The scraggly beard and the backpack were badges of honor along the Appalachian Trail. Both served me well as I walked from Georgia to Maine. The honor slowly faded on the long hitch home.
In South Carolina, I was seen as just another homeless guy in need, so Samaritans pressed dollar bills on me, gave me food, and spoke v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, using the simplest of words.
“We are leaving you at McDonalds. You can get something to eat. They will let you use the bathroom,” the woman patiently explained while her friend eyed me with suspicion. “That road over there will take you to the Interstate.”
I thanked them for the ride. And laughed.
Two men in a pickup stopped as I shed my pack and asked if I need money for lunch; another gave me two dollars and a lift to Summerville in the back of his truck. Two young guys in a truck pulled over later and handed me a carryout chicken dinner.
I was a quarter-mile from I-26 and two hours from home, but a ride was unlikely, so I ducked into the trees beside the Hess station and made camp for the night.
What a trip!
Since leaving the Appalachian Trail, I Occupied Maine, dined with a diplomat, was rousted by a Maryland state trooper, and busted by a Florence county sheriff’s deputy for doing something that was common on the trail. I camped behind a shopping mall, near truck stops, and under a tree between an on-ramp and I-95.
Easing back into the world on my long journey home, I stopped in Charleston for classes with my Boston tai chi master and then worshipped with the monks at Mepkin Abbey to thank God for His many blessings.
Nearly seven months after taking the midnight bus from Columbia to Atlanta for the long walk to Maine, the thru-hiker known on the trail as “Grasshopper” is almost home.
I have restored my faith in the Lord and in myself and have laid many burdens down along the way. Thanks to the fellowship of other hikers, support from friends at home and the generosity of countless strangers along the way, I hiked the Appalachian Trail and lived to tell the tale.
The end was bittersweet; the hike took its toll. Proud and humbled, I was awed by the accomplishment and filled with melancholy that the journey was almost over. Six months in the woods brought isolation, exhaustion, doubt, and pain, but I came home physically, mentally and spiritually stronger than at any time of my life.
I would head to Georgia and do it all again if I could. And I wouldn’t change a thing.
My heart was glad, and I was ready for what comes next, nourished by a recurring lesson, my mantra from the trail – “Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord, thy God.”
There and Back
It had rained every day for a week when I reached the west bank of the Piscataquis River, and the guidebook warned that this knee-high fording could be dangerous after heavy rain.
At another crossing earlier that morning, I had foolishly chosen to wear sandals and keep my boots dry. Unable to see my feet through the dark and swirling waters, I slipped on the rocky bottom and nearly went under, but while my backside got wet, my backpack stayed dry.
Lesson learned, I kept the boots on for this fording, but struggled to find stable footing and force my way across the current as the icy waters of the Piscataquis fought hard to push me downstream. I grinned and whooped and savored the moment.
I made it safely to shore. And then I got lost.
The sun was setting when I found myself back at the river where the afternoon had begun. Irritated at having somehow turned and hiked in the wrong direction, I camped alone, tired, and discouraged. I had the wilderness of Maine much to myself.
I left Georgia in the spring, hiking through North Carolina and Tennessee as the trees and flowers came alive and then through Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic states in the heat of the summer. Jumping ahead of Hurricane Irene into New England, I hiked above the tree line and through ice and snow in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mount Katahdin and the lake country of Maine were reaching their autumn finest in late September when I reached Baxter Peak and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Red, silver, and golden leaves shimmered across the 100 Mile Wilderness and covered the footpath like falling snow.
My Appalachian Trail journey was ending, but more adventure lay ahead on the re-entry to the civilized world – a hitchhike from Maine to South Carolina. I had promised my trail companion “Strider” that I would hitchhike home with him; not yet ready for our adventures to end, we put out our thumbs on Highway 201 near the Kennebec River at Caratunk, trusting in the Lord that we would get home safely.
Given our 40-year age difference, most assumed Strider and I were father and son, though someone in Massachusetts asked if we were brothers. Nope, we were hiking buddies who shared the trail and adventure since meeting in North Carolina many, many miles before.
A young lady in an SUV went 15 miles out of her way to take us to Bingham, and, after a short wait, an older woman in a sedan happily carried us 23 miles to Skowhegan and within striking distance of I-95. On the trail, all we needed was a flat spot with room for our tents, but this world had other rules and we knew the authorities might quibble with our choice of campsites. Options limited, we slipped into the tall weeds behind a strip mall, pitching our tents out of sight of security guards who might be making late night rounds.
After breakfast at Burger King and browsing a discount warehouse, we walked into town looking for thrift shops and bargain clothes more appropriate for the highway than our hiking gear. Ten dollars bought almost-new corduroy jeans, a shirt, and a belt, all fit for a man smaller than the one who left South Carolina in the spring.
We waited barely a minute in town before getting a ride to I-95 and one exit south to a truck stop where we dined at Subway and talked strategy to get us to Strider’s home in Virginia Beach and me home to South Carolina.
We used a Sharpie and rummaged cardboard to make signs – 95 South – and talked to a trucker who said insurance forbids riders, but we already knew there was little chance for two of us (with packs) to get a ride in a big rig.
Pedestrians are forbidden on the Interstate, but hitching is OK at on-ramps and access roads, so we put out our thumbs and waited, hoping our smiles and backpacks signaled we were interesting companions – not evildoers.
The Subway manager ferried us down two exits where we waited for nearly an hour before a young woman, a yoga instructor, took us south to Portland, Maine. A cold drizzle and reality set in as we stared at the city skyline and wondered where we might stealth camp and get out of the rain.
We found refuge at the Miss Portland Diner, a converted railroad car, and the local newspaper answered our silent prayers -- Occupy Maine was camped in Lincoln Park and our home for the night was six blocks away. Sweet!!
The protester who welcomed us said ours were the 25th and 26th tents in the park. We never mentioned that we were thru-hikes hitching south. We happily stayed for a lazy day off in Portland.
The next day, a retired used bookseller in a station wagon saved us from the morning rain and took us 50 miles and into New Hampshire. We were walking away from the interchange looking for shelter from an approaching storm when a man in a Honda offered to drive two hours south. He was a hiker and jobless and had the time to be a Trail Angel.
Accustomed to hiking 10 mile days in Maine, we now quickly covered 200 miles and made it from Maine into Connecticut, our wilderness memories stoked by a driver who knew where we had come from and what it had been like.
Still attuned to a world where 8 p.m. is “hiker midnight” and where hiking starts early and ends early, we spent the evening in the Pilot truck stop restaurant and gift shop, met the uncle of a thru-hike we knew, and then camped in a spillover truck lot behind the depot.
Ten minutes at the on-ramp the next morning brought us a screaming man, who hollered “Come on! Come on!” as we struggled to force our packs into the back of his late model Cadillac. Mostly deaf and screaming to hear himself, he was 85 and he drove 80 and angry, weaving through traffic one-handed for a scary two-hour ride into New York.
“I’m going to the Tappan Zee Bridge so I’m going to drop you here,” he said, pulling to the shoulder outside Rye, NY, and dumping us into the buzz of traffic at a busy freeway off-ramp.
We were in the New York City suburbs, no longer thru-hikers and wilderness adventurers, just two guys with packs beside the road, barely visible to the families out running errands on a sunny Saturday morning.
But the Lord takes care of thru-hikers — and hitch-hikers. Jann and Nicole raced by, but knew we had no chance of a ride at that suburban on-ramp, so they went one exit down 95 and circled back to take us 200 miles and into Maryland.
Jann is a Czech national and cultural attaché at the embassy in New York; his wife is an American jewelry designer and silversmith.
She invited us to join them at their cabin on the Susquehanna River, but we decided to keep moving south and bade them farewell at a rest area. A state trooper soon rousted us for hitching, and ran our IDs through his computer to check for outstanding warrants. We both were clean, but he made us sign a trespass notice, saying, “If anybody complains about you, I’ll have to take you to jail.”
Nicole was a phone call away and happy to come back and rescue us. Their rustic cabin in the woods offered us our first beds in weeks. Valerie and Linda, neighbors from down river, joined us for pizza and a raucous Saturday evening beside a roaring campfire.
We were back at a lonely on-ramp by nine the next morning and waited barely 15 minutes before three Latinos in a jeep offered us a lift. We shoved our packs into the back, and I squeezed into the backseat and rode the hump between two guys who smiled a lot but didn’t speak English. Strider rode in front, sharing stories of faith with the driver who spoke some English, but was difficult to understand.
They were planning to go just to Washington but happily volunteered to take us on to Richmond, where Strider’s stepdad, Bill, was waiting to take us to Virginia Beach.
Strider’s mother and I had met by phone and text, and I was her path to her son when his cell phone died. She was eager to meet Grasshopper, the old guy who had shared the trail with her son and had helped convince him to keep hiking when he had nearly quit just short of halfway.
I considered taking Greyhound home but did not like the notion of 25 hours on a bus, so Bill and Strider hauled me back to 95 on Wednesday morning.
“I love you, Grasshopper. God bless you,” Strider said as we hugged a quick an emotional goodbye before they drove away, leaving me quite alone for the first time since the spring.
A
n old man with a dog gave me a ride to Fayetteville, and a young mechanic carried me to Lumberton. The sun was dropping at a busy cloverleaf and I sought my bearings over a Waffle House omelette. With no good options, I pitched my tent under a tree between I-95 and the on-ramp and slept like a baby, a good day’s hitching from home.
Fortified by two large cups of gas station coffee and pair of frosted blueberry pop tarts, I had my thumb out early and a young Latino man soon answered my silent plea. We didn’t talk much, but he said he had nowhere to be and could take me into South Carolina. He didn’t ask why I was on the road. The Appalachian Trail was so far out of context that I felt no need to share my tale.
The coffee caught up with me and I began to fidget as we passed South of the Border. With no exit in sight, I finally begged him to pull over soon. Having lived six months in the woods, I was no stranger to outdoor relief.
“Hurry. Hurry,” he said, waving urgently as I turned back to the car. I saw the patrol cars in the median a few hundred yards away, but didn’t think much of it until the blue lights came on behind us at the next exit. Welcome to South Carolina.
The Florence County Sheriff’s Deputy approached my window and said he had seen me beside the road a few miles back. He asked for my ID and for the driver’s license. I explained that my ID was in my backpack and asked to get out of the car and retrieve it; the driver said he did not have a license.
The deputy gave him a $150 ticket for driving without a license, but I was let go with a written warning (and terrific souvenir) for public urination and the admonition “don’t do that again.”
I felt terrible that my bladder had caused problems for someone who had helped me. The deputy said I should drive because was licensed, so I took the wheel for the first time in months and turned back north to get the Latino man headed home. Feeling guilty, but not so much as to offer to pay his ticket, I gave him $20 and an apology and walked down to the on-ramp in search of my next ride.
A man heading to Florida with a backseat filled with fruits and vegetables took me to I-26 and then one exit toward Charleston, and two rides later I was reunited with a friend I had met on the trail in Virginia.
Tai chi with old friends at a dojo in Mount Pleasant helped ground me and ease my reentry, but I was still drawn to the woods and not yet willing to let my adventure go. I went to Mepkin Abbey and prayed with my monastic friends before finding the Palmetto Trail, potentially a hundred mile walk through the woods to Columbia.
But the lakes and South Carolina flatlands were tame after the wilds of Maine, the highway now was more appealing than the woods, and home was more appealing than the road.
After 3000 miles to Maine and back, the journey was over for the thru-hiker turned hitchhiker turned hobo. It was time to put down the pack and to lay that burden down, trusting in myself with faith to guide me as my journey continues.
“Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord, thy God.”
-30-
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Monday, October 3, 2011
Not Quite Through Hiking: But What a Trip!
Monson, Maine. October 3.
