite with a spring. It promised to be a sweaty day as impurities were eager to come rolling out in waves.
Trail Magic struck again as Katie, Harmony and I were about to leave Thunder Hill Shelter (Mile 762) after a 5 p.m. break when a voice from the trail asked, “Do any of you guys like ice cream?”
Our heads snapped around to see an elderly man wearing a daypack and carrying a cooler. “I have some Trail Magic here if you’d like,” he said, opening the cooler and bringing out a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream (my favorite, by the way,) two quarts of slushy lemonade, and two bags of Oreos (regular and vanilla.)
The Ice Cream Man explained that he had brought Trail Magic to Thunder Hill before, only to find it empty. We shared news of the vortex 14 miles south and eagerly devoured two bowls of ice cream each, grabbed a handful of cookies and fought off the frozen throat that comes with too much of a good thing.
I could have stayed, but I marched on, freed from the vortex and determined not to lose more time and momentum, although the late afternoon Trail Magic meant I would not catch up with friends. That burp in my schedule pushed me to find the solitude that had lured me into the woods but has been somehow hard to find. Camping alone, I set my own course for Waynesboro and beyond.
I decided to push myself hard and do the 80 miles in five days, meaning a 15-miles-a-day pace. Even by Virginia standards, that can be difficult because there are no easy miles on the Appalachian Trail and because there would be several long and steep climbs and then the downhill sections sure to bang away at ankles and knees.
Long hikes are done in chunks; time and distance are often measured by the miles to go before a re-supply town or the number of days needed to reach a certain destination. I had already forgotten or ignored one rule of thru-hiking – Hike Your Own Hike – and I was losing sight of another – It’s the Journey, Stupid, not the Destination.
Freed from the vortex of Trail magic, I found myself sucked into the vortex of doubt, dismay and frustration and I started pounding away at myself for my perceived lack of progress. I had forgotten the joy of the trail while being consumed with a pre-hike objective of making it to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia by the 4th of July.
Harpers Ferry is 1013 miles from Springer Mountain, Ga., the southern terminus of the A.T. and while Harpers Ferry is a bit short of halfway along the 2,180 mile Trail, it’s the ceremonial halfway point and hikers there around the 4th of July are on pace to make it to the northern end at Mount Katahdin in Maine.
Silly as it might sound, I began to grind away at figuring how many miles a day it would take for me to get there on time and, not being able to hike that far that fast, I started being disappointed in what I had been able to do
I was grinding away one afternoon, well into a 12-hour, 18-mile day and cursing myself for not getting to Harpers Ferry by the 4th of July when I had one of those ‘aha’ moments that changed everything.
Several thoughts converged:
“Patience, grasshopper.”
“Smile, damn it.”
“You are living in the woods on the adventure of a lifetime and beating yourself up because it will take a couple of extra days to hike a thousand miles – A THOUSAND MILES – so this adventure is a failure?”
I started laughing out loud and vowed to remember that I am here to have fun and am having an amazing wilderness experience that will change me forever and already has
My mood brightened, the pack felt lighter, and there was a new spring in my step. I was again a happy camper on a merry woodlands adventure.
I made it to Waynesboro at my pace and on my terms and checked into the YMCA on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Hikers can camp nearby and use all of the Y facilities, so I grabbed my first shower and shave in nearly two weeks and was clean and able to take a another look at how I had come to where I am.
The locker room has a set of zero-balance scales, and I was curious to see what nearly three months and 850 miles had done to me. I was close to 200 pounds when I started at Springer, 182 pounds at Damascus at Mile 464, and a shocking 170 at Woods Hole Hostel a couple of hundred miles ago.
The scales stayed steady at 175 pounds, and I can only wonder what might have registered had I not been able to get that Monkey of Expectations off my back.
My feet still hurt, but it’s mostly my toes. The knees are fine, and so are the ankles.
Now the head is screwed back on right, and I am eager to get back on the trail – hiking my own hike and enjoying my journey without obsessing on the destination and without playing foolish head games.
I also embark alone, although there will be plenty of company along the way. The late arrivals at the Y tonight included two buddies from Columbia, Reese and Oatmeal, who were back on the trail after an injury timeout and a trip home.
I will post this blog, stop for second breakfast and snag a ride back to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the start of the Shenandoahs.
Harpers Ferry is 160 miles away -- about 8 day of good walking-- but I will get there when I get there -- not before, and I will be a happy camper when I do.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Damascus to Daleville: Blue Skies and Boulders
Damascus to Daleville. Blue skies and boulders.
June 15, 2011
The large dark bear loped along the ridge above the trail, never knowing that the two hikers below were transfixed watching him go about his morning business.
