AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (10 page)

This is the first time on my hike that I feel burdened by tasks I put on myself. Back in the real world, I routinely enlisted myself in an excessive array of activities. I recall a formative decision I made soon after starting my first job out of college. An acquaintance had asked if I would reroof his mother's home. I spent two days pondering the decision. I had a job programming. I didn't need to labor on roofs anymore. When the decision finally came, it was an epiphany. No way was I going to allow myself to settle into an ordinary life because it was the easy thing to do. I didn't want to be pigeonholed, defined by my career, growing soft and specialized behind a desk. I would continue to resist specialization and stretch myself by undertaking new endeavors.

If not for that attitude, I wouldn't be here. But because of that attitude, I can be too demanding of myself. Now I see an unexpected benefit of thru-hiking. It is an escape from me. It is a forced simplification of my life; being on the trail limits the opportunities for me to pull myself in multiple directions.

By the time I leave Atkins, all the other thru-hikers who were here last night have left, and a few new ones have trickled in. After I check out, I pass the open door of a room full of hikers, catching a glimpse of one with a green hat. I don't pause to do a double-take, because unmistakably it is Steve O., the hiker I believed--hoped--I had seen for the last time in Hot Springs.

It is raining when I head out, and it rains on and off all muddy day. The first two miles are through waist-high grain, and it is like walking through a car wash. The trail goes through a number of cow pastures, each time entering and exiting the barbwire-bound fields over stiles: wide, stubby, wood ladders with three or four steps. The path in the pasture is rutted, about the size of a bowling lane gutter, with red clay showing where the grass has been pounded away. The bottom of the gutter is muddy at best, or flowing with a stream of orange water. I try walking on the shoulder of the gutter, but a misstep catches the rain-slicked clay and I slide, toppling over on my side. Venturing off the trail, I get thrashed by tall grass, splatter through a few piles of manure, and find that the ground below the grass is also uneven.

I reach Knot Maul Branch Shelter at 4:30 p.m. It is a full house, and the water source is far from the shelter. Crash is laying out his sleeping pad. I tell him of my plan to head for Chestnut Knob Shelter, another nine miles north. I will be in for a twenty-three-mile day, long under any circumstances, but particularly so since I wasn't on the trail until noon today. Late in the afternoon, I reach an extensive, somewhat open ridge, feeling as though I should be near the shelter but never getting there. Heel pain is excruciating now, even on uphill steps. It was a poor decision for me to push on. Wind-blown clouds limit visibility and dump a steady rain on me. The grassy top of the ridge has just enough trees to avoid being called a bald. Ghostly looking trees stand back from the trail, obscured by the foggy mist. Wet, windy, high, and exposed is a good recipe for hypothermia, and I feel increasingly chilled, despite the sweay effort of walking.

A spring-fed puddle is off to the left. I recall from the guidebook that this must be the water source for my still-unseen shelter. As much as I desire to reach cover, I know I need water to cook, and I won't want to come back later. I take off my pack and balance it in an upright position on the long, wet grass since there are no trees in the vicinity. In the brief moment of pulling back my pack cover to get out a water bottle and filter, rain dampens the upper contents of my pack. I pump a bottle of water with numb hands and a shivering body. When done, I turn to see that my pack has toppled, spilling more gear onto the wet ground. Frustrated, I stuff it all in the pack, losing all pretense of keeping anything dry.

I am lucky that there is room in the shelter, more so since it is a rare, fully enclosed, concrete shelter. A half hour later, Crash arrives. I am flattered that he was inspired by me to extend his day. His entrance makes me think of this shelter as an Arctic outpost, where the weary, bundled traveler opens the door and enters with a burst of howling cold wind. Then the wind slams the door behind him and there is silence and safety.

The pain in my heel is agonizing when I walk out to pee in the morning. For the past few days, my heel pain has intensified as the day wore on, so I don't like the way this day has begun.

After spending considerable time cleaning and rebandaging my heel, I decide I need to get off the trail and see a doctor about this problem. All but one of the other hikers head out while I'm looking over the guidebooks for the next easy access to town. The last remaining hiker is a young man who was asleep in the bunk above mine when I arrived last night. To my knowledge, he had not stirred in the twelve hours since that time. Now he has retrieved a cigarette and lit up without leaving his bag. The smoke pervades this small enclosed building, but I say nothing.

The best choice for getting off the trail is at road U.S. 52, which leads into the town of Bland, Virginia. This road crossing is twenty-two miles away, a daunting prospect considering how I feel at the moment. At first, there is a rocky but manageable descent from the shelter, then a climb back up Garden Mountain. On the climb, the smoker-hiker passes me. I step aside and finally say hello. He flies by without a word. On the downside of the mountain, I come upon him and another thru-hiker. His friend had camped by the road last night. The two of them look over a map, scheming to hitch out on this little-traveled road. Smoker-hiker remains reticent, but his gregarious friend explains the plan. "If we can just figure out which way to walk, [right or left on the road], someone will eventually come along and give us a ride."

"How will you get back here?" I ask, only getting laughter for a response. Of course they don't intend to hitch back out on a dirt road. There are plenty of well-traveled access points further up the trail.

In the middle part of my day, the trail is an obstacle course of mud, blow-downs, and a bunch of stream crossings. Actually, I believe it is only one stream that the trail planners crossed back and forth a dozen times. On the home stretch to civilization, the AT follows a gravel road, where I pass hiker "Dirt Nap" playing his guitar. He indeed looks like a man woken from a nap on the ground. Gear jangles from his pack as he strolls along. Given the width of the road, I'm free to walk alongside, pass, or walk backwards diagonally in front of him, as a dog might explore perspectives of a walking companion. His words have the wispy, deliberate tone you would use to asses mee hypnosis. We speak about his guitar, music. On other topics he is vague.