Three more weeks of hiking will bring me back to New Hampshire and across some of the most rugged and demanding parts of the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
Pray with me for good weather because the final leg of my hike would really be a bitch in the rain, ice or snow. But the weather has been extraordinary since late August when Hurricane Irene sent me scrambling north, and I have been blessed with clear skies and great visibility through the White Mountains and on Mount Katahdin, where I flipped the hike and began walking back south through Maine.
I am now 163 miles from Gorham, NH and Mount Success, the end point of this remarkable adventure.
I hike south having shared the beauty and melancholy of Katahdin and Baxter State Park with other hikers who have reached their finish line. Many look stunned, their eyes glazed by the thought that “it’s over. I’ll be home (and the ‘real world’) very soon.” Their joy and pride of accomplishment is soon muted by the goodbyes and best wishes to others who know the challenges and the wonder and joy that have marked the long walk north.
Today marks six months to the day since I started north from Springer Mountain in Georgia.
Six months in the woods is a lifetime -- when I am in town I want to be in the woods; when on the trail, I want to stop hiking and wish I was in town. The end will be bittersweet, but the hike has taken its toll. I am physically, mentally and spiritually stronger than at any time of my life, and I am ready for what comes next.
Life is good. God is Great and my thanks and praise to Him for all I have seen and done for the past six months. Please join me in prayer for my continued good health and good hiking. I have seen others come agonizingly close to finishing their hikes only to be taken out by injury or worse, but I now am happy to be able to take my time and extra care as I walk south because I need no longer worry about getting to Katahdin by October 15.
At the top of Katahdin I gave thanks to God for everyone I have met and for the amazing adventure that has played out since I left Georgia in the spring, wondering how life in the woods and the harshness of this test would affect me or how long my hike might last. Each day I thank the Lord for the air in my lungs, for the food in my stomach and the strength in my legs and in my heart that has kept me going. I am truly blessed to have come this far.
I was thrilled to get to Katahdin on a clear day and to be able to see the lakes of Maine stretching far to the south and to look ahead to the 100 Mile Wilderness, the Bigelows, Saddleback and Sugarloaf, the Mahoosics and other stretches of trail that I hiked 30 years ago. I head south tomorrow and will retrace my steps from a hike 10 years ago, one that I thought might be my last hike because I was suddenly out of my depth and ready to quit.
I still carry a scar from Pleasant Pond Mountain, and I look forward to hiking that again -- and doing it right this time.
But that’s what is ahead. It’s time to look back.
The jump north from Massachusetts was the right call, and I would have had no choice but to skip Vermont anyway because the hurricane trashed the state and closed it to hiking. Much of the AT is still closed, and I hope to come back next year and see what I missed.
I last blogged before the August 28 storm, and, this being October, it’s been more than a month since I was last able to write about my journey. Truth is that I stared at a flashing cursor on a Word document in Gorham a few weeks back to write about the White Mountains, but could not find the words to share stories from the 75-miles stretch of trail that took me far above the tree line and tested me as never before.
The transition from Massachusetts from New Hampshire was dramatic, as we suddenly faced long and steep ups and downs through a range of 4,000 foot mountains to the top of Mt. Washington at 6,200 feet. But it was difficult to enjoy the views because the terrain was treacherous and, though the sun was shining across the Presidential Range, a harsh, cold and bitter wind blew me to the ground as I cautiously made my way down Washington.
As I trudged along, I cursed my stupidity.
Footing was treacherous and progress very slow, but the walk was more delicate and dicey for me because my shoes had little tread and the front of the right shoe was unraveling with each step. The dying shoes were worn nearly smooth and slipped on the rocks; they offered little cushion for sore knees and ankles continually being jarred by the steep descents.
I had switched from boots to lighter-weight trail runners in West Virginia, but foolishly -- stupidly, actually -- come to New Hampshire ill-equipped to deal with the rugged terrain. New boots would come to me at Pinkham Notch, but that meant new shoes (and the chance of blisters or foot problems) as the trail presented still more demands.
Long gone are the days of 15-mile-a-day hiking. New Hampshire and Maine offer the country’s toughest trails and it can take more than an hour to cover a single mile and five miles might qualify as a good day of walking. Twice, climbs of only three miles took more than five hours, and I once walked three miles in the dark to a campsite, my eyes adjusting to the limited light as my pace was slowed by the slippery boards that spanned trails still boggy from Irene.
New boots came just in time for the climb up Wildcat Mountain and then Carter Dome, where a late September snow storm blew across the mountain, coating the trees and making us grin while hiking in the snow and then shiver through the night at Imp Campsite where 10 hikers shared a shelter and temperatures dropped into the teens.
That blast of early winter convinced me to head north again and to climb Katahdin before the weather turned really nasty and then head south back to New Hampshire. The timing has been perfect as the leaves are turning from green to red, gold and silver and the trail through Maine flattens and wends through the lake country before hitting the mountains to the south.
The jump north means I am now a southbounder instead of a northbounder (in hiker parlance a SoBo instead of a NoBo) and That means an almost daily reunion and a daily dose of memories and shared stories as I bump into hikers I had known in Georgia or Virginia or New York and had not seen since.
Back in the spring, nine thru-hikers shopped at Wal-Mart together and also shared lunch at a Main Street café. Five of us are now in Monson together, hundreds and hundreds of miles and so many adventures later.
The Monson library closes in less than an hour. There is no time to start sharing stories and adventures, but I have filled a notebook with memories and a lifetime of stories to write and share. That will come later.
Thanks to all of you for the support and encouragement you have given me along the way. messages and the postings and text messages that gave me strength when I needed it the most. You are all Trail Angels and you will be in my heart and in my prayers forever.
I head south tomorrow with a glad heart and knowing that my merry woodlands adventure is 163 miles from its end. I hike south remembering the mantra that has brought me this far:
“Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord, thy God.
Happy Trails.
-30-
.
Three more weeks of hiking will bring me back to New Hampshire and across some of the most rugged and demanding parts of the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
Pray with me for good weather because the final leg of my hike would really be a bitch in the rain, ice or snow. But the weather has been extraordinary since late August when Hurricane Irene sent me scrambling north, and I have been blessed with clear skies and great visibility through the White Mountains and on Mount Katahdin, where I flipped the hike and began walking back south through Maine.
I am now 163 miles from Gorham, NH and Mount Success, the end point of this remarkable adventure.
I hike south having shared the beauty and melancholy of Katahdin and Baxter State Park with other hikers who have reached their finish line. Many look stunned, their eyes glazed by the thought that “it’s over. I’ll be home (and the ‘real world’) very soon.” Their joy and pride of accomplishment is soon muted by the goodbyes and best wishes to others who know the challenges and the wonder and joy that have marked the long walk north.
Today marks six months to the day since I started north from Springer Mountain in Georgia.
Six months in the woods is a lifetime -- when I am in town I want to be in the woods; when on the trail, I want to stop hiking and wish I was in town. The end will be bittersweet, but the hike has taken its toll. I am physically, mentally and spiritually stronger than at any time of my life, and I am ready for what comes next.
Life is good. God is Great and my thanks and praise to Him for all I have seen and done for the past six months. Please join me in prayer for my continued good health and good hiking. I have seen others come agonizingly close to finishing their hikes only to be taken out by injury or worse, but I now am happy to be able to take my time and extra care as I walk south because I need no longer worry about getting to Katahdin by October 15.
At the top of Katahdin I gave thanks to God for everyone I have met and for the amazing adventure that has played out since I left Georgia in the spring, wondering how life in the woods and the harshness of this test would affect me or how long my hike might last. Each day I thank the Lord for the air in my lungs, for the food in my stomach and the strength in my legs and in my heart that has kept me going. I am truly blessed to have come this far.
I was thrilled to get to Katahdin on a clear day and to be able to see the lakes of Maine stretching far to the south and to look ahead to the 100 Mile Wilderness, the Bigelows, Saddleback and Sugarloaf, the Mahoosics and other stretches of trail that I hiked 30 years ago. I head south tomorrow and will retrace my steps from a hike 10 years ago, one that I thought might be my last hike because I was suddenly out of my depth and ready to quit.
I still carry a scar from Pleasant Pond Mountain, and I look forward to hiking that again -- and doing it right this time.
But that’s what is ahead. It’s time to look back.
The jump north from Massachusetts was the right call, and I would have had no choice but to skip Vermont anyway because the hurricane trashed the state and closed it to hiking. Much of the AT is still closed, and I hope to come back next year and see what I missed.
I last blogged before the August 28 storm, and, this being October, it’s been more than a month since I was last able to write about my journey. Truth is that I stared at a flashing cursor on a Word document in Gorham a few weeks back to write about the White Mountains, but could not find the words to share stories from the 75-miles stretch of trail that took me far above the tree line and tested me as never before.
The transition from Massachusetts from New Hampshire was dramatic, as we suddenly faced long and steep ups and downs through a range of 4,000 foot mountains to the top of Mt. Washington at 6,200 feet. But it was difficult to enjoy the views because the terrain was treacherous and, though the sun was shining across the Presidential Range, a harsh, cold and bitter wind blew me to the ground as I cautiously made my way down Washington.
As I trudged along, I cursed my stupidity.
Footing was treacherous and progress very slow, but the walk was more delicate and dicey for me because my shoes had little tread and the front of the right shoe was unraveling with each step. The dying shoes were worn nearly smooth and slipped on the rocks; they offered little cushion for sore knees and ankles continually being jarred by the steep descents.
I had switched from boots to lighter-weight trail runners in West Virginia, but foolishly -- stupidly, actually -- come to New Hampshire ill-equipped to deal with the rugged terrain. New boots would come to me at Pinkham Notch, but that meant new shoes (and the chance of blisters or foot problems) as the trail presented still more demands.
Long gone are the days of 15-mile-a-day hiking. New Hampshire and Maine offer the country’s toughest trails and it can take more than an hour to cover a single mile and five miles might qualify as a good day of walking. Twice, climbs of only three miles took more than five hours, and I once walked three miles in the dark to a campsite, my eyes adjusting to the limited light as my pace was slowed by the slippery boards that spanned trails still boggy from Irene.
New boots came just in time for the climb up Wildcat Mountain and then Carter Dome, where a late September snow storm blew across the mountain, coating the trees and making us grin while hiking in the snow and then shiver through the night at Imp Campsite where 10 hikers shared a shelter and temperatures dropped into the teens.
That blast of early winter convinced me to head north again and to climb Katahdin before the weather turned really nasty and then head south back to New Hampshire. The timing has been perfect as the leaves are turning from green to red, gold and silver and the trail through Maine flattens and wends through the lake country before hitting the mountains to the south.
The jump north means I am now a southbounder instead of a northbounder (in hiker parlance a SoBo instead of a NoBo) and That means an almost daily reunion and a daily dose of memories and shared stories as I bump into hikers I had known in Georgia or Virginia or New York and had not seen since.
Back in the spring, nine thru-hikers shopped at Wal-Mart together and also shared lunch at a Main Street café. Five of us are now in Monson together, hundreds and hundreds of miles and so many adventures later.
The Monson library closes in less than an hour. There is no time to start sharing stories and adventures, but I have filled a notebook with memories and a lifetime of stories to write and share. That will come later.
Thanks to all of you for the support and encouragement you have given me along the way. messages and the postings and text messages that gave me strength when I needed it the most. You are all Trail Angels and you will be in my heart and in my prayers forever.
I head south tomorrow with a glad heart and knowing that my merry woodlands adventure is 163 miles from its end. I hike south remembering the mantra that has brought me this far:
“Patience, Grasshopper. And trust in the Lord, thy God.
Happy Trails.
-30-
.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
North Before the Storm
Lee, MA,
The stench rose when the sun came through and burned away the rain in the Massachusetts forest and dried my socks, shoes and gear. It hit me as I walked that it was me that I smelled and I hadn’t had a hot shower since Pennsylvania about 200 miles earlier.
There was a cold sponge bath a week ore more back at the Graymoor monastery near the Hudson River in New York, but I had not gotten really clean in more than three weeks or washed my clothes in more than two. The odor crept up on me in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, and grabbed me by the nose as I neared South Egremont, MA and 1500 miles along the Appalachian Trail.
The trip to town meant a $10 bunk and hot shower and a $3 laundry at the East Mountain Retreat Center, plus a pig out at Mom’s Restaurant outside of town where Strider and I ate a big meal. Shared a huge stack of blueberry pancakes for desert and then happily accepted the breakfast leftovers from a kindly gentleman and his granddaughters at the next table.
Luxuriously clean, rested and stuffed, I was/am a happy camper again. And, I am jumping north; the journey continues.
Hurricane Irene is headed up the coast and that sealed my decision to go north and finish my Appalachian Trail journey in sections. A bus will take Strider and me through Springfield, MA, then Boston and deep into New Jersey as we hope to beat the storm and get to New Hampshire over the weekend.
The jump clears the calendar and takes the pressure off the October 15 deadline that can seal off Katahdin and Baxter State Park as winter comes. Soon I will be hiking in the White Mountains, the Presidential Range, the Mahoosucs and the 100 Miles Wilderness and enjoying that 400 mile chunk of the AT in the fall before doubling back to do the 300 miles of Massachusetts and Vermont as winter comes.
On we go. The days are getting shorter, the nights cooler as August fades into September and I look forward to my cold weather gear that should be coming next week.
The change is invigorating and the hiking is about to become much more difficult, a welcome challenge after the lovely, flatter trails of lower New England that took us through birch and evergreen and along steep ups and downs through the scrub brush near the tree line and across rock ledges with wonderful views of the Berkshires.
The hike north from Pawling, NY and my trip to Manhattan featured a succession of idyllic villages offering poor hikers an array of high-end Belgian chocolates and coffees and trendy bookstores and antique shops. Each offers wonderful hospitality to even the smelliest of thru-hikers in town for a hot meal, a mail pickup or just a break from the woods for cold sodas and ice cream.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kent, CT, (1826,)offers a friendly greeting from Father Kevin and lets hikers tent in its churchyard and use the parish hall bathroom. St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury leaves its doors open all day and give hikers fresh new socks (for their “troubled soles”) from a Hiker’s Box in the vestibule. And there’s internet access at Scoville Memorial Library which, at 200, is the country’s oldest publicly funded library and looks far more like a Revolution-era church than a public building.
These have been welcome and charming sites after the rigors of Pennsylvania and the struggles along the trail. After more than four months in the woods, hikers begin to feel the grind of the long walk from the south and have to reach deep to stay focused on the trail ahead and the goal of finishing the 2180 miles in one year. There is much work left to be done.
The trail through New York and Connecticut has been crowded with southbound thru-hikers, mostly young college graduates who left school too late for the south-to-north journey, but who can head south in June and make it to Georgia before the snows hit the Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge. They look fresh and eager at this stage of their journey and I wonder if I had that same enthusiasm and zeal when I was 700 miles along the trail and in Virginia.
I was relieved to get into the South Egremont because I had been slipping and sliding my way down Jug End, after falling four times on wet rocks, banging forearms and and drawing blood, I was eager to get this part of the hike behind me and to get my wits about me. Since leaving Pawling, NY 10 days earlier I had witnessed several trail tragedies and was able to learn from the misfortunes of others. I continued to marvel at the generosity of others.
Being Park Bears ”Just act humble, Strider and let it come to us,” I say as we walk into the Housatonic Meadows State Park and settle in at a picnic table between a recreational vehicle and three family-sized tents.
Two minutes later, a man brought two water bottles; then two minutes later, two young girls brought us to apples each; then the man invited us over for chicken salad sandwiches and chips and sodas and lemon bread and zucchini bread. We ate and talked hiking and told stories.
Rosemary and mike invited us to their RV for cranberry juice and we spent a half hour enjoying their company.
Lesson One Patience, Grasshopper. The mantra for the hike –. Let the hike come to you and do not hurry, because you might get hurt if you press and an injury could end your hike in an instant.
Purple and Carnivore are 50-somethings hiking south from Katahdin to Springer, but a fall near Sages ravine just inside Massachusetts on the way to Kent, CT could kill their hopes.
Purple was wailing as she came up the trail, one bandanna held to her forehead by another, her face wet with tears and red from tears and a frightening fall. She did not appear to be badly injured, but she was very scared and rattled by her fall. Carnivore looked on impassively as they decided to take a short side trail that would take them to a road into town. Her tears had dried
Patience, Grasshopper, and take care. That could be you.
Man Down. Steve came flopping into a campsite near Ten Mile Creek late one afternoon, both boots falling apart as he finished the first day of a planned 10 days in the woods. He's from Beaufort, SC and has come 25 hours by bus for this long-anticipated trip that's about to go horribly wrong. We chat as he uses my duct tape and his cord to strap his boots together and then we pitch camp ahead of the late afternoon storm that's moving in.
I was hoping for solitude, but it's also good to have someone my own age and from my part of the country around for conversation. Steve also has a large flask of very smooth Scotch and shares a liberal dose with me as the rain begins.
We hike together the next day and I go slower than I would have liked but have agreed to go with him as we are both headed into Kent – me for a mail drop and him for new boots – and Strider is a half day behind. His boots hold together and our conversation is steady as we negotiate the 10 tough miles to the road.
Strider catches us and we start down the highway toward town; we walk because three hikers makes hitch-hiking unlikely.
We're chatting and Steve's boots are musically flapping along the pavement when he suddenly goes down. Quicker than a thought, he hits the pavement, face and chest first and he is unconscious, his head next to a small puddle of blood. Strider and I look on in stunned horror as a small car pulls onto the shoulder and two young men get out to help.
Steve stirs, and Strider unsnaps his pack so he can move. The heavy pack had become Steve's worst enemy, adding torque and power to the tumble when he lost his balance and driving him to the ground. He bled from a cut over his left eye and said his ribs hurt. He pressed a white towel to his head, but the bleeding had stopped.
I helped Steve to his feet, and he slowly regained his senses, staggered by the fall and working to figure out what had happened and how much damage it had caused him. He cut the ropes from his boots, hoisted his pack and we walked another quarter mile into Kent. Steve went to the outfitter's store and found medical help while Strider and I met Father Kevin at St. Andrew's Church.
Heavy winds and rain blew through town as we camped that night; I was not there when Steve came back to retrieve his pack, but he was off the trail with a broken rib there was no concussion but he would not be hiking again soon.
Patience Grasshopper and be wise. This could be you.
Steve and Purple stay in my thoughts as I continue to go steadily north. I am now convinced that I will be able to finish the entire trail – unless a bad spill or accident takes me down.
My friend Ricky (Trailmaster) called last night. He hiked the entire trail 25 years or more ago and had been talking with our mutual hiking friend Cliff (Mr. Bag.)
“Cliff says 'he looks tired.'” Really, I have just walked 1500 miles; We laugh at that and discuss my plans to jump north. Ricky is impressed by my hiking success at 60, but, like me, realized that I would not make Katahdin by mid-October and that I am doing the right thing by shuffling the hike.
Strider and I camped a hundred yards up the trail and five miles out of Kent last night before catching a ride into town – and to Joe's Diner for a big breakfast and a library visit before the bus to Lincoln comes at 11.
We discussed our hitchhiking prowess as the first car by circled back to give us a ride into town. The young man at the wheel, looking I in the rear view mirrors, said, “are you guys brothers?” With a 40-year age differential, we both laughed at that, something I will probably never hear again.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
From Georgia to Manhattan -- And Beyond
My 1400-mile hike from Georgia brought me close to New York City and a commuter train ride from my son, Noah, who happened to be in town from Atlanta to play music in Manhattan.
It hasn’t always been easy.
A wet sock was rubbing the bottom of my right foot raw as I hurried along the trail, working to get to a train station 40 miles ahead in Pawling, NY. I sorted through the logistics, knowing that I could not make it to Pawling in time on foot. Noah travelled with others, his itinerary iffy, and we worried that our rendezvous might not happen.
Trail loneliness was getting to me as I had been hiking and camping alone for several days and was increasingly weighed down by magnitude of the task ahead and the knowledge that I walked from Georgia to New York, but my ultimate destination was still nearly 800 miles away.
I had camped the night before atop Island Pond Mountain on a grassy field under a full moon. I was up and on the trail by 6:45, but by mid-afternoon, I was toiling through Harriman State Park, worrying that a side-trip to New York would leave me a day or so behind my hiking buddies and alone starting the last third of my thru-hike to Maine.
My iPod had died in Maryland, but I could not get The Byrds song “Glory Glory” out of my head as I limped along and worried about the journey ahead. “Halleluiah. Thank you, Jesus. Help me lay my burdens down.”
The hike across New Jersey and into New York had been magnificent, with both states far more beautiful than I thought they could be. The trails were smoother than oh-so-rocky Pennsylvania and brought us near ponds and through meadows and bird sanctuaries, and also offered enough steep ups and downs and hardships to keep hikers honest.
Then I met Colleen and Steve, day-hikers sitting atop West Mountain and drinking red wine and enjoying the views from high above the Hudson River. They shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bottle of Gatorade; we talked hiking and I posed for pictures with each of them before I continued north and pondered my options.
They caught up with me down the trail a few minutes later, and, on a whim, I asked them if they were headed anywhere near the Graymoor Spiritual Center, a Franciscan monastery 15 miles up the trail and a place that would allow me to jump ahead to Pawling in time to get to New York and meet up with Noah if that happened to work out.
“Grasshopper, we will take you any where you want to go,” Colleen said.
An hour later, I was walking across a field to join three friends at the monastery’s hiker shelter, carrying my pack and a six-pack of Coronas when Noah called me on the phone.
“Hey, Dad. I’m in Central Park at the John Lennon memorial. I was just at the place where he was shot.”
“That’s awesome, Noah. Can we go there Tuesday?”
“Absolutely.”
A half hour later, I received spiritual confirmation that I had made the right decision and come to the right place. My phone buzzed with a text message from the Messenger, my friend from the Mepkin Abbey monastery near Charleston who I had miraculously met for the first time on the trail in Virginia 900 miles earlier as he hiked south and I moved north.
“Yes, God is so great. United in Prayer,” he wrote. “Blessings on you, dear friend. Fr. Leonard, pray for us. Amen.”
I called him and we laughed at our wondrous spiritual connection and the coincidence of him sending me a text for the first time just after I had arrived at a monastery in New York. I said he had not been at Mepkin the times I phoned and instead I had talked with Father A.J., who always made me smile with his closing comment, “May God Bless you, Grasshopper.”
“That is actually an Ecclesiastical blessing,” the Messenger said, adding that Fr. A.J. was a retired Catholic Bishop before he became a monk, so that means his blessing carries more spiritual weight than one from a priest or a monk.
My time at Graymoor and my talks with myself and the Messenger brought me to a peaceful place with my hike and my fears that I might not make it to Baxter State Park before it closes on October 15 and that I could get very close to the end of the Appalachian Trail while being unable to finish atop Mount Katahdin.
“I don’t care. I am laying that burden down,” I told the Messenger. “I am going to keep walking until I get to Baxter and if the park is closed, so be it. I am going north and don’t plan to stop until I get to the end.”
Refreshed, another burden aside, my faith in myself and in my hike were restored. Strider and I decided to take the early commuter train to Grand Central Station. Noah hoped to be back from Boston by mid-day and we would get together so very far away from home.