We watched, stalking him as we quietly moved along our trail as the bear moved casually across the ridge and stopped to sniff at this or that. For five minutes he stayed in sight before scrambling over a fallen tree and heading the other way as the hikers shared an excited “wow” and went our way to the north,
This was just another majestic day on the Appalachian Trail. It started with a magical sunrise at my campsite overlooking an idyllic Virginia valley from atop Tinker Cliffs a few miles back.
I had camped alone on the cliffs the night before to celebrate the 700 miles on the Appalachian Trail and, quite honestly, feeling a bit proud of myself.
I am humbled by the entire adventure.
Seven hundred miles is a long way, and most hikers who make it this far end up going the distance – 2180 miles to Maine. That’s a very long walk.
This is a magnificent country, one filled with amazing people who hike its trails and who give strangers a lift, sensing we are travelers who appreciate the kindness and mean no harm. This remarkable country is filled with incredible wildlife like this morning’s bear and the other wonders I have seen on my journey: the rattlers and other snakes, the deer, turtles, the birds and the butterflies.
The forest creatures have begun taking hikers for granted -- perhaps it's the smell or we just fade into the trees like they do. They frolic in thee trees and race by without a glance.
Butterflies seem to always find me at the perfect time. Sometimes when I need to strength to make the next climb, sometime to ease a doubt that might come through my head. Sometimes, they seem to just want to say hello.
The road from Damascus to Daleville has been 240 miles of heat, bright sunshine and cloudless blue skies, and the trail has taken me through long lush meadows and farm fields, across stark and open highlands strewn with large boulders, and through demanding ups and downs across harsh and jagged rock slides and scrambling over downed trees.
It is hard hiking, tough on the knees and ankles, and I stop here in Daleville to recover a bit before the push to the halfway point on the 4th of July. I pause to give thanks before pressing on.
Angels and More Angels
The battered black pickup truck turned around up the road and pulled alongside my friend and me on a lonely backcountry Virginia road, hoping for a ride to the grocery at Newport, about eight miles away.
“We’re going to Newport. Ya’ll get in the back,” said Thelma Jean the Trail Angel. I told her I’d kiss her if I weren’t so wet and smelly; him too, I nodded at the driver, Buddy. They both just grinned that happy Southern grin.
“They is beers in the cooler back there if ya’ll is thirsty,” she said. “Mountain Dew, too.” There may be a better cold beer than that one; I don’t know it.
Two days later, I was trying to catch a ride to the Catawba post office before closing when Trail Angel Laurie gave me a lift, waited for me to do my business inside, and then drove me five miles back to the trail.
And yesterday I sat in the gravel parking lot at Catawba, having a quick lunch at Mile 700 before the 3.7-mile hike up to McAfee Knob. Trail Angel Mike, a Presbyterian minister, eagerly quizzed me about trail life before he told me to put my stuff in his truck and let him drive me to the store and buy me trail treats.
None of these angels seemed to mind how bad I smelled; or perhaps they were just too polite to mention it.
From the Messenger to Daleville
I wrote last from about the rain at Mount Rogers and the southbound Messenger who joined a group of us northbound thru-hikers also seeking shelter from the storm. The Messenger headed on south, and I headed north toward Maine, though I called calling Mepkin Abbey a week or so later to check in with him. We swapped voice mails.
North took me into the wonderful Grayson Highlands State Park where the forests gave way to panoramic views and the solitude of the Appalachian Trail evaporated with the clouds and was quickly replaced by the hubbub of a popular state park on Memorial Day weekend.
Family sounds echoed across the fields as day-tripping groups came to explore. Mothers screamed at their youngsters to “don’t go over there” and that gave the highlands the feel of a Wal-Mart or Disney World more than a wilderness playground.
We northbound thru-hikers became part of their wilderness adventure as they greeted us with fascination and wariness – you’re really walking to Maine? There was no shortage of awe and wide eyes and a little bit of head shaking.
I stopped at a gate to let a troop of scouts go by and paused to thank the adult leaders for taking young people into the woods. The group stopped to let me buy when the leader asked me how far I had hiked. With a burst of enthusiasm, I happily announced, “I have hiked almost 500 miles!”
More than one camper’s eye bulged at that and then the first one grinned and raised his palm. “High 5!" I received an enthusiastic hand slap and some ‘woo-hoos” from every young hiker I passed.
The joy of the highlands and passing the 500-mile mark from Springer was quickly tempered by physical horrors, as I caught a nasty bug that had made its rounds through the hiker community, and my body, reliable so far, became my worst enemy.