"When did you start the trail?" I ask.

Dirt Nap responds, "I don't know."

Surely he knows when he started hiking, but giving a concrete answer would undermine his enigmatic persona. The appropriate response here would be, "Awesome." "Awesome" is a sweeping adjective used by the younger generation. In this context, "awesome" is equivalent to the "far out" of the older generation. If I say "awesome," it would mean, "It's cool that you are so much at one with nature that you have lost your sense of time and self. Far out." Semantics aside, I'm in a bit of a snippy mood, and I don't want to let Dirt Nap off easy.

I test his ability to be creatively evasive with, "Where did you stay last night?"

He's taken aback, stumbling over my breach of protocol. "I...I don't remember."

When I get to U.S. 52, the first car I see pulls over and the driver gives me a ride to the Big Walker Motel in Bland, Virginia. Smoker-hiker and his friend are here, telling me of their success in hitching out from the dirt road, even though they had chosen the wrong direction to walk. Steve O. is here, too.

"Hi, Steve," I say.

"Awol--I thought that was you I saw in Atkins," he responds.

In the midst of our greetings, it dawns on me that he shouldn't be here yet. It was only yesterday that I left Atkins, and Steve O. was just settling in. How is it that he is here one day later? Actually, it is almost as improbable for me to be here. He saw me at noon yesterday, and here I am forty-four miles further north the next evening. For all he knows, I am a kindred spirit in taking a less literal approach to thru-hiking.

The incongruity has dawned on him as well, and he explains, "These guys I'm with, they've hiked that part already. Those miles are trash. I'm not gonna let it bother me. Hell, I'll be walking two thousand miles--nobody cares about a few miles."

The name Bland is apropos for this town. Scanning the phone book, I see few businesses. My choices for medical care are just a couple of private practices, and it is now Saturday morning. I have poked into the bulging infection on my left heel, as I did in Erwin, but now instead of clear fluid, a sickly yellow puss seeps out. Indecisive about what to do next, I talk on the phone with Juli and then with my parents. They encourage me to walk into an emergency room for medical care, a thought that never dawned on me. I think of hospitals as places for people who are seriously ill. The nearby town of Wytheville has a hospital. There is also a rental car agency that will shuttle me to Wytheville if I rent a car.

I lie on my stomach while the doctor and his assistant have a go at my heel. They cut and squeeze with much success. They whisper to themselves, not to keep me from hearing, but because they are concentrating.

"Look at all that," he says, referring to the puss they've extracted. He makes another cut.

"There is another pocket over here." He squeezeal the extent of his strength, then regrips and squeezes again. I know just how he feels, on the cusp of accomplishing a total purge. In spite of the pain, I want him to do this. I want the infection gone. I am silent, but my leg tension breaks the doctor's focus.

"Oh, sorry," he says, as if suddenly aware that the heel in his grip is attached to a person.

The doctor sends me away with antibiotics, bandaging tape, and gauze, and he reprimands me for continuing to walk with my foot in this condition.

"You should not hike until you've finished the antibiotics. The real problem for you will be the wound. Even if it has started to heal when you hike again, it will be very easy to reopen the injury."

The antibiotics will last a week. I can't take a week off. In my mind, I've already cut the doctor's suggestion back to four days, maybe even three. His other, more worrisome sentences ring true. This infection stemmed from a blister that I popped twelve days ago in Erwin. I thought it was on track to heal, and then the infection appeared. How can I prevent this weakened area from becoming a perennial problem?

From being on the trail, and from my prior reading about thru-hiking, I know that this is how a hike ends. It only takes one injury that won't go away, and I've already dodged a handful of injuries that had hike-ending potential. Also, taking multiple days off will break the momentum that I had. I will have the distraction of nursing a sore foot. Will I maintain the motivation to continue? Even if my heel ceases to be a problem, I've come to expect that there will be another injury or pain to take its place. I feel like my chances of finishing the hike are fifty-fifty. My assessment of the situation is objective. I'm not unmotivated at the moment. I won't really know how my head or my heel will react until I hit the trail again.

Assumption, even about your own state of mind, without immediacy of action is guesswork. During the yearlong planning of my hike, I mostly felt positive anticipation about the things I would be doing and places I'd be seeing, just like anyone does looking over vacation brochures. As my departure date grew near, worries about leaving work mounted. For at least four months I would be a spender with no earnings. Then came the day I actually walked away from my desk and turned in my badge. It was really happening. I felt like a truant, having broken free in midday, midweek. Instead of looking forward to 5:00 p.m., I was looking forward to adventure. The doubts I had about voluntary unemployment were washed away by the tide of excitement. It wasn't until then that unadulterated emotion escaped and I was certain of my decision.

I'm determined to do all that I can to get myself back on the trail with the best chance of staying the course. I find a motel in Wytheville willing to put me up for half price for taking a room with poor TV reception and agreeing to stay at least three nights. I buy Epsom salts and soak my foot for fifteen minutes three times a day. I wear camp clogs all the while, keeping the area free from friction or confinement.

I drive a car for the first time in over a month, taking my rental car north to an outfitter in Blacksburg, Virginia, to buy boots. Heel blistering occurs on my trailing foot during the walking motion, when my heel lifts off the ground but my shoe resists bending like my foot does. I reason that boots can be attached snugly at the ankle, alleviating some of the heel friction.

I purchase molefoam, a thicker version of the popular blister-protecting material called moleskin. Molefoam comes in patches about the size of an index card, about one-eighth of an inch thick, and has one adhesive side. It is applied by custom cutting a donut shaped piece and pasting it to your foot with the hole over the blister. The molefoam around the blister absorbs impact and friction that would otherwise befall the blister.