God willing, I will be in Connecticut by the end of this week and this magical journey continues. Some memories:
New York City. “You look like a hobo,” Noah said when we hugged outside the Waldorf Astoria where I had been chilling on a sofa, waiting for him to get to town. We had a marvelous visit, almost not believing that fate had brought us together so very far away from Atlanta where we last had been together in early April, a day before my hike began.
He laughed at my skinniness and at the white scruffiness on my face. I had been shaving, but the youngsters on the trail convinced me to let the beard grow and “go wild.”
Manhattan was not as surreal as I thought it might be, and I was amazed that with a blink I would see many more people than I had seen in four-plus months of hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Pounding the Manhattan pavement all day was much like hiking the trail though I could look up and around instead of watching the ground for rocks and roots, no bugs buzzed around my face or darted into my ears or eves, and no cobwebs suddenly smacked me across the mouth or eyebrows. Walking without a pack was refreshing, but still tiring. As on the trail, there was so much to look at and absorb while getting from one unfamiliar place to another one several miles (or many blocks) away, not sure where I was heading, what I would find when I got there or where I would go after that.
My senses of hearing and smell have heightened during my months in the woods, and the city’s sounds and smells were powerful, jarring and intoxicating. Walking in Central Park was more soothing than on 5th Avenue or Broadway; Strawberry Fields, the Lennon memorial, was touching; the subway was funky; the World Trade Center site was nearly as sad and moving as when I had seen it a few months after 9-11.
Seeing my 23-year-old son walking along a sidewalk with my 20-year-old hiking companion will make me smile as I continue north.
Trail Sainthood. Strider and I met Trail Saint Carol at the CVS in Pauling while and trying to decide where and how to stash our packs while we went to NYC. We planned to camp at the Edward R. Murrow Memorial Park and worried about leaving our possessions unguarded for a day.
Trail Magic. Problem solved.
Carol invited us to her home where we stayed in guest rooms; she took us to town and the train at 5:30 in the morning and retrieved us at 10:30 that night. There was hot coffee when we woke both mornings, we cooked breakfast and shared stories of our journeys and adventures and of hers.
Ahead or Behind? We had stopped for a break at the Mohican Outdoor Center, 10 miles after crossing into New Jersey from Pennsylvania. It was nearly 2 p.m. before Strider and I pushed on toward a shelter 14 miles away and, as usual, he moved ahead and I took my time on the uneven terrain. Rain started and didn’t let up; I missed the shelter and found a place to camp, deciding that I had to stop as the rain slacked and darkness fell.
The next day I would be out early for a 15-mile day that I hoped would catch me up with Strider, Juntsi and Captain Redbeard. It didn’t. I stopped in Unionville, NY early one afternoon two days later and the three of them came into town a few hours behind me.
I had been working to catch up with them only to find out that I was ahead of them – not behind. That makes an old man feel good.
The Church on the Mountain. I was lucky enough to get to this hostel in Delaware Water Gap, PA on a Thursday because the church has been hosting potluck dinners for hikers since 1977. There were three of us there that night, far short of the 50 hikers who showed up a few weeks back, but that meant there was more food for us than I could imagine, including homemade cherry ice cream.
Celebrity Status. First the Indians, then the Japanese and then Colleen and Steve from New Jersey, but people want to get their picture taken with me.
The Indian man was carrying an 8-foot section of PVC pipe over his shoulder with a plastic bag hanging from the end. He said he and his son were out hiking for the first time and he was amazed to have run into a thru-hiker. “We need a picture. OK?” “Sure.”
Dad was wearing a University of Kentucky cap, but said he’s a cricket fan and just liked the color. The son took picture of me and Dad, and then Dad snapped the boy and me. They promised to email me copies.
A dozen Japanese came by me day-hiking in Harriman State Park in New York. A man in a black sweat suit and bright green bandanna asked a friend to take his picture with me. “You are living my dream,” he said.
Steve and Colleen were hiking in Harriman State Park to check their gear before they go to Europe for 10 days of hut hiking in the Alps. As we hiked later, with Steve leading the way, then Colleen and then me behind, I told her, “Colleen, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you sure do smell good.”
She shared that comment with Steve, and I think he laughed. A bit later, our hiking order was switched so she was leading, followed by Steve and then me.
I could not resist. “Steve,” I said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you sure do smell good.”
To New York and Beyond.
The Mid-Atlantic states have been more captivating than I had imagined, as I had only seen them from the I-95 corridor on the few times I had drive north or from high above on an infrequent plane ride to New York. The mountains are much lower than in the South, but the ridges offer spectacular views of ranges like the Poconos and the Catskills that I have heard of but never seen.
The Hudson River is breathtaking after the long walk from Georgia, and I could almost imagine being among the Last of the Mohicans (a favorite movie) and part of an adventurous part of this country’s past.
Every day brings another magical encounter; each mile offers another wonder. Surprises wait over every ridge. It might be a family of deer or wild turkey crossing ahead, a snake or turtle blocking the path, or groups of scouts or day-hikers wide-eyed and eager to hear more about my walk in the woods.
I still hunger to get to New England, but I am quite happy to be where I am on my journey.
Happy Trails, everybody. Grasshopper is out of here, headed north.
-30-
It hasn’t always been easy.
A wet sock was rubbing the bottom of my right foot raw as I hurried along the trail, working to get to a train station 40 miles ahead in Pawling, NY. I sorted through the logistics, knowing that I could not make it to Pawling in time on foot. Noah travelled with others, his itinerary iffy, and we worried that our rendezvous might not happen.
Trail loneliness was getting to me as I had been hiking and camping alone for several days and was increasingly weighed down by magnitude of the task ahead and the knowledge that I walked from Georgia to New York, but my ultimate destination was still nearly 800 miles away.
I had camped the night before atop Island Pond Mountain on a grassy field under a full moon. I was up and on the trail by 6:45, but by mid-afternoon, I was toiling through Harriman State Park, worrying that a side-trip to New York would leave me a day or so behind my hiking buddies and alone starting the last third of my thru-hike to Maine.
My iPod had died in Maryland, but I could not get The Byrds song “Glory Glory” out of my head as I limped along and worried about the journey ahead. “Halleluiah. Thank you, Jesus. Help me lay my burdens down.”
The hike across New Jersey and into New York had been magnificent, with both states far more beautiful than I thought they could be. The trails were smoother than oh-so-rocky Pennsylvania and brought us near ponds and through meadows and bird sanctuaries, and also offered enough steep ups and downs and hardships to keep hikers honest.
Then I met Colleen and Steve, day-hikers sitting atop West Mountain and drinking red wine and enjoying the views from high above the Hudson River. They shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bottle of Gatorade; we talked hiking and I posed for pictures with each of them before I continued north and pondered my options.
They caught up with me down the trail a few minutes later, and, on a whim, I asked them if they were headed anywhere near the Graymoor Spiritual Center, a Franciscan monastery 15 miles up the trail and a place that would allow me to jump ahead to Pawling in time to get to New York and meet up with Noah if that happened to work out.
“Grasshopper, we will take you any where you want to go,” Colleen said.
An hour later, I was walking across a field to join three friends at the monastery’s hiker shelter, carrying my pack and a six-pack of Coronas when Noah called me on the phone.
“Hey, Dad. I’m in Central Park at the John Lennon memorial. I was just at the place where he was shot.”
“That’s awesome, Noah. Can we go there Tuesday?”
“Absolutely.”
A half hour later, I received spiritual confirmation that I had made the right decision and come to the right place. My phone buzzed with a text message from the Messenger, my friend from the Mepkin Abbey monastery near Charleston who I had miraculously met for the first time on the trail in Virginia 900 miles earlier as he hiked south and I moved north.
“Yes, God is so great. United in Prayer,” he wrote. “Blessings on you, dear friend. Fr. Leonard, pray for us. Amen.”
I called him and we laughed at our wondrous spiritual connection and the coincidence of him sending me a text for the first time just after I had arrived at a monastery in New York. I said he had not been at Mepkin the times I phoned and instead I had talked with Father A.J., who always made me smile with his closing comment, “May God Bless you, Grasshopper.”
“That is actually an Ecclesiastical blessing,” the Messenger said, adding that Fr. A.J. was a retired Catholic Bishop before he became a monk, so that means his blessing carries more spiritual weight than one from a priest or a monk.
My time at Graymoor and my talks with myself and the Messenger brought me to a peaceful place with my hike and my fears that I might not make it to Baxter State Park before it closes on October 15 and that I could get very close to the end of the Appalachian Trail while being unable to finish atop Mount Katahdin.
“I don’t care. I am laying that burden down,” I told the Messenger. “I am going to keep walking until I get to Baxter and if the park is closed, so be it. I am going north and don’t plan to stop until I get to the end.”
Refreshed, another burden aside, my faith in myself and in my hike were restored. Strider and I decided to take the early commuter train to Grand Central Station. Noah hoped to be back from Boston by mid-day and we would get together so very far away from home.
God willing, I will be in Connecticut by the end of this week and this magical journey continues. Some memories:
New York City. “You look like a hobo,” Noah said when we hugged outside the Waldorf Astoria where I had been chilling on a sofa, waiting for him to get to town. We had a marvelous visit, almost not believing that fate had brought us together so very far away from Atlanta where we last had been together in early April, a day before my hike began.
He laughed at my skinniness and at the white scruffiness on my face. I had been shaving, but the youngsters on the trail convinced me to let the beard grow and “go wild.”
Manhattan was not as surreal as I thought it might be, and I was amazed that with a blink I would see many more people than I had seen in four-plus months of hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Pounding the Manhattan pavement all day was much like hiking the trail though I could look up and around instead of watching the ground for rocks and roots, no bugs buzzed around my face or darted into my ears or eves, and no cobwebs suddenly smacked me across the mouth or eyebrows. Walking without a pack was refreshing, but still tiring. As on the trail, there was so much to look at and absorb while getting from one unfamiliar place to another one several miles (or many blocks) away, not sure where I was heading, what I would find when I got there or where I would go after that.
My senses of hearing and smell have heightened during my months in the woods, and the city’s sounds and smells were powerful, jarring and intoxicating. Walking in Central Park was more soothing than on 5th Avenue or Broadway; Strawberry Fields, the Lennon memorial, was touching; the subway was funky; the World Trade Center site was nearly as sad and moving as when I had seen it a few months after 9-11.
Seeing my 23-year-old son walking along a sidewalk with my 20-year-old hiking companion will make me smile as I continue north.
Trail Sainthood. Strider and I met Trail Saint Carol at the CVS in Pauling while and trying to decide where and how to stash our packs while we went to NYC. We planned to camp at the Edward R. Murrow Memorial Park and worried about leaving our possessions unguarded for a day.
Trail Magic. Problem solved.
Carol invited us to her home where we stayed in guest rooms; she took us to town and the train at 5:30 in the morning and retrieved us at 10:30 that night. There was hot coffee when we woke both mornings, we cooked breakfast and shared stories of our journeys and adventures and of hers.
Ahead or Behind? We had stopped for a break at the Mohican Outdoor Center, 10 miles after crossing into New Jersey from Pennsylvania. It was nearly 2 p.m. before Strider and I pushed on toward a shelter 14 miles away and, as usual, he moved ahead and I took my time on the uneven terrain. Rain started and didn’t let up; I missed the shelter and found a place to camp, deciding that I had to stop as the rain slacked and darkness fell.
The next day I would be out early for a 15-mile day that I hoped would catch me up with Strider, Juntsi and Captain Redbeard. It didn’t. I stopped in Unionville, NY early one afternoon two days later and the three of them came into town a few hours behind me.
I had been working to catch up with them only to find out that I was ahead of them – not behind. That makes an old man feel good.
The Church on the Mountain. I was lucky enough to get to this hostel in Delaware Water Gap, PA on a Thursday because the church has been hosting potluck dinners for hikers since 1977. There were three of us there that night, far short of the 50 hikers who showed up a few weeks back, but that meant there was more food for us than I could imagine, including homemade cherry ice cream.
Celebrity Status. First the Indians, then the Japanese and then Colleen and Steve from New Jersey, but people want to get their picture taken with me.
The Indian man was carrying an 8-foot section of PVC pipe over his shoulder with a plastic bag hanging from the end. He said he and his son were out hiking for the first time and he was amazed to have run into a thru-hiker. “We need a picture. OK?” “Sure.”
Dad was wearing a University of Kentucky cap, but said he’s a cricket fan and just liked the color. The son took picture of me and Dad, and then Dad snapped the boy and me. They promised to email me copies.
A dozen Japanese came by me day-hiking in Harriman State Park in New York. A man in a black sweat suit and bright green bandanna asked a friend to take his picture with me. “You are living my dream,” he said.
Steve and Colleen were hiking in Harriman State Park to check their gear before they go to Europe for 10 days of hut hiking in the Alps. As we hiked later, with Steve leading the way, then Colleen and then me behind, I told her, “Colleen, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you sure do smell good.”
She shared that comment with Steve, and I think he laughed. A bit later, our hiking order was switched so she was leading, followed by Steve and then me.
I could not resist. “Steve,” I said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you sure do smell good.”
To New York and Beyond.
The Mid-Atlantic states have been more captivating than I had imagined, as I had only seen them from the I-95 corridor on the few times I had drive north or from high above on an infrequent plane ride to New York. The mountains are much lower than in the South, but the ridges offer spectacular views of ranges like the Poconos and the Catskills that I have heard of but never seen.
The Hudson River is breathtaking after the long walk from Georgia, and I could almost imagine being among the Last of the Mohicans (a favorite movie) and part of an adventurous part of this country’s past.
Every day brings another magical encounter; each mile offers another wonder. Surprises wait over every ridge. It might be a family of deer or wild turkey crossing ahead, a snake or turtle blocking the path, or groups of scouts or day-hikers wide-eyed and eager to hear more about my walk in the woods.
I still hunger to get to New England, but I am quite happy to be where I am on my journey.
Happy Trails, everybody. Grasshopper is out of here, headed north.
-30-
Monday, August 1, 2011
Trouble on the Trail
Palmerton, Pennsylvania, 1250 miles. Monday, August 1, 2011
My granddaddy's granddaddy walked from the deep South to Pennsylvania nearly 150 ago wearing a wool uniform and carrying a rifle, so my doing the 1250 miles from Georgia in shorts and a backpack doesn’t seem that big a deal.
His adventure did not end well. A Rebel soldier, he was wounded at Gettysburg and joined a 14-mile-long trail of wounded warriors who limped back South after three days of hell. I am not taking enemy fire, but my last week in Pennsylvania had me wondering if I might be going home in a box.
Late Sunday, I was lost near the summit of a 900-foot boulder field after scrambling and laboring up a very steep and challenging mile of trail to flat walking and a campsite six miles beyond. I had turned back from an impossible climb and was cautiously inching my way along a steep descent when I stumbled slightly, wobbled, spun and fell back, banging my head and slamming my left foot against a rock. Dazed and staggered, I wondered how I was going to get to the bottom without breaking an ankle, a leg or my neck.
All this high drama came just four days after I had nearly stepped onto a timber rattler and two days after I happily but cautiously hiked along a flatter boulder field, my feet never touching soil – just rocks – for a few hundred yards during a thunderstorm and drenching rain. Once confident that the Lord Jesus wasn’t going to call me home just yet, now I was not so sure.
I slipped off my pack and slid over to a broad flat rock to catch my breath. The sky was a spectacular blue and a hawk (perhaps an eagle) floated above while a small airplane flew by on approach to a tiny air strip below. All I could see was the boulder field beneath me and I could not enjoy the view because I was shaken, and, for the first time since leaving Georgia, I was scared.
On my own, I was in a mess. It was just past 4 p.m. and about 100 degrees when I walked out of Palmerton with a chocolate milkshake and without a worry about the hike ahead. I was the last hiker out of town and was sure nobody was behind me. Strider had called to tell me that the climb included scaling a few boulders and some hand-over-hand rock climbing but that the path was sometimes confusing.
I sat and watched the valley as my breathing calmed. I ate a Snickers bar, and drank a half liter of water while deciding what would come next. I was bloodied, but OK and knew that I would be able to get to the bottom. I needed to talk to someone because sharing my plight would take some of the terror out of it and I knew that talking through my options would help.
Strider could offer nothing but sympathy, but said he knew I’d be fine and that he would pray for me. I had talked to Kathy in Columbia before I left Palmerton and things were still rosy, and she now offered the reality check and reassurance that I needed to refocus and know I was going to be fine.
I picked my way cautiously down, lowering myself gently a step at a time, hoping the rock that I trusted would not shift under my weight, tip or slide and praying the tread of my Trailrunners would hold. I never saw another white blaze as I made my own path while brambles clawed at my legs and my ankles sometimes yelped.
The trail I found was not the Appalachian Trail, but it led me to a parking lot where two hikers were locking their car before heading up the hill.
Samson, a 2008 thru-hiker, said the section was the most difficult part of the trail in Pennsylvania and that he had gotten lost on that climb when he had come through. He offered to lead me to the top, but it was well past 5 o’clock and I’d had enough adventure for one day. I wanted a hot shower and a glass of Jack Daniel’s and accepted his kind offer of a ride back into town.
I had that one drink and shared my tale with Musher, a fellow northbounder who had watched me limp back into town and waited while I washed away the blood and pulled myself together. I did not eat dinner and sleep was difficult as I thought through the past week and scribbled notes in my journal, eager to get to the library and a computer on Monday morning.
I will strap on my pack and face that same climb early Tuesday, humbled and a bit battered, but structurally sound and eager to get going. I will climb out of Lehigh Gap without getting lost this time and find my way to the top and beyond.
By Wednesday I will be in New Jersey, but Pennsylvania will stay with me. This is why:
-- Gettysburg. Chilling. I took a Zero Day to get off the trail and take my mind away from hiking. This was a perfect choice. I took the tours, walked the cemetery and then brought the book Killer Angels along to learn what happened during the three days that left 50,000 killed, wounded or missing. I left the battlefield and caught a ride to the Mason-Dixon Line and crossed from Maryland into Pennsylvania like my granddaddy’s granddaddy before me.
-- The Half Gallon Challenge. A sign marks the 1090.5 mark, exactly halfway from Springer to Katahdin, and a Trail Challenge waited at a country store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park three miles away. I pulled in at the end of a steamy 17-mile hike eager to try and eat a half gallon of ice cream. The choices were grim – Peanut Butter Twist (gag), Banana Split (ack), or Cherries Jubilee (barf). Vanilla was my only option.
A half-dozen hikers looked on and cheered as Green Light and Joontsy ate. Green Light was groaning while he dug out another spoonful, and Joontsy’s face was bloated and an odd color and he looked close to being ill. Not deterred by seeing what pain lay ahead, I settled in and finished off a box of vanilla in 48 minutes while both of those youngsters had taken more than an hour.
My reward for ingesting more than 2400 calories at one sitting? A small wooden ice cream spoon and a caution to not get the spoon wet or the ink-stamped “Half Gallon Challenge” will run.
And no, I did not hurl. An hour later, I was ready for a cheeseburger and fries, but I lost my craving for ice cream and didn’t have more ice cream for nearly 48 hours.
-- Cumberland Valley and the Heat. Camping is prohibited in the 14 miles through the valley, and we made that day-long trip in 100-plus heat and humidity. It was Pennsylvania at its loveliest with smooth trails and mostly-flat walking through cornfields and forests and a mid-afternoon swim in Conodoguinet Creek (aka Whatyacallit Creek) four miles from camp to wash away the sweat. Add in swims in a lake near a campground and at a public pool in Boiling Springs and you have refreshed and happy hikers.
-- The Rattlesnake. I credit tai chi training with giving me patience and confidence as I sometimes teeter on the rocks of Pennsylvania and I believe it saved me from stepping into a life-challenging encounter with a timber rattler. That stutter-step move in the 32 sword form is called “wild horse crosses a mountain stream.” Having gotten past the snake, I now call it “grasshopper dances over rattlesnake’s back.”
-- Trail Angels. I stood in the rain beside the road for barely two minutes before Brad stopped and gave me a ride the two miles into Lickdale, PA. My shopping finished as the rain was ending and I was putting on my pack when Jeff came up and asked me if I needed a ride back to the trailhead. We stopped at Wendy’s on the way out of town. A Pentecostal pastor I met on the trail happily drove me all the way into Gettysburg.
-- Rockhound. A 43-year-old former Army MP, Rockhound had a heart attack in Troutdale, VA on April 2, the day I left Springer, and then had a double bypass operation and took three months off before getting back on the trail.
Most hikers haven’t had their walk disrupted by major surgery, but many of us have walked through crises of confidence, motivation, interest and will after making it halfway to Katahdin but knowing that we had more than a thousand miles to go.
Strider and I have hiked together since Franklin, NC more than 1100 miles ago, but he had gone to Gettysburg and was close to calling it quits. After a long talk with his mother and himself, he decided to stay in the woods and is happily hiking again, determined to get to Katahdin.
Francois Dillinger was distraught and yelling at himself when I arrived at the Ensign Cowell Shelter in Maryland and his buddy Sherpa was not doing much better.
“I have to finish this,” Dillinger said, “I have never finished anything that I started, and I have to finish this.” He had taken a series of zero days and was having problems getting re-engaged, although it seems like he’s now back on track.
Everyone has been running numbers – how many miles a day will it take to get me where I need to be? Will I make it? Am I behind schedule? Where are my friends?”
Our population has dwindled since we all left Georgia so many weeks ago. Those who keep track say that last year 1460 hikers left Springer for Katahdin, 747 of them made it to Harpers Ferry, and 349 made it all the way to the northern end of the 2,180 mile trail.
The success rate of a straight through thru-hike – about 10-15 percent.
It’s August now, and we start getting the same questions from others on the trail and in town as we move steadily north. Aren’t you running late? Are you going to make it to Maine? Wow, you still have a long way to go!
Undeterred, each moves on, knowing that half of us might leave the trail before reaching the end.
The mental part is the hardest because we often have to push our bodies through pain and injury, and because some days we would just rather not hike but go hiking anyway.
Sitting in the Palmerton, PA library, I take stock of my battered body as I am poised (odd word) to start my fifth month in the woods and on the Appalachian Trail.
Despite Sunday’s banging, my feet seem fine even though I switched from boots to Trailrunners in Harpers Ferry and I had been nursing a foot injury since the Shenandoah National Forest almost 300 miles back.
I took a chunk out of my right little toe when I was barefoot and kicked a rock while putting the rain cover on my tent before a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Bandages helped, but the constant pressure of my shoes and the pounding of rocks and roots have made it hard to heal.
As July becomes August, I move ahead, confident in my ability to go the distance and stick with the adventure of a lifetime.
I move ahead with the support and caring of folks at home, somehow inspiring them as Rockhound and many others out here (and at home) continue to inspire me and cheer me on.
Tomorrow I head back up the mountain that kicked my ass so badly the day before yesterday. And tomorrow I will get it done. I will miss Pennsylvania (or not) but look very much forward to what comes next.
Happy Trails.
On to New Jersey and New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and New Hampshire.
On to Maine.
-30-
My granddaddy's granddaddy walked from the deep South to Pennsylvania nearly 150 ago wearing a wool uniform and carrying a rifle, so my doing the 1250 miles from Georgia in shorts and a backpack doesn’t seem that big a deal.
His adventure did not end well. A Rebel soldier, he was wounded at Gettysburg and joined a 14-mile-long trail of wounded warriors who limped back South after three days of hell. I am not taking enemy fire, but my last week in Pennsylvania had me wondering if I might be going home in a box.