I was still able to do long miles, but the heat got to me and water became scarce along the trail. I was sweating far more water and fluids than I could take in, and, coupled with a very nasty intestinal disorder, I became a very unhappy camper. The 200-pounder who confidently strode onto the trail in early April was now a gaunt shell, looking more like a POW than a thru-hiker.
No pun intended, it passed.
Hiking By the Numbers
What damage does backpacking for 700 miles from Georgia to Virginia do to the body of an otherwise healthy 60-year-old man?
When I began, I weighed about 205 pounds and was carrying a 55-pound pack, fully loaded with gear and food for several days on the trail. Between me and my pack, my legs were carrying 260 pounds up and down the steep Georgia mountains.
When I reached the Woods Hole Hostel near Pearisburg, VA, I weighed 170 and, fully loaded, my pack now weighs about 35 pounds. That’s about 205 total, or 55 pounds less than I was struggling with during the early days of the hike.
I have no idea what my vital signs might be, but I have added some weight to my body since Pearisburg. That 170 weight came after a few terrible difficult days of gastronomic distress and I have gotten steadily stronger as the days go by.
A Day in the Life
I write this at 7 a.m. Last night, three of us went to a country cooking all-you-can-eat buffet. Cheap, but there was a lot of it. Soon I will have a hot breakfast here at the Howard Johnson’s Express, and then the trail beckons once more from just up the road. So it begins again.
My hiking days typically start at 6:05, when my internal clock nudges me to get moving. The tent comes down, the sleeping pad is put away with the bedding and the clothing are packed away while I either prepare a breakfast of hot oatmeal or keep it simple and have a granola or power bar.
I am on the trail by 7:15 most mornings and plan to go for three hours before a morning break and a snack and then another three hours of walking before stopping for lunch. I eat at both stops and if the day has gone well, I have covered about 10 miles or more before lunch. My daily goal is 115 miles, but that can vary because of water, weather, or the sometimes-complicated logistics of getting from Point A to Point B.
I try to camp by 6 p.m., pitch my tent, make a hot dinner and do camp chores before settling on my sleeping pad away from the bugs and reading, writing or just reviewing the day. My world is Spartan and simple and amazing.
The sun drops by 9 and I drop off soon after, another day starting just a few hours later when the sun calls me again to get up and start walking.
I learn daily lessons about hiking and every day seems somehow easier than the day before.
The climbs and grades have gotten easier as I have learned to regulate my breathing and pace myself so that I can keep moving and not stop again and again to gasp for breath. I recover more quickly after a difficult stretch.
Hiking that has been drudgery has become wonderful fun. It’s not effortless by any means, but I have enjoyed walks up and down Virginia hills and found a good cadence and rhythm that moves me along at a good clip and I negotiate the rocks and roots and obstacles by instinct, placing my feet where they need to be without obsessing and feeling each and every step.
I have added music to my hike this time, bringing an iPod with me on the trail as my only creature comfort from the other world. Sometimes it is Steely Dan, sometimes the Beatles or bob Dylan or gospel or new age, but the music helps drive the hike sometimes and adds the right mood when times are tough.
But the sounds of the forest are always more interesting than the music I own and I pick my spots for music carefully and remember why I am here. Why is that? Oh year, I remember. I am here because the Appalachian Trail is here and I am walking to Katahdin.
But first there is a hot breakfast and perhaps another shower before I put the 40 pounds of stuff on my back again and hit the trail, following the endless white blazes that guide me -- first to Harpers Ferry W.VA by the 4th of July – and then to Maine by October.
Happy Trails!
June 15, 2011
The large dark bear loped along the ridge above the trail, never knowing that the two hikers below were transfixed watching him go about his morning business.
We watched, stalking him as we quietly moved along our trail as the bear moved casually across the ridge and stopped to sniff at this or that. For five minutes he stayed in sight before scrambling over a fallen tree and heading the other way as the hikers shared an excited “wow” and went our way to the north,
This was just another majestic day on the Appalachian Trail. It started with a magical sunrise at my campsite overlooking an idyllic Virginia valley from atop Tinker Cliffs a few miles back.
I had camped alone on the cliffs the night before to celebrate the 700 miles on the Appalachian Trail and, quite honestly, feeling a bit proud of myself.
I am humbled by the entire adventure.
Seven hundred miles is a long way, and most hikers who make it this far end up going the distance – 2180 miles to Maine. That’s a very long walk.
This is a magnificent country, one filled with amazing people who hike its trails and who give strangers a lift, sensing we are travelers who appreciate the kindness and mean no harm. This remarkable country is filled with incredible wildlife like this morning’s bear and the other wonders I have seen on my journey: the rattlers and other snakes, the deer, turtles, the birds and the butterflies.
The forest creatures have begun taking hikers for granted -- perhaps it's the smell or we just fade into the trees like they do. They frolic in thee trees and race by without a glance.
Butterflies seem to always find me at the perfect time. Sometimes when I need to strength to make the next climb, sometime to ease a doubt that might come through my head. Sometimes, they seem to just want to say hello.
The road from Damascus to Daleville has been 240 miles of heat, bright sunshine and cloudless blue skies, and the trail has taken me through long lush meadows and farm fields, across stark and open highlands strewn with large boulders, and through demanding ups and downs across harsh and jagged rock slides and scrambling over downed trees.
It is hard hiking, tough on the knees and ankles, and I stop here in Daleville to recover a bit before the push to the halfway point on the 4th of July. I pause to give thanks before pressing on.
Angels and More Angels
The battered black pickup truck turned around up the road and pulled alongside my friend and me on a lonely backcountry Virginia road, hoping for a ride to the grocery at Newport, about eight miles away.
“We’re going to Newport. Ya’ll get in the back,” said Thelma Jean the Trail Angel. I told her I’d kiss her if I weren’t so wet and smelly; him too, I nodded at the driver, Buddy. They both just grinned that happy Southern grin.
“They is beers in the cooler back there if ya’ll is thirsty,” she said. “Mountain Dew, too.” There may be a better cold beer than that one; I don’t know it.
Two days later, I was trying to catch a ride to the Catawba post office before closing when Trail Angel Laurie gave me a lift, waited for me to do my business inside, and then drove me five miles back to the trail.
And yesterday I sat in the gravel parking lot at Catawba, having a quick lunch at Mile 700 before the 3.7-mile hike up to McAfee Knob. Trail Angel Mike, a Presbyterian minister, eagerly quizzed me about trail life before he told me to put my stuff in his truck and let him drive me to the store and buy me trail treats.
None of these angels seemed to mind how bad I smelled; or perhaps they were just too polite to mention it.
From the Messenger to Daleville
I wrote last from about the rain at Mount Rogers and the southbound Messenger who joined a group of us northbound thru-hikers also seeking shelter from the storm. The Messenger headed on south, and I headed north toward Maine, though I called calling Mepkin Abbey a week or so later to check in with him. We swapped voice mails.
North took me into the wonderful Grayson Highlands State Park where the forests gave way to panoramic views and the solitude of the Appalachian Trail evaporated with the clouds and was quickly replaced by the hubbub of a popular state park on Memorial Day weekend.
Family sounds echoed across the fields as day-tripping groups came to explore. Mothers screamed at their youngsters to “don’t go over there” and that gave the highlands the feel of a Wal-Mart or Disney World more than a wilderness playground.
We northbound thru-hikers became part of their wilderness adventure as they greeted us with fascination and wariness – you’re really walking to Maine? There was no shortage of awe and wide eyes and a little bit of head shaking.
I stopped at a gate to let a troop of scouts go by and paused to thank the adult leaders for taking young people into the woods. The group stopped to let me buy when the leader asked me how far I had hiked. With a burst of enthusiasm, I happily announced, “I have hiked almost 500 miles!”
More than one camper’s eye bulged at that and then the first one grinned and raised his palm. “High 5!" I received an enthusiastic hand slap and some ‘woo-hoos” from every young hiker I passed.
The joy of the highlands and passing the 500-mile mark from Springer was quickly tempered by physical horrors, as I caught a nasty bug that had made its rounds through the hiker community, and my body, reliable so far, became my worst enemy.
I was still able to do long miles, but the heat got to me and water became scarce along the trail. I was sweating far more water and fluids than I could take in, and, coupled with a very nasty intestinal disorder, I became a very unhappy camper. The 200-pounder who confidently strode onto the trail in early April was now a gaunt shell, looking more like a POW than a thru-hiker.
No pun intended, it passed.
Hiking By the Numbers
What damage does backpacking for 700 miles from Georgia to Virginia do to the body of an otherwise healthy 60-year-old man?
When I began, I weighed about 205 pounds and was carrying a 55-pound pack, fully loaded with gear and food for several days on the trail. Between me and my pack, my legs were carrying 260 pounds up and down the steep Georgia mountains.
When I reached the Woods Hole Hostel near Pearisburg, VA, I weighed 170 and, fully loaded, my pack now weighs about 35 pounds. That’s about 205 total, or 55 pounds less than I was struggling with during the early days of the hike.
I have no idea what my vital signs might be, but I have added some weight to my body since Pearisburg. That 170 weight came after a few terrible difficult days of gastronomic distress and I have gotten steadily stronger as the days go by.
