AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (11 page)

During my stay in town, I never tire of eating large meals at restaurants. Four days of bingeing hardly adds back any of the weight I had lost. I watch the movie
Finding Nemo
at the Millwald Theater, the oldest continuously operating movie house in Virginia, open since 1928.

I try my hand at trail magic and anonymously leave a cooler where I got off the trail near Bland. I want to see hikers, but no one passes in the half hour that I wait. When I retrieve the empty cooler later in the day, I see that Tipperary left a note of thanks.

The next day I head for a trail crossing further south, on a road I remember crossing before reaching Atkins. I navigate the back roads, pairing a road map that doesn't show the trail with a trail map that doesn't show the roads. I gain a better understanding of the effort others go through to meet hikers at trailheads. From the city of Marion, Virginia, I head up a tiny road that is supposed to cross the trail.

A short way out of town, two hikers are walking the road, still far from the trail. I'm not expecting them, and they are just as surprised to see a car. Not many hikers go into Marion because the trail leads directly into Atkins less than twenty miles away. The hikers are a couple in their midfifties. They are dressed alike in blue shorts, white shirts, and white Gilligan hats. The woman turns and backpedals, waving superfluously to get my attention. Her feet slide down a grassy shoulder of the road, and she falls forward onto her hands. Both have short black hair peppered with gray. I can't help my impressions. They look too clean, too civil, and they've come off the trail at an inconvenient road to go into a town no hiker visits. They must not know what they are doing. On the remainder of my hike, I would see much more of them and learn how wrong my impressions were. For now, they introduce themselves as Ken and Marcia.

The break did not make me feel like quitting. If anything, having the injury and time off added to my motivation. I had my hard times and expect balance to be restored. I now know that I have the drive to finish the hike and realize that I must take better care of myself to make it happen. I averaged twenty miles per day in the twelve days of hiking from Erwin to Bland. I no longer want to push to make miles. My self-imposed four-month schedule is sure to be extended.

It's raining. Not too bad really, and it clears up by noon. The trail feels different, more organic than the trail I left four days ago. The ground has rich, dark, wormy soil. Kudzu and its kin are covering the floor of the forest with green runners. I see three sizable black snakes at separate locations.

The cuts made by the doctor have not closed completely, but they are not bleeding. My heel does not hurt when I walkI c8217;m not used to hiking with shoes that come over the ankles, so I feel constrained by my new boots. Even though they are no higher than the average hiking boot, it feels like I am walking in ski boots. After a couple of miles, I start experiencing discomfort, especially when going downhill. On the downslope, the top of my boots put painful pressure on my Achilles tendons. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing how shoes or boots will work until you try them out. After using them, they are difficult or impossible to return, and usually you are a day or more away from being able to swap them out. If I stick with my current plan, I would reach Daleville in a little more than a week, where I could visit another outfitter. After about eight miles the pressure on my Achilles tendon is unbearable. I cut a line an inch and a half vertically down the back of each boot to loosen the "collar" around my leg.

At 3:00 p.m. I arrive at Jenny Knob Shelter. Boot alterations alleviated the stress on the back of my leg, and I never felt any irritation on my heel. At the shelter, I take off the bandage and see that there is no bleeding or undue redness. The day thus far was a success.

Two section hikers are in the shelter, and more thru-hikers come in after me. Andy is a thru-hiker I'm seeing for the first time. His clothes and gear give the impression he is traveling on a limited budget. He is young and from California. My short twelve-mile walk is exactly what I need to be doing while I'm nursing my heel and coming back up to speed on the trail. Andy packs up and continues down the trail. Rain clouds have dissipated, and I can see blue sky through the treetops. I get restless. The weather is perfect and I feel fine. Indecision paralyzes me until 5:00 p.m., then I get up and go. Six miles from Jenny Knob Shelter I'm ready to stop, but now I'm too close to a road. Head-high brush near Kimberling Creek laps across the trail. When I push them aside, thorns snag my shirt and cut thin red lines into my arms and shoulders. I'm wearing down and wish I had not left the shelter. My first day back and I've already made a bad decision and walked another twenty-mile day.

Darkness is falling, and I finally find a clearing in which to camp. It's on the side trail leading to Dismal Falls. Andy comes back from the falls and sets up his tent in the same clearing. Andy is good company; he is talkative, gregarious, and agreeable. He had met some locals having a party on the other side of the falls, and he had rock-hopped across to join them.

Dismal Falls is a short, wide cascade. Water drops only ten feet over a concave arc of rock. The creek is running low, exposing broad slabs of rock on the unused portion of the streambed. Our little clearing among saplings, with the din of the falls, is calm and comforting.