Late Sunday, I was lost near the summit of a 900-foot boulder field after scrambling and laboring up a very steep and challenging mile of trail to flat walking and a campsite six miles beyond. I had turned back from an impossible climb and was cautiously inching my way along a steep descent when I stumbled slightly, wobbled, spun and fell back, banging my head and slamming my left foot against a rock. Dazed and staggered, I wondered how I was going to get to the bottom without breaking an ankle, a leg or my neck.
All this high drama came just four days after I had nearly stepped onto a timber rattler and two days after I happily but cautiously hiked along a flatter boulder field, my feet never touching soil – just rocks – for a few hundred yards during a thunderstorm and drenching rain. Once confident that the Lord Jesus wasn’t going to call me home just yet, now I was not so sure.
I slipped off my pack and slid over to a broad flat rock to catch my breath. The sky was a spectacular blue and a hawk (perhaps an eagle) floated above while a small airplane flew by on approach to a tiny air strip below. All I could see was the boulder field beneath me and I could not enjoy the view because I was shaken, and, for the first time since leaving Georgia, I was scared.
On my own, I was in a mess. It was just past 4 p.m. and about 100 degrees when I walked out of Palmerton with a chocolate milkshake and without a worry about the hike ahead. I was the last hiker out of town and was sure nobody was behind me. Strider had called to tell me that the climb included scaling a few boulders and some hand-over-hand rock climbing but that the path was sometimes confusing.
I sat and watched the valley as my breathing calmed. I ate a Snickers bar, and drank a half liter of water while deciding what would come next. I was bloodied, but OK and knew that I would be able to get to the bottom. I needed to talk to someone because sharing my plight would take some of the terror out of it and I knew that talking through my options would help.
Strider could offer nothing but sympathy, but said he knew I’d be fine and that he would pray for me. I had talked to Kathy in Columbia before I left Palmerton and things were still rosy, and she now offered the reality check and reassurance that I needed to refocus and know I was going to be fine.
I picked my way cautiously down, lowering myself gently a step at a time, hoping the rock that I trusted would not shift under my weight, tip or slide and praying the tread of my Trailrunners would hold. I never saw another white blaze as I made my own path while brambles clawed at my legs and my ankles sometimes yelped.
The trail I found was not the Appalachian Trail, but it led me to a parking lot where two hikers were locking their car before heading up the hill.
Samson, a 2008 thru-hiker, said the section was the most difficult part of the trail in Pennsylvania and that he had gotten lost on that climb when he had come through. He offered to lead me to the top, but it was well past 5 o’clock and I’d had enough adventure for one day. I wanted a hot shower and a glass of Jack Daniel’s and accepted his kind offer of a ride back into town.
I had that one drink and shared my tale with Musher, a fellow northbounder who had watched me limp back into town and waited while I washed away the blood and pulled myself together. I did not eat dinner and sleep was difficult as I thought through the past week and scribbled notes in my journal, eager to get to the library and a computer on Monday morning.
I will strap on my pack and face that same climb early Tuesday, humbled and a bit battered, but structurally sound and eager to get going. I will climb out of Lehigh Gap without getting lost this time and find my way to the top and beyond.
By Wednesday I will be in New Jersey, but Pennsylvania will stay with me. This is why:
-- Gettysburg. Chilling. I took a Zero Day to get off the trail and take my mind away from hiking. This was a perfect choice. I took the tours, walked the cemetery and then brought the book Killer Angels along to learn what happened during the three days that left 50,000 killed, wounded or missing. I left the battlefield and caught a ride to the Mason-Dixon Line and crossed from Maryland into Pennsylvania like my granddaddy’s granddaddy before me.
-- The Half Gallon Challenge. A sign marks the 1090.5 mark, exactly halfway from Springer to Katahdin, and a Trail Challenge waited at a country store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park three miles away. I pulled in at the end of a steamy 17-mile hike eager to try and eat a half gallon of ice cream. The choices were grim – Peanut Butter Twist (gag), Banana Split (ack), or Cherries Jubilee (barf). Vanilla was my only option.
A half-dozen hikers looked on and cheered as Green Light and Joontsy ate. Green Light was groaning while he dug out another spoonful, and Joontsy’s face was bloated and an odd color and he looked close to being ill. Not deterred by seeing what pain lay ahead, I settled in and finished off a box of vanilla in 48 minutes while both of those youngsters had taken more than an hour.
My reward for ingesting more than 2400 calories at one sitting? A small wooden ice cream spoon and a caution to not get the spoon wet or the ink-stamped “Half Gallon Challenge” will run.
And no, I did not hurl. An hour later, I was ready for a cheeseburger and fries, but I lost my craving for ice cream and didn’t have more ice cream for nearly 48 hours.
-- Cumberland Valley and the Heat. Camping is prohibited in the 14 miles through the valley, and we made that day-long trip in 100-plus heat and humidity. It was Pennsylvania at its loveliest with smooth trails and mostly-flat walking through cornfields and forests and a mid-afternoon swim in Conodoguinet Creek (aka Whatyacallit Creek) four miles from camp to wash away the sweat. Add in swims in a lake near a campground and at a public pool in Boiling Springs and you have refreshed and happy hikers.
-- The Rattlesnake. I credit tai chi training with giving me patience and confidence as I sometimes teeter on the rocks of Pennsylvania and I believe it saved me from stepping into a life-challenging encounter with a timber rattler. That stutter-step move in the 32 sword form is called “wild horse crosses a mountain stream.” Having gotten past the snake, I now call it “grasshopper dances over rattlesnake’s back.”
-- Trail Angels. I stood in the rain beside the road for barely two minutes before Brad stopped and gave me a ride the two miles into Lickdale, PA. My shopping finished as the rain was ending and I was putting on my pack when Jeff came up and asked me if I needed a ride back to the trailhead. We stopped at Wendy’s on the way out of town. A Pentecostal pastor I met on the trail happily drove me all the way into Gettysburg.
-- Rockhound. A 43-year-old former Army MP, Rockhound had a heart attack in Troutdale, VA on April 2, the day I left Springer, and then had a double bypass operation and took three months off before getting back on the trail.
Most hikers haven’t had their walk disrupted by major surgery, but many of us have walked through crises of confidence, motivation, interest and will after making it halfway to Katahdin but knowing that we had more than a thousand miles to go.
Strider and I have hiked together since Franklin, NC more than 1100 miles ago, but he had gone to Gettysburg and was close to calling it quits. After a long talk with his mother and himself, he decided to stay in the woods and is happily hiking again, determined to get to Katahdin.
Francois Dillinger was distraught and yelling at himself when I arrived at the Ensign Cowell Shelter in Maryland and his buddy Sherpa was not doing much better.
“I have to finish this,” Dillinger said, “I have never finished anything that I started, and I have to finish this.” He had taken a series of zero days and was having problems getting re-engaged, although it seems like he’s now back on track.
Everyone has been running numbers – how many miles a day will it take to get me where I need to be? Will I make it? Am I behind schedule? Where are my friends?”
Our population has dwindled since we all left Georgia so many weeks ago. Those who keep track say that last year 1460 hikers left Springer for Katahdin, 747 of them made it to Harpers Ferry, and 349 made it all the way to the northern end of the 2,180 mile trail.
The success rate of a straight through thru-hike – about 10-15 percent.
It’s August now, and we start getting the same questions from others on the trail and in town as we move steadily north. Aren’t you running late? Are you going to make it to Maine? Wow, you still have a long way to go!
Undeterred, each moves on, knowing that half of us might leave the trail before reaching the end.
The mental part is the hardest because we often have to push our bodies through pain and injury, and because some days we would just rather not hike but go hiking anyway.
Sitting in the Palmerton, PA library, I take stock of my battered body as I am poised (odd word) to start my fifth month in the woods and on the Appalachian Trail.
Despite Sunday’s banging, my feet seem fine even though I switched from boots to Trailrunners in Harpers Ferry and I had been nursing a foot injury since the Shenandoah National Forest almost 300 miles back.
I took a chunk out of my right little toe when I was barefoot and kicked a rock while putting the rain cover on my tent before a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Bandages helped, but the constant pressure of my shoes and the pounding of rocks and roots have made it hard to heal.
As July becomes August, I move ahead, confident in my ability to go the distance and stick with the adventure of a lifetime.
I move ahead with the support and caring of folks at home, somehow inspiring them as Rockhound and many others out here (and at home) continue to inspire me and cheer me on.
Tomorrow I head back up the mountain that kicked my ass so badly the day before yesterday. And tomorrow I will get it done. I will miss Pennsylvania (or not) but look very much forward to what comes next.
Happy Trails.
On to New Jersey and New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and New Hampshire.
On to Maine.
-30-
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Lesson One -- Watch Your Step
July 27, Port Clinton, PA. -- Had my left foot landed where I was about to plant it, someone else would have been telling this story and I probably would not be around to read it.
It was late yesterday, near the end of a 15-mile day that would get me to Eagle’s Nest Shelter, about 1200 miles along the Appalachian Trail. I moved across Pennsylvania in gorgeous weather, welcoming the cooler temperatures and the clean air that followed the rain-soaked 17 miles the day before, that hike a relief from the 18–miles the day before in the humid high 90s.
My knees and feet were feeling a long day on rocky trails when the path smoothed and the walk became easier. Had I planted my left foot where I saw it about to land, I would have been ankle deep in a fat rattlesnake coiled on the edge of the trail.
The snake would have surely struck while I struggled to free myself from the eight-foot tangle of angry snake fighting for its own life from a sudden attack from above. Had I been bitten and struggled along for help, I would have soon found still another rattler just off the trail to my right.
Happily, instincts kicked in because conscious thought was scared out of me. Years of tai chi trained me to stutter my step to get my left foot past the snake and push me ahead, to a short hop over a fallen log and onto my right foot, where I pivoted in fear to see what had almost happened.
The fat snake just stared at me and hissed. I just stared back and tried to breathe, assuming that I was safely out of range.
My breathing returned to normal as I pulled out my camera and gathered my wits while thinking through what might have just happened. As I walked on, I sorted through the memories from earlier that day, a routine one on my six-month journey from Springer Mountain, GA to Mount Katahdin, ME.
The snake will live on in my memory, but I have to go hiking now and do not have time to post the rest of this section of my amazing journey and the memories – the half-gallon of vanilla ice cream near the halfway point, the latest trail news, and many other wonderful tales and wonders. That will come soon, but this story had to come while fresh.
My anxiety about getting to New England in time to finish is fading, because something magical happens nearly every step of the way. My old buddies Chowhound and Chuck Wagon are now a couple of days behind and should be with us soon.
And I had a surprise letter at the Port Clinton post office – a wo0ndefrul letter from an old pal at DSS who, as I write, is taking her own time on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia -- walking from Springer Mountain to Neel’s Gap. Great Hike. You Go Girl!!
So on I walk, my days filled with amazing challenges and payoffs. The day before the snake, I had called the monastery looking for the Messsenger, but he was not at work and I spent some time talking with Father A.J. We caught up on news from there and here (the Messenger and wife are expecting) and he closed with a wonderful goodbye:
“God Bless You, Grasshopper.”
That conversation was fresh in my mind when I found the snake. And another message from earlier in the hike that sticks with me:
“Patience, Grasshopper. And Trust in the Lord Thy God.”
Happy Trails everyone.
It was late yesterday, near the end of a 15-mile day that would get me to Eagle’s Nest Shelter, about 1200 miles along the Appalachian Trail. I moved across Pennsylvania in gorgeous weather, welcoming the cooler temperatures and the clean air that followed the rain-soaked 17 miles the day before, that hike a relief from the 18–miles the day before in the humid high 90s.
My knees and feet were feeling a long day on rocky trails when the path smoothed and the walk became easier. Had I planted my left foot where I saw it about to land, I would have been ankle deep in a fat rattlesnake coiled on the edge of the trail.
The snake would have surely struck while I struggled to free myself from the eight-foot tangle of angry snake fighting for its own life from a sudden attack from above. Had I been bitten and struggled along for help, I would have soon found still another rattler just off the trail to my right.
Happily, instincts kicked in because conscious thought was scared out of me. Years of tai chi trained me to stutter my step to get my left foot past the snake and push me ahead, to a short hop over a fallen log and onto my right foot, where I pivoted in fear to see what had almost happened.
The fat snake just stared at me and hissed. I just stared back and tried to breathe, assuming that I was safely out of range.
My breathing returned to normal as I pulled out my camera and gathered my wits while thinking through what might have just happened. As I walked on, I sorted through the memories from earlier that day, a routine one on my six-month journey from Springer Mountain, GA to Mount Katahdin, ME.
The snake will live on in my memory, but I have to go hiking now and do not have time to post the rest of this section of my amazing journey and the memories – the half-gallon of vanilla ice cream near the halfway point, the latest trail news, and many other wonderful tales and wonders. That will come soon, but this story had to come while fresh.
My anxiety about getting to New England in time to finish is fading, because something magical happens nearly every step of the way. My old buddies Chowhound and Chuck Wagon are now a couple of days behind and should be with us soon.
And I had a surprise letter at the Port Clinton post office – a wo0ndefrul letter from an old pal at DSS who, as I write, is taking her own time on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia -- walking from Springer Mountain to Neel’s Gap. Great Hike. You Go Girl!!
So on I walk, my days filled with amazing challenges and payoffs. The day before the snake, I had called the monastery looking for the Messsenger, but he was not at work and I spent some time talking with Father A.J. We caught up on news from there and here (the Messenger and wife are expecting) and he closed with a wonderful goodbye:
“God Bless You, Grasshopper.”
That conversation was fresh in my mind when I found the snake. And another message from earlier in the hike that sticks with me:
“Patience, Grasshopper. And Trust in the Lord Thy God.”
Happy Trails everyone.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Halfway Home, a Long Way to Go
Mary’s Rock, in the Shenandoah. July 3, 2011
Thunder boomed and the wind whipped across the bald rock face, threatening to roll my tent, as I lay inside pushing hard against the walls and hoping that my weight would be a solid anchor.
The lighting kept flashing and the rain blew sideways for the better part of an hour. I was nervous and prayed for God’s protection, wondering whether my decision to camp at this exposed site at 3500 feet was foolhardy. Surely, I thought, the folks who made my Hubba tent had tested its stability in high winds, and, surely, the tent poles were designed to not attract lightning.
I had started to Maine on April 3, three months earlier, and had decided that this would be a great place to camp. Mary’s Rock looks over Luray, VA to the west and the sunset was outstanding, despite the storm to the north I thought might be moving away and would not affect me. Wishful thinking. In my bravado, I ignored my conversation from earlier in the day with two southbounders who had camped here until a storm forced them off the mountain in the dead of night.
It was a nerve-wracking hour, and though the rain continued, the thunder seemed to be moving away and the lightning flashes grew faint. The wind slowly died and the tent stopped flapping. The rain stopped and my breathing returned to normal as the storm passed.
I peeped from the tent and then crawled out. The storm had moved north, the sun was settling beyond Luray and leaving luminous orange trails as the lights of the town flickered and headlights moved through the valley below.
Exhausted, I crawled back inside, leaving the tent’s rain fly open so I could watch the sky as the storm continued to fade.
The evening adventure was the perfect end to a nearly perfect day. Another thunderstorm had roused me in the middle of the previous night and I had banged my little toe against a rock and ripped skin away as I worked to put the rain fly on my tent before the rain. (Knock on wood, that’s my only foot injury, but it still bothers me a week later.)
Rain always makes it more difficult to break camp, but the sun warmed the forest and I had a nice walk to the Skyland Resort and Restaurant where I was delighted to find an” all you can eat” breakfast buffet and a Sunday Washington Post. Feeling like a normal biped instead of a smelly woodlands creature, I enjoyed two large plates of eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit, biscuits, gravy, and potatoes and three cups of coffee while scanning the paper and watching the valley from a comfortable spot indoors.
I slept well at the close of that adventure-filled Sunday and was up by six and on the trail a half-hour later on Monday morning. Though I was still almost a week away from Harper’s Ferry, I was a bit less than that away from one of the most unexpected, cool and emotional moments of my 90-plus days in the woods.
Just past a stretch of steep ups and downs known as the Rollercoaster and the Devil’s Playground, a simple sign was nailed to a tree.
1000
Miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, that is. Any doubts, dismay and frustration from the journey vanished. I grinned and fished my cellphone from my pack to call my son and share the moment. I had hiked 1000 miles! And that, friends, is a long, long way.
Another sign had marked the end of 535 miles of Virginia trails and the move into West Virginia (the fifth state of the hike) but it had just a fraction of the impact of the 1000-mile sign. I strapped my camera to a tree and set the timer for a memory-saving shot of me, the tree and that marker.
The next eight miles were a blur, with a cascade of memories of the past 13 weeks in the woods. At Keys Gap, I walked a half mile down WV Highway 9 to Torlone’s Pizza, where my thru-hiker friend Torch joined me for cheeseburgers and a couple of beers to toast our milestone.
The stretch from Rockfish Gap at Waynesboro, VA to Harper’s Ferry, WV brought me to the midpoint of my woodlands adventure. As I walked, I thanked God for his many blessings, and prayed for my friends on the trail and at home. My spiritual journey had brought me closer to Him, and I also praised Jesus Christ and thanked Him for being part of my life and for helping me shed many of the burdens that I carried with me to the Appalachian Trail.
I carry these and many other memories as I continue to move north:
The first park ranger I met in the Shenandoah National Park wore a Smoky Bear hat, but it looked like a child’s cap teetering on top of his 300-pound body. His many chins jiggled and mountains of flesh rippled under his uniform as he gave me the forms that would allow me to camp in the park.
I learned the true meaning of the verb – to Yogi. Derived from the Yogi Bear cartoons, it is hiker parlance for begging for food, i.e. “Grasshopper yogied the family at the picnic table and came away with four peanut butter sandwiches and a banana.”
The quiet evening at Manassas Gap Shelter quickly shifted into party mode when Lunchbox pulled out a five-liter water bag filled with red wine. Lunchbox, one of a few guys hiking in a kilt, and his lady friend Long Trail, were a half-day behind their friends Indy and Snags; it would have been rude not to help him lighten that 10-pound burden. One cup of wine quickly turned into several.
Mr. and Mrs. Black, eccentric and charming honeymooning southbounders, lived up to the reputation that preceded them. A smallish man, he carried 110 pounds of gear and her pack weighed more than 60. A former Marine honing his survivalist skills, Mr. Black was admittedly ADHD with a smattering of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (“a slightly dangerous combination,” he said.) He transformed campsites into comfort zones, building stone fire pits and wooden benches for “the missus” and worked to decorate his hiking stick with the skins of snakes he had killed and eaten and with feathers of turkeys and hawks.
Spud and Snake Hips, a 60-ish couple also staying Bears Den Hostel, helped me work through the calendar issues that we face as we work north hoping to make it to Mount Katahdin by mid-October. They were catching a train to Massachusetts and planned a New England section before jumping back to the Middle Atlantic states.
The Shenandoah National Forest was everything I had hoped it would be when I continued north after a Zero Day in Waynesboro, Virginia. The trail crosses Skyline Drive many times as it wanders toward West Virginia, and the forest is more open and welcoming to tourists who drive along the ridge, enjoy its beautiful vistas and perhaps take to the woods for a day hike.
This section of my hike was a bit lonely as many of my fellow thru-hikers had decided to “aqua blaze” and paddle the Shenandoah River down to Harper’s Ferry instead of hiking the 160 miles from Rockfish Gap. At times, I felt like a park bear, just another tourist attraction.
“Are you a thru-hiker,” a woman asked as she and her two pre-teen children crossed my path.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You guys are like rock stars out here,” she said as her son, wide-eyed in wonder, stared up at me and clutched his trail maps. I laughed out loud and I answered the usual “what is it like” questions before we went our separate ways.
This part of the trail was a delightful break for hikers as we could now carry fewer supplies, resupply and have hot meals at the Wayside restaurants, and wash ourselves and our clothes at any of several campgrounds through the park. The hiking also was a tad easier with milder ups and downs and fewer rocks and obstacles.
I had planned a short stop at Big Meadows Wayside, but that turned into a two-hour stay as the lush green lawn was a wonderful place for a break. I bought a cheeseburger, fries and a soda and watched tourists come and go while I devoured the hot lunch at a picnic table. The burger, actually a double burger, was one of the best I had found on my hike, so I had a second one (I needed the fuel) and then two scoops of blueberry ice cream before dozing in the shade.
I had hoped to resupply at the Elkwallow Wayside on the Fourth of July and snag enough food (and maybe a burger or two and a blueberry milkshake) to get me to Harpers Ferry, but the storm that rocked me at Mary’s Rock the night before had knocked out the power at the Wayside and forced a change in plans.
Low on food, I was pondering my options when a Trail Angel came from nowhere and saved the day. He was a former thru-hiker just out looking for hikers to share the goodies that he had packed into the back of his car. He gave me bananas, Gatorade, granola bars, a bag of cashews, some cheese and a few Snickers bar; a family picnicking nearby made me four peanut butter sandwiches before wishing me well and sending me on my way.
I continue to marvel at the generosity of others and their willingness to help hikers.
Nature also has a very special way of taking care of things, and food is little more than an arm’s length away as berry-laden bushes often line the trail. Blackberries and raspberries were bursting forth and sweet juices stained my hands as I stopped to devour a luscious natural treat.
My mood and outlook about my hike to Maine improved as I walked, but I missed many of my fellow travelers who had decided to paddle instead of walk. It helps to share the journey and sort through issues and make sense of things; we support each other as we all wrestle with doubts and frustration and fatigue while plowing ahead on the long walk to Maine.
Happily, I again had pep in my step and pride in my stride (a campaign slogan from a Statehouse candidate a few decades ago.)
Gandhi and I (not that one, he’s dead) shared our worry about getting to Katahdin before Baxter State Park closes on October 15, and we discussed our options before deciding we would hike on and get as far North as we can and not worry about the deadline that looms a few months ahead. Our best would simply be good enough.
I am determined to not let the Monkey of Expectations crawl once again onto my back and to stop worrying about the calendar and not obsess over how many miles I need to cover before reaching my goal. Each of us came into the woods for different reasons and we brought our own expectations along; we all watched as our plans continue to evolve and our hikes play out in ways we did not expect.
Trail normalcy returned when Penguin walked into camp late one night. “Hey, Penguin, is that you? It’s Grasshopper!” “What’s happening, Grasshopper! Good to see you.”
We had met in the Great Smoky Mountains more than 750 miles south and our paths continued to cross as we moved ahead at different speeds. Torch also came into camp that night and we discovered that he had started a day after me, and I learned that some of the hikers I had met in Georgia were still on the trail.
Crossing the Shenandoah River and reaching Harper’s Ferry was a magical moment, though I was getting here six days later than I had once hoped. I arrived a stronger, though far lighter, man than the one who left Georgia so many weeks ago carrying 55 pounds of gear and the excess baggage that comes with a 60-year journey.
While it’s possible to leave many worries behind, it is also easy to bring them along and the solitude and grind of a wilderness adventure can also bring issues and worries into sharper focus. They can also weigh on your psyche more heavily because there are fewer demands and distractions that offer cover in the “real world.” The woods also offer a separate set of demands and issues and worries.
I will think about all of that some other time.
I am off to the Post Office and the outfitter, where I will buy a new pair of shoes because my Vasque Breeze boots are worn out after barely 750 miles. I am going to move into lighter “trail runners” that many hikers favor, and head north along somewhat flatter but still demanding trails.
Katahdin is still my goal, but I may decide to jump north to New Hampshire and hike the northernmost 500 miles of the trail before jumping back south to cover the middle section and finish my 2180 mile journey. My goal is still to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in one calendar year, and it really matters little whether it’s straight through or includes some skipping around.
We all hike our own hikes. And, like with the rest of our journeys, what truly matters is what’s in our own hearts, and minds and souls.
My journey still depends on God’s will and mine, and there are miles and miles to go before I sleep and my travels end.
There is an ice cream shop in Harper’s Ferry that is calling my name and sitting at this computer brings me no closer to Maine. It is time to eat more fuel because, God knows, I will burn it up as I move along through the summer’s heat and humidity.
On through West Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania – and perhaps sooner rather than later to the Presidential Range in New Hampshire and the grueling test of Maine.
Happy Trails. On I go!
-30-
Thunder boomed and the wind whipped across the bald rock face, threatening to roll my tent, as I lay inside pushing hard against the walls and hoping that my weight would be a solid anchor.
The lighting kept flashing and the rain blew sideways for the better part of an hour. I was nervous and prayed for God’s protection, wondering whether my decision to camp at this exposed site at 3500 feet was foolhardy. Surely, I thought, the folks who made my Hubba tent had tested its stability in high winds, and, surely, the tent poles were designed to not attract lightning.
I had started to Maine on April 3, three months earlier, and had decided that this would be a great place to camp. Mary’s Rock looks over Luray, VA to the west and the sunset was outstanding, despite the storm to the north I thought might be moving away and would not affect me. Wishful thinking. In my bravado, I ignored my conversation from earlier in the day with two southbounders who had camped here until a storm forced them off the mountain in the dead of night.
It was a nerve-wracking hour, and though the rain continued, the thunder seemed to be moving away and the lightning flashes grew faint. The wind slowly died and the tent stopped flapping. The rain stopped and my breathing returned to normal as the storm passed.
I peeped from the tent and then crawled out. The storm had moved north, the sun was settling beyond Luray and leaving luminous orange trails as the lights of the town flickered and headlights moved through the valley below.
Exhausted, I crawled back inside, leaving the tent’s rain fly open so I could watch the sky as the storm continued to fade.
The evening adventure was the perfect end to a nearly perfect day. Another thunderstorm had roused me in the middle of the previous night and I had banged my little toe against a rock and ripped skin away as I worked to put the rain fly on my tent before the rain. (Knock on wood, that’s my only foot injury, but it still bothers me a week later.)
Rain always makes it more difficult to break camp, but the sun warmed the forest and I had a nice walk to the Skyland Resort and Restaurant where I was delighted to find an” all you can eat” breakfast buffet and a Sunday Washington Post. Feeling like a normal biped instead of a smelly woodlands creature, I enjoyed two large plates of eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit, biscuits, gravy, and potatoes and three cups of coffee while scanning the paper and watching the valley from a comfortable spot indoors.
I slept well at the close of that adventure-filled Sunday and was up by six and on the trail a half-hour later on Monday morning. Though I was still almost a week away from Harper’s Ferry, I was a bit less than that away from one of the most unexpected, cool and emotional moments of my 90-plus days in the woods.
Just past a stretch of steep ups and downs known as the Rollercoaster and the Devil’s Playground, a simple sign was nailed to a tree.
1000
Miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, that is. Any doubts, dismay and frustration from the journey vanished. I grinned and fished my cellphone from my pack to call my son and share the moment. I had hiked 1000 miles! And that, friends, is a long, long way.
Another sign had marked the end of 535 miles of Virginia trails and the move into West Virginia (the fifth state of the hike) but it had just a fraction of the impact of the 1000-mile sign. I strapped my camera to a tree and set the timer for a memory-saving shot of me, the tree and that marker.
The next eight miles were a blur, with a cascade of memories of the past 13 weeks in the woods. At Keys Gap, I walked a half mile down WV Highway 9 to Torlone’s Pizza, where my thru-hiker friend Torch joined me for cheeseburgers and a couple of beers to toast our milestone.
The stretch from Rockfish Gap at Waynesboro, VA to Harper’s Ferry, WV brought me to the midpoint of my woodlands adventure. As I walked, I thanked God for his many blessings, and prayed for my friends on the trail and at home. My spiritual journey had brought me closer to Him, and I also praised Jesus Christ and thanked Him for being part of my life and for helping me shed many of the burdens that I carried with me to the Appalachian Trail.
I carry these and many other memories as I continue to move north:
The first park ranger I met in the Shenandoah National Park wore a Smoky Bear hat, but it looked like a child’s cap teetering on top of his 300-pound body. His many chins jiggled and mountains of flesh rippled under his uniform as he gave me the forms that would allow me to camp in the park.
I learned the true meaning of the verb – to Yogi. Derived from the Yogi Bear cartoons, it is hiker parlance for begging for food, i.e. “Grasshopper yogied the family at the picnic table and came away with four peanut butter sandwiches and a banana.”
The quiet evening at Manassas Gap Shelter quickly shifted into party mode when Lunchbox pulled out a five-liter water bag filled with red wine. Lunchbox, one of a few guys hiking in a kilt, and his lady friend Long Trail, were a half-day behind their friends Indy and Snags; it would have been rude not to help him lighten that 10-pound burden. One cup of wine quickly turned into several.
Mr. and Mrs. Black, eccentric and charming honeymooning southbounders, lived up to the reputation that preceded them. A smallish man, he carried 110 pounds of gear and her pack weighed more than 60. A former Marine honing his survivalist skills, Mr. Black was admittedly ADHD with a smattering of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (“a slightly dangerous combination,” he said.) He transformed campsites into comfort zones, building stone fire pits and wooden benches for “the missus” and worked to decorate his hiking stick with the skins of snakes he had killed and eaten and with feathers of turkeys and hawks.
Spud and Snake Hips, a 60-ish couple also staying Bears Den Hostel, helped me work through the calendar issues that we face as we work north hoping to make it to Mount Katahdin by mid-October. They were catching a train to Massachusetts and planned a New England section before jumping back to the Middle Atlantic states.
The Shenandoah National Forest was everything I had hoped it would be when I continued north after a Zero Day in Waynesboro, Virginia. The trail crosses Skyline Drive many times as it wanders toward West Virginia, and the forest is more open and welcoming to tourists who drive along the ridge, enjoy its beautiful vistas and perhaps take to the woods for a day hike.
This section of my hike was a bit lonely as many of my fellow thru-hikers had decided to “aqua blaze” and paddle the Shenandoah River down to Harper’s Ferry instead of hiking the 160 miles from Rockfish Gap. At times, I felt like a park bear, just another tourist attraction.
“Are you a thru-hiker,” a woman asked as she and her two pre-teen children crossed my path.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You guys are like rock stars out here,” she said as her son, wide-eyed in wonder, stared up at me and clutched his trail maps. I laughed out loud and I answered the usual “what is it like” questions before we went our separate ways.
This part of the trail was a delightful break for hikers as we could now carry fewer supplies, resupply and have hot meals at the Wayside restaurants, and wash ourselves and our clothes at any of several campgrounds through the park. The hiking also was a tad easier with milder ups and downs and fewer rocks and obstacles.
I had planned a short stop at Big Meadows Wayside, but that turned into a two-hour stay as the lush green lawn was a wonderful place for a break. I bought a cheeseburger, fries and a soda and watched tourists come and go while I devoured the hot lunch at a picnic table. The burger, actually a double burger, was one of the best I had found on my hike, so I had a second one (I needed the fuel) and then two scoops of blueberry ice cream before dozing in the shade.
I had hoped to resupply at the Elkwallow Wayside on the Fourth of July and snag enough food (and maybe a burger or two and a blueberry milkshake) to get me to Harpers Ferry, but the storm that rocked me at Mary’s Rock the night before had knocked out the power at the Wayside and forced a change in plans.
Low on food, I was pondering my options when a Trail Angel came from nowhere and saved the day. He was a former thru-hiker just out looking for hikers to share the goodies that he had packed into the back of his car. He gave me bananas, Gatorade, granola bars, a bag of cashews, some cheese and a few Snickers bar; a family picnicking nearby made me four peanut butter sandwiches before wishing me well and sending me on my way.
I continue to marvel at the generosity of others and their willingness to help hikers.
Nature also has a very special way of taking care of things, and food is little more than an arm’s length away as berry-laden bushes often line the trail. Blackberries and raspberries were bursting forth and sweet juices stained my hands as I stopped to devour a luscious natural treat.
My mood and outlook about my hike to Maine improved as I walked, but I missed many of my fellow travelers who had decided to paddle instead of walk. It helps to share the journey and sort through issues and make sense of things; we support each other as we all wrestle with doubts and frustration and fatigue while plowing ahead on the long walk to Maine.
Happily, I again had pep in my step and pride in my stride (a campaign slogan from a Statehouse candidate a few decades ago.)
Gandhi and I (not that one, he’s dead) shared our worry about getting to Katahdin before Baxter State Park closes on October 15, and we discussed our options before deciding we would hike on and get as far North as we can and not worry about the deadline that looms a few months ahead. Our best would simply be good enough.
I am determined to not let the Monkey of Expectations crawl once again onto my back and to stop worrying about the calendar and not obsess over how many miles I need to cover before reaching my goal. Each of us came into the woods for different reasons and we brought our own expectations along; we all watched as our plans continue to evolve and our hikes play out in ways we did not expect.
Trail normalcy returned when Penguin walked into camp late one night. “Hey, Penguin, is that you? It’s Grasshopper!” “What’s happening, Grasshopper! Good to see you.”
We had met in the Great Smoky Mountains more than 750 miles south and our paths continued to cross as we moved ahead at different speeds. Torch also came into camp that night and we discovered that he had started a day after me, and I learned that some of the hikers I had met in Georgia were still on the trail.
Crossing the Shenandoah River and reaching Harper’s Ferry was a magical moment, though I was getting here six days later than I had once hoped. I arrived a stronger, though far lighter, man than the one who left Georgia so many weeks ago carrying 55 pounds of gear and the excess baggage that comes with a 60-year journey.
While it’s possible to leave many worries behind, it is also easy to bring them along and the solitude and grind of a wilderness adventure can also bring issues and worries into sharper focus. They can also weigh on your psyche more heavily because there are fewer demands and distractions that offer cover in the “real world.” The woods also offer a separate set of demands and issues and worries.
I will think about all of that some other time.
I am off to the Post Office and the outfitter, where I will buy a new pair of shoes because my Vasque Breeze boots are worn out after barely 750 miles. I am going to move into lighter “trail runners” that many hikers favor, and head north along somewhat flatter but still demanding trails.
Katahdin is still my goal, but I may decide to jump north to New Hampshire and hike the northernmost 500 miles of the trail before jumping back south to cover the middle section and finish my 2180 mile journey. My goal is still to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in one calendar year, and it really matters little whether it’s straight through or includes some skipping around.
We all hike our own hikes. And, like with the rest of our journeys, what truly matters is what’s in our own hearts, and minds and souls.
My journey still depends on God’s will and mine, and there are miles and miles to go before I sleep and my travels end.
There is an ice cream shop in Harper’s Ferry that is calling my name and sitting at this computer brings me no closer to Maine. It is time to eat more fuel because, God knows, I will burn it up as I move along through the summer’s heat and humidity.
On through West Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania – and perhaps sooner rather than later to the Presidential Range in New Hampshire and the grueling test of Maine.
Happy Trails. On I go!
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