A Day in the Life
I write this at 7 a.m. Last night, three of us went to a country cooking all-you-can-eat buffet. Cheap, but there was a lot of it. Soon I will have a hot breakfast here at the Howard Johnson’s Express, and then the trail beckons once more from just up the road. So it begins again.
My hiking days typically start at 6:05, when my internal clock nudges me to get moving. The tent comes down, the sleeping pad is put away with the bedding and the clothing are packed away while I either prepare a breakfast of hot oatmeal or keep it simple and have a granola or power bar.
I am on the trail by 7:15 most mornings and plan to go for three hours before a morning break and a snack and then another three hours of walking before stopping for lunch. I eat at both stops and if the day has gone well, I have covered about 10 miles or more before lunch. My daily goal is 115 miles, but that can vary because of water, weather, or the sometimes-complicated logistics of getting from Point A to Point B.
I try to camp by 6 p.m., pitch my tent, make a hot dinner and do camp chores before settling on my sleeping pad away from the bugs and reading, writing or just reviewing the day. My world is Spartan and simple and amazing.
The sun drops by 9 and I drop off soon after, another day starting just a few hours later when the sun calls me again to get up and start walking.
I learn daily lessons about hiking and every day seems somehow easier than the day before.
The climbs and grades have gotten easier as I have learned to regulate my breathing and pace myself so that I can keep moving and not stop again and again to gasp for breath. I recover more quickly after a difficult stretch.
Hiking that has been drudgery has become wonderful fun. It’s not effortless by any means, but I have enjoyed walks up and down Virginia hills and found a good cadence and rhythm that moves me along at a good clip and I negotiate the rocks and roots and obstacles by instinct, placing my feet where they need to be without obsessing and feeling each and every step.
I have added music to my hike this time, bringing an iPod with me on the trail as my only creature comfort from the other world. Sometimes it is Steely Dan, sometimes the Beatles or bob Dylan or gospel or new age, but the music helps drive the hike sometimes and adds the right mood when times are tough.
But the sounds of the forest are always more interesting than the music I own and I pick my spots for music carefully and remember why I am here. Why is that? Oh year, I remember. I am here because the Appalachian Trail is here and I am walking to Katahdin.
But first there is a hot breakfast and perhaps another shower before I put the 40 pounds of stuff on my back again and hit the trail, following the endless white blazes that guide me -- first to Harpers Ferry W.VA by the 4th of July – and then to Maine by October.
Happy Trails!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Trail Miracle at Mt. Rogers
Thomas Knob Shelter, VA, May 27, 2011.
We arrived at about the same time from different places, both drenched and a bit whipped by a hard few miles in a late afternoon storm.
He was coming south – Atkins, VA to Damascus; I was headed to Maine. We grabbed the last two spots in a crowded shelter. I was cold and famished, shivering and perhaps in low-grade hypothermia, and wasn’t interested in anything beyond dry clothes and a warm sleeping bag.
I asked Strider for food – anything -- Scooter gave me three small Snickers bars and the chocolate gave me the jolt I needed jolt to get organized, hang wet gear and make my space in the crowded shelter, eat and get rid of the chills.
It was the end of a 14-mile day, and I had spent the last 90 minutes asking God if He was trying to tell me something with all the rain. I had talked to Him about the weather off and on during my weeks on the Appalachian Trail, and I was weary of yet another day of rain.
“What’s with all of this rain? What are you trying to tell,” I asked out loud as I slogged through mud and skidded on wet rocks and roots, looking for the shelter in the fog. “Is there a message here somewhere?”
“Patience, Grasshopper,” I can almost hear His smiling voice,” and trust in the Lord thy God!”
Indeed.
Five of us were nearly 500 miles from Springer Mountain Georgia, Caveman was stretched out and reading on one side of the shelter, his dog Dirtbag, snoring softly at his side. Strider and Scooter were working on their dinners, and Penguin lay across the far end of the shelter, hoping to sleep off a bad cold.
We talked trail conditions shared what we had seen that day. The southbounder said brought news from the north as he had been camping with thru-hikers and had heard about some the others he would meet along the way. He had camped with the Wolfpack: Fish, Lemon, and BearBait, a group I had hiked with in the Great Smoky Mountains.
We told him our trail names. “Why does the name Grasshopper sound familiar,” he asked himself.
What’s your name, Strider asked? Some section hikers have them, some don’t.
I am the Messenger,” the southbounder said.
The trail name was not familiar, but meeting a “messenger” certainly gave me a jolt.