I return to the falls in the morning to get water and see a few of the locals asleep on the slabs of rock, one of them less than an arm's length from the falls. Andy is still in his tent when I leave. Before lunchtime I reach Wapiti Shelter, the location where two hikers were murdered in 1981.
²¹
The shelter faces away from the trail, as if embarrassed by its past. It is a worn, old-looking shelter. Inscriptions are on the walls and in the shelter register, some mourning the victims, some expressing outrage that the murderer was set free in 1996. It is a sad place to be, and I don't stay long. Sad, but not spooky; visiting this site does not change my visceral feeling that the trail is safe.

The trail passes through a zone in which all the trees are saplings, no taller than a dozen feet high. Their young leaves are a luminous light green. Undergrowth is dense here, still getting a share of sunlight that they will be deprived of when the trees mature. The effect is that of having a wall of green on either side of the trail, like a corridor through an oversized cornfield. A deer is in the corridor, less than twenty yards ahead of me, also walking north. He looks over his shoulder at me and then lazily jogs ahead on the trail until he is out of sight. I catch up and see him grazing on trailside shrubbery. Again, he only goes far enough to lose sight of me. On my third sighting, he grows impatient and leaves the trail for cover of the saplings. An hour later, the trees are taller and sparser, so I have clear vision of three deer galloping on a path that will bring them closer to me as they cut across the trail. They don't alter course even though they must be aware of my presence. I have a fleeting feeling of being disrespected since they show no fear of me--then I think better of it, content to believe that I am somehow passing through their woods with a nonthreatening demeanor.

The trail, now on a ridge, has changed direction from earlier in the day. Looking at the map, I see that the change is much more severe than I perceived while walking. A ten-mile section of trail is in the shape of a wide, flattened S curve. When the trail finally resumes its northeasterly bearing, I stop for a break at Doc's Knob Shelter, where I am perplexed to see Andy. He sheepishly admits that he took a blue-blaze trail that lops off one loop of the S, shortening the walk by about five miles. I do my best to help him understand that I don't condemn blue-blazing. Andy is a great guy to have on the trail, an asset to the trail community. In many ways, he is more wholly taking in the experience than I am as a white-blazer.

The trail leading away from the shelter is a wide straightaway, mildly downhill, lined with rhododendrons. The rhododendrons are blooming pink, like giant bouquets overstuffed with flowers. The path is carpeted with pink petals. Nine beautiful, dreamlike miles pass. From the ridge, a patchwork of fields is visible in the valley below. Then there is the two-mile-long, foot-jamming descent into Pearisburg.

On the downhill, my toes cram forward into the unforgiving toe box of my new boots. I stop, take the boots off, and let my feet breathe. After the break, I walk only a hundred yards before the pain resumes. I try walking backwards, to make my feet slide toward the heel of the boot. I try loosening the bootlaces at the eyelets nearest my toes, hoping that my forefoot would feel less constricted. Tightening the boot laces near the ankle to hold my toes back from the front of the boot doesn't help. Nothing works; the descent is torture on my feet. The failure to solve my foot problems with $140 boots is a huge disappointment.

The trail enters Pearisburg near the Rendezvous Hotel on Highway 100. I hustle over and get a room, eager to forget my difficulties. I walk down the street to a bar and am thrilled to see other thru-hikers. I see Stretch for the first time since Hot Springs. Jason and Shelton, a couple I met in Damascus, are here. No Pepsi and others come and go as the night wears on.

I wake early, feeling no ill effects from the drinking. I have a plan to get out of these boots. Although there is no outfitter in Pearisburg, there is a car dealer across the street from my motel. Correctly assuming that they rent cars, I get a rental and once again head for Blacksburg. Getting the car was time consuming, and I'm starving. Before leaving town, I pull into a little diner to get breakfast.

Steve O. is sitting at a cleared table with his pack, either not eatuetr having finished breakfast. Ladies from an adjacent table hand him a few dollars. I had missed out on whatever story earned him the money. A waitress eyes him, probably for the dual transgressions of occupying a table and soliciting customers.

"Awol!" he says, as surprised as I am to meet again.

"Hi, Steve O."

"Just my luck," sarcastically runs through my thoughts. I imagine he thinks the same thing without the sarcasm. I wonder if he might ask me to buy him breakfast.

"They're calling me Elwood now," he says, as if the choice for changing his trail name was not his. Changing names is not always dubious, but in his case I suspect him of sweeping over his tracks.

"Where are you going?"

"I rented a car, and I'm going to Blacksburg. These boots aren't working out for me, so I'm looking for new ones." Normally, I would be more guarded about my plans, but I assume he's headed back out to the trail. We will be parting ways, and I don't feel as though I need to concoct a story.

"Great!" he replies. "That's where I wanted to go." I've shown my hand, and now I'm stuck with him.

Elwood has a different backpack from the one I last saw him using. His clothes are new, too. He tells me of all the things he has been given along the trail. "And when I told her about my son, killed in Iraq, she said 'Elwood, I want you to have this backpack.'" He continues to the next story, but his words fade from my attention. His reