Adventures are, by nature, unpredictable. This one was no exception, ultimately deemed "not a good fit," though it seemed like a good idea at the time. Perhaps I will one day tell the story of the 40 days at the Moultrie News. That can wait. For now, a look back my return from the woods. 

From the Forest to the Newsroom

        

         The temperature dropped to 35 degrees my last night on the Appalachian Trail, but I left my tent early to watch the sun rise over a New Jersey mountain and burn away the fog that covered the Delaware River.

         My fourth season as a trail ridge runner ended on the second Monday  of this October, and while I was sad to be leaving the forest I was also looking ahead 10 days to far warmer weather and to my wonderful new job back home in South Carolina.

         I am delighted to join the staff of the Moultrie News and am excited to be back in the Lowcountry.  I have put away my backpack, tent and hiking gear and am thrilled to be back in the newspaper business as a reporter, writer and editor.

         Thank you, readers, for giving me the opportunity to share your stories and help you get to know your neighbors and our community.      Let me share my story so you’ll know who wants to share yours.

         I grew up in Greenville, studied political science at Furman and journalism at USC and then fell in love with being a newspaper reporter and landing my first job covering cops and city government for the Daily Item in Sumter. 

         The News and Courier hired me in 1978 to write about city government and politics. That was during Joe Riley’s second term as mayor and the rise of the Republican Party and fledgling politicians like Glenn McConnell and Arthur Ravenel.  I chased the fire trucks and sirens on a Sunday night in 1981 when the old Charleston museum at Calhoun and Rutledge burned; our breaking news coverage of that fire earned a reporting award.

         The State newspaper hired me in 1982 to cover the legislature and politics and I spent a quarter century in Columbia, raising a family, thriving in — and then leaving —the newspaper business and doing TV news for three years as a reporter and twice-weekly commentator. I “switched teams” in 1992, working as communications director for state agencies, answering tough questions instead of asking them.

         Charleston friends questioned my sanity in 2005 when I told them I wanted to be public affairs director for Charleston County schools. Maria Goodloe-Johnson, the county’s first black female school superintendent, desperately needed spokesman and public affairs director. Having spent a decade handling media relations for the state Department of Social Services, I believed could handle most anything.

         I got the job and loved it. Maria moved to Seattle to run their schools in 2007 and I left the District a few months later, happy with what I had been able to accomplish but not a good fit for the new administration. I wept when I heard that Maria had died; she was a wonderful person and a great boss.

        

         The economy tanked in 2008. I was working for the math and science charter school when a budget crisis killed that job.  Fortune smiled and two weeks later I met Charleston attorney Larry Kobrovsky at a deposition. He remembered my work at the State newspaper from a quarter century earlier and later hired me to manage his 2010 Congressional campaign. We finished fourth in the nine-man race that Tim Scott won.

         Hoping for better job prospects and thinking I might have decent  political connections, I moved to Washington DC only to end up back in SC making the finals for a great job with the University of South Carolina.  The high-stress interviews with the search committee and then a one-on-one with the prospective boss hit a wall. I called later for an update only to be told they decided they weren’t going to fill the job.

         Looking back across the years, I sometimes wonder how I have come to be here now writing this story.

         The short answer is Mepkin Abbey. I sought peace in nature there during difficult times and then built a relationship with the brothers during week-long retreats.  The woods have always been my spiritual base, but the mountains were out of reach and I thought the monastery might be the answer. 

         Hard work, solitude and soul-searching brought me answers and peace as I worked through anger and disappointment and anxiety and loss.

         Not knowing what might come next, I vowed to be prepared and to get myself in the best possible shape physically, mentally, emotionally and, especially, spiritually. Suddenly my path seemed clear — now is the time to hike the Appalachian Trail.

         I left Springer Mountain in Georgia on April 2 for the 2,180 mile walk to Maine. (Friends and other hikers always ask whether I saw the governor out there (haha) but I never did, though a man in Franklin, NC told me he had once shuttled him one.)

         I hiked from Georgia to Massachusetts when Hurricane Irene blew through and took Vermont off the hiking map. A young friend and I took a bus to New Hampshire, hiked Mt. Washington and the White Mountains. We caught a ride to Millinocket, celebrated our hike atop Mt. Katahdin, and then hiked south until we just decided it was time to stop hiking.

         Adventurers still, we hitch-hiked home from the middle or nowhere in Maine — first to Virginia Beach to my young friend’s home and then hitching alone to Mount Pleasant, arriving here the last week in October four years ago.

         I returned to the monastery for a few days to give thanks for my journey and amazing adventures and returned to Columbia, still seeking my path. I interviewed for a job as a ridge runner on the Appalachian Trail but had heard nothing more. I looked to Mepkin. Again.

         The Brothers accepted me into the monastic guest program and I spent the 40 days of Lent there in 2012, living and working and praying, living the life of a monk. Those 40 days were, in their own way, more difficult than my six months on the AT.

         The trail folks told me I was on the waiting list for a job in New Jersey, and me while I was at Mepkin to tell me I did not get the ridge runner job, but they asked if they could put me on the waiting list and I said OK.  They called again in early May, offering me a job because another hiker had gotten hurt and had to withdraw. I headed to New Jersey two weeks later and returned each year since.