I was still thinking about my long wet conversation with God and grousing that I would sure rather be in my tent than crammed in a shelter with five or six other hikers as rain pounded the roof. I remembered that the southbounder also had been disappointed at being forced inside because he couldn’t pitch a tent in a steady downpour.
Something else seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it; so I asked,
“I have a feeling that I know you from somewhere,” I said. I had been in the woods for more than six weeks at the time and had long since misplaced the daily reality of home. “Do you mind if I ask where you are from?”
“Charleston, SC.”
“Me, too.”
“Mount Pleasant, actually,” he said.
“I lived on Rutledge Avenue. Downtown.”
Strider is between us, looking one way and then the other as his two neighbors look for the common ground. The Messenger sees the connection and senses that we are supposed to be having this conversation, as unlikely as that seems.
“I work at Mepkin Abbey,” he said. Strider starts laughing out loud, and I choke on a peanut.
“I volunteer there. I work with Vivian in native plants.”
Even Caveman’s dog Dirtbag, train name Dink, knew this was a trail encounter of cosmic proportion.
“Were you at Ursula’s retirement party? He asked. “Nope. Did Angel get her job? “Yes.” “Cool.”
Mepkin Abbey has become a spiritual home for me. The monastery is on the Cooper River an hour from Charleston. Its grounds and gardens are as majestically beautiful as any of God’s mountains and valleys that we have seen between Georgia to Virginia. It is as holy a place as I have ever seen, lovingly cared for by the score of Trappist monks who live, work, pray and meditate there.
My special time on a retreat last summer and my time around the monks put me on a path that reconnected me with The Lord and changed the direction of my life.
The Messenger’s real name is David, and he is the medical caregiver, the Infirmarian” at the monastery who takes care of the aging community of monks. He and I had not met, but we knew that night in the shelter that God’s afternoon rain had again put us in the same place at the same time.
“The last time I was there, I was at Father Leonard’s funeral,” I said. Fr. Leonard was the first African-American to be ordained in Charleston (1951) and the first to perform mass there. I was quoting from the eulogy where the Abbot recalled a conversation with the 92-year-old Leonard a week earlier. “You are a good man, Leonard,” he said.
“I hope someone else tells me that real soon,” Leonard replied.
The Messenger said, “the Abbot was talking about my son at the end of the eulogy.”
The Messenger said he had been told one of the volunteers was hiking the trail, but he didn’t know who or when they had started. His section hike as put together quickly as his wife suggested his week in the woods as a good birthday gift.
“Father Christian (who is 96) told me I should not go hiking,” the Messenger said advising him that, “you might run into a bevy of beautiful women and be tempted.”
The Messenger remembered the three nuns who came to visit Br. Vincent last summer and because friends to me during my five day retreat that week. We shared other quick monastery stories and I got the latest about Vincent and brothers Joseph, Robert, Stephen and others before we quietly let the shelter return to less spiritual and more practical and immediate matters. The others knew that their hiking friend Grasshopper had just had a trail encounter of epic proportions.
Strider, who has heard me talk about the Abbey many times over many miles, just smiled, knowing that God had worked a miracle with the afternoon storm that brought Grasshopper the message he had been asking God about.
The rain stopped during the night and the Messenger and I took our time getting back on the trail the following day. There was much ground we wanted to cover about the monastery and our dreams for it, sharing our common love of the peaceful and godly place and the depth of its meaning in our lives.
The Messenger gave me news from this spiritual home and passed along a 5x7 group photo of the brothers, the order of the Psalms they read each week at each of their services through the day and other Mepkin materials so I could “follow along” from the trail. He saw the Mepkin Abbey hat I sometimes wear and knows that the cross I wear on a boot lace around my neck came from there.
The days of rain were giving way to blue skies that morning. I told the Messenger that I may come to Mepkin this fall for a 30-day retreat and that I would love to write a history of the Mepkin Abbey and record oral histories and take photographs of the remarkable men who live there.
My last visit there came on the day of Fr. Leonard’s funeral as that week I came to volunteer on a Thursday instead of my usual Tuesday. I did not know the man, but I was moved by the funeral mass that honored him and brought together members of his monastic family and nieces and nephews from Charleston and around the country.
Fr. Leonard lay peacefully in a small wooden box on the floor in front of the stone Mepkin Abbey altar. His family brought an African-American, “black funeral” feel to the simple and beautiful church.
The brothers are buried on the bluff between the church and their private quarters and the brothers and family gently carried his body to the open grave outside.
Abbot Stan knelt and draped a white cloth across his brother’s face, and
brothers used white cords to lift his earthly remains from the open wooden box and lower him into the grace. The Abbot explained that according to monastic tradition brothers are buried without caskets and the monks, friends and family would use shovels to fill the grave and commit Leonard’s body to the soil.
The Abbot said he understood that family might not be comfortable with that tradition and he offered them red roses to drop into the grace as a loving goodbye.
The Messenger, David, and I talked all about Fr. Leonard’s funeral – and the story about his little boy that the Abbot shared in his eulogy.
David’s two-year-old son Nathaniel, was very sick last fall and faced possible heart problems if the illness became any worse. David and Fr. Leonard were very close and David came to the old priest one afternoon to tell him that was leaving work early that day because Nathaniel needed him and he feared for his health.
Fr. Leonard told him not to worry.
“I talked to God and the boy is going to be just fine,” he told David. “I am going to be leaving soon.”
Fr. Leonard started to fast that afternoon. He died two days later. I believe that David was with him when he breathed his last.
Grasshopper and the Messenger reflected briefly on the miracle that brought them together at an Appalachian Trail shelter so very far from home. They hugged and hoisted their packs – one headed south to Damascus, one headed north to Maine.
What was my message from God?
Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord thy God.
I have now been reconnected with Mepkin Abbey and have a new friend in Charleston who shares my love of backpacking and the monastery. I have shared a miracle and awed by it.
And I have a message from God that I am on the right path – both with the Appalachian Trail and on my quest to become closer to Him.
-30-
We arrived at about the same time from different places, both drenched and a bit whipped by a hard few miles in a late afternoon storm.
He was coming south – Atkins, VA to Damascus; I was headed to Maine. We grabbed the last two spots in a crowded shelter. I was cold and famished, shivering and perhaps in low-grade hypothermia, and wasn’t interested in anything beyond dry clothes and a warm sleeping bag.
I asked Strider for food – anything -- Scooter gave me three small Snickers bars and the chocolate gave me the jolt I needed jolt to get organized, hang wet gear and make my space in the crowded shelter, eat and get rid of the chills.
It was the end of a 14-mile day, and I had spent the last 90 minutes asking God if He was trying to tell me something with all the rain. I had talked to Him about the weather off and on during my weeks on the Appalachian Trail, and I was weary of yet another day of rain.
“What’s with all of this rain? What are you trying to tell,” I asked out loud as I slogged through mud and skidded on wet rocks and roots, looking for the shelter in the fog. “Is there a message here somewhere?”
“Patience, Grasshopper,” I can almost hear His smiling voice,” and trust in the Lord thy God!”
Indeed.
Five of us were nearly 500 miles from Springer Mountain Georgia, Caveman was stretched out and reading on one side of the shelter, his dog Dirtbag, snoring softly at his side. Strider and Scooter were working on their dinners, and Penguin lay across the far end of the shelter, hoping to sleep off a bad cold.
We talked trail conditions shared what we had seen that day. The southbounder said brought news from the north as he had been camping with thru-hikers and had heard about some the others he would meet along the way. He had camped with the Wolfpack: Fish, Lemon, and BearBait, a group I had hiked with in the Great Smoky Mountains.
We told him our trail names. “Why does the name Grasshopper sound familiar,” he asked himself.
What’s your name, Strider asked? Some section hikers have them, some don’t.
I am the Messenger,” the southbounder said.
The trail name was not familiar, but meeting a “messenger” certainly gave me a jolt.
I was still thinking about my long wet conversation with God and grousing that I would sure rather be in my tent than crammed in a shelter with five or six other hikers as rain pounded the roof. I remembered that the southbounder also had been disappointed at being forced inside because he couldn’t pitch a tent in a steady downpour.
Something else seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it; so I asked,
“I have a feeling that I know you from somewhere,” I said. I had been in the woods for more than six weeks at the time and had long since misplaced the daily reality of home. “Do you mind if I ask where you are from?”
“Charleston, SC.”
“Me, too.”
“Mount Pleasant, actually,” he said.
“I lived on Rutledge Avenue. Downtown.”
Strider is between us, looking one way and then the other as his two neighbors look for the common ground. The Messenger sees the connection and senses that we are supposed to be having this conversation, as unlikely as that seems.
“I work at Mepkin Abbey,” he said. Strider starts laughing out loud, and I choke on a peanut.
“I volunteer there. I work with Vivian in native plants.”
Even Caveman’s dog Dirtbag, train name Dink, knew this was a trail encounter of cosmic proportion.
“Were you at Ursula’s retirement party? He asked. “Nope. Did Angel get her job? “Yes.” “Cool.”
Mepkin Abbey has become a spiritual home for me. The monastery is on the Cooper River an hour from Charleston. Its grounds and gardens are as majestically beautiful as any of God’s mountains and valleys that we have seen between Georgia to Virginia. It is as holy a place as I have ever seen, lovingly cared for by the score of Trappist monks who live, work, pray and meditate there.
My special time on a retreat last summer and my time around the monks put me on a path that reconnected me with The Lord and changed the direction of my life.
The Messenger’s real name is David, and he is the medical caregiver, the Infirmarian” at the monastery who takes care of the aging community of monks. He and I had not met, but we knew that night in the shelter that God’s afternoon rain had again put us in the same place at the same time.
“The last time I was there, I was at Father Leonard’s funeral,” I said. Fr. Leonard was the first African-American to be ordained in Charleston (1951) and the first to perform mass there. I was quoting from the eulogy where the Abbot recalled a conversation with the 92-year-old Leonard a week earlier. “You are a good man, Leonard,” he said.
“I hope someone else tells me that real soon,” Leonard replied.
The Messenger said, “the Abbot was talking about my son at the end of the eulogy.”
The Messenger said he had been told one of the volunteers was hiking the trail, but he didn’t know who or when they had started. His section hike as put together quickly as his wife suggested his week in the woods as a good birthday gift.
“Father Christian (who is 96) told me I should not go hiking,” the Messenger said advising him that, “you might run into a bevy of beautiful women and be tempted.”
The Messenger remembered the three nuns who came to visit Br. Vincent last summer and because friends to me during my five day retreat that week. We shared other quick monastery stories and I got the latest about Vincent and brothers Joseph, Robert, Stephen and others before we quietly let the shelter return to less spiritual and more practical and immediate matters. The others knew that their hiking friend Grasshopper had just had a trail encounter of epic proportions.
Strider, who has heard me talk about the Abbey many times over many miles, just smiled, knowing that God had worked a miracle with the afternoon storm that brought Grasshopper the message he had been asking God about.
The rain stopped during the night and the Messenger and I took our time getting back on the trail the following day. There was much ground we wanted to cover about the monastery and our dreams for it, sharing our common love of the peaceful and godly place and the depth of its meaning in our lives.
The Messenger gave me news from this spiritual home and passed along a 5x7 group photo of the brothers, the order of the Psalms they read each week at each of their services through the day and other Mepkin materials so I could “follow along” from the trail. He saw the Mepkin Abbey hat I sometimes wear and knows that the cross I wear on a boot lace around my neck came from there.
The days of rain were giving way to blue skies that morning. I told the Messenger that I may come to Mepkin this fall for a 30-day retreat and that I would love to write a history of the Mepkin Abbey and record oral histories and take photographs of the remarkable men who live there.
My last visit there came on the day of Fr. Leonard’s funeral as that week I came to volunteer on a Thursday instead of my usual Tuesday. I did not know the man, but I was moved by the funeral mass that honored him and brought together members of his monastic family and nieces and nephews from Charleston and around the country.
Fr. Leonard lay peacefully in a small wooden box on the floor in front of the stone Mepkin Abbey altar. His family brought an African-American, “black funeral” feel to the simple and beautiful church.
The brothers are buried on the bluff between the church and their private quarters and the brothers and family gently carried his body to the open grave outside.
Abbot Stan knelt and draped a white cloth across his brother’s face, and
brothers used white cords to lift his earthly remains from the open wooden box and lower him into the grace. The Abbot explained that according to monastic tradition brothers are buried without caskets and the monks, friends and family would use shovels to fill the grave and commit Leonard’s body to the soil.
The Abbot said he understood that family might not be comfortable with that tradition and he offered them red roses to drop into the grace as a loving goodbye.
The Messenger, David, and I talked all about Fr. Leonard’s funeral – and the story about his little boy that the Abbot shared in his eulogy.
David’s two-year-old son Nathaniel, was very sick last fall and faced possible heart problems if the illness became any worse. David and Fr. Leonard were very close and David came to the old priest one afternoon to tell him that was leaving work early that day because Nathaniel needed him and he feared for his health.
Fr. Leonard told him not to worry.
“I talked to God and the boy is going to be just fine,” he told David. “I am going to be leaving soon.”
Fr. Leonard started to fast that afternoon. He died two days later. I believe that David was with him when he breathed his last.
Grasshopper and the Messenger reflected briefly on the miracle that brought them together at an Appalachian Trail shelter so very far from home. They hugged and hoisted their packs – one headed south to Damascus, one headed north to Maine.
What was my message from God?
Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord thy God.
I have now been reconnected with Mepkin Abbey and have a new friend in Charleston who shares my love of backpacking and the monastery. I have shared a miracle and awed by it.
And I have a message from God that I am on the right path – both with the Appalachian Trail and on my quest to become closer to Him.
-30-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)