         The 75 miles of trail in New Jersey are quite beautiful and my years working there have been a joy.  Being paid to camp and hike five days a week is “Living the Dream.”  A thru-hike is an incredible journey and I have been honored to give back the kind of help and support that countless others gave me during my long walk north and my hitch-hike home.

         So many memories; so many stories.

        

         A 400-pound black bear wandered through my campsite one night last summer. He never threatened me, but closed to within 10 yards as he patrolled his neighborhood, but I was the only human within several miles and, frankly, it rattled me and I moved my tent into a wilderness shelter.  Another bear had attacked my tent the year before and run off with my backpack, a crisis that ended well as I found my pack — including my wallet, ID, debit card and car keys — a hundred yards into the trees.

         And others sometime needed help.

         Park police called me late one Sunday night and sent me out to find three hikers who were lost and sitting in the dark a few miles away. I found them and led them to the rangers who transported them off the mountain. 

        

         One Sunday morning, I came across a body laying in the road deep in the forest. I summoned help as the man regained consciousness from a nasty bicycle accident and struggled to remember who he was and what had happened.

         I was pondering what might come next when the job opening at the Moultrie News appeared out of nowhere. I jumped at the opportunity.

         I told Editor Sully Witte in my interview, “I have ink in my blood” and will always be a newspaperman at heart.  Working for a community newspaper, I added, would be “living the dream, but just without the hiking and the tent.”

         I come now to the Moultrie News, once again a newspaperman, returning to a career and working to share news and features in a community I love, one that shaped me personally and professionally. The journey that has sometimes mystified me has now brought me home.

-30-

Man Down on Old Mine Road

Sunday morning; Worthington State Forest.

He was on his face in the middle of the road when I first saw him, his body sprawled at a crooked angle beside his bike. Helmet askew, he was not moving, there was a small pool of blood near his head and I thought for a second he was dead.

His right eye was open, staring unfocused and blankly ahead. Then a blink and a spark of life and the eye began to clear, he lifted his head a bit as his brain seemed to reboot and to make sense of what was happening.

“Mister, can you hear me?” I shout! ”I’m getting help. Hang in there. Don’t move.” He seems to hear the sounds, but not the words.

          We were deep in Worthington State Forest on Old Mine Road last Sunday morning when he wrecked his bike and I found him unconscious on the road. He was halfway through a 20-mile bike ride and I was driving to the trail for a hike up to Sunfish Pond.

I ran to my truck to find a phone and put on the flashers. The road is deserted and, I think, “this just happened, and this man is badly hurt!”

          I fight to breathe and process the scene. I offer a silent plea – “Father, you brought me to this place right now. Please help me” – while telling myself. “OK, come on man, you’re a ridgerunner and you are trained for this. You can do this.”)

          He sits up, but does not speak. Remembering my wilderness first aide training, I keep trying to make contact while looking for injuries. – “Can you hear me? What is your name?”

Confused, he struggles for words that won’t come.

Finally. “Dale.”

I call Trenton Dispatch for a policeman and an ambulance. I keep talking to Dale while playing traffic cop for passing rubber-neckers and also sharing information with Dispatch.

“Dale, can you tell me what happened? What day is it?”

          “Trying to get my bearings,” he says.

         

A trauma nurse stops to help and park police arrive a few minutes before the ambulance.

Medics arrive and bandage his head, secure his right shoulder and put him on a gurney for the ride to the hospital.  The helmet probably saved his life, but the impact also shaved off part of his left ear.

I found Dale and called Dispatch at 9:06 a.m. He was on his way to the hospital by 10 o’clock.

I was hiking again by noon, giving thanks for a happy ending.

-30-

The blackness at the base of the tree might have been shadows in the roots, but then it began to move. 

Sunlight through the leaves left sparkles on scales as the mass of blackness quivered and the long black snake began to knead itself, moving in and around, not to settle, but seemingly with purpose. I saw the head, knew there was no danger, and I watched it roll into itself.

Again and again. But then a second head emerged, slipping up though the darkness and through the coils, arching, twisting and reaching toward the other.

Oh my God, there are TWO snakes! I jumped back and saw what I had missed. Transfixed by the slippery mass at the base of the tree, I had not seen the second snake slowly inching its way into the pile with at least four feet of snake still stretching up the tree.

The second snake continued to work its way into and through the coils of the first, a mesmerizing dance as foot after foot of snake disappeared from the tree and the coiling pile continued to grow and take shape.

The dance continued and I realized the obvious and watched their mating in awe.

In and out, over and through, both moving the pile of twisted slickness and pushing themselves this way and that, the two worked insistently to wrap themselves together and stretch each other out. The mass lengthened and the knot of snakes slowly came untied as the wrestling and writhing struggle continued.

One’s mouth clamped down on the other’s neck, apparently with devotion, not malice. And I swear the snake made eye contact with me; it knew I was watching them mate. If a snake could wink, that one would have. Or maybe it did.

On it went until the two became one, head next to head and tails intertwined. And the rolling and twisting and struggle continued, and the two pushed and stretched against each other with common purpose. I know not what exactly was being linked to and/or into what, but the dance was riveting.

The coils began to pulse and bulge and the mass started shimmy and throb. A long series of convulsions along the length and the tails twitched together, then relaxed.

The gently rolling continued, and I left them to themselves.

I have never before seen anything like that. And that is why I come into the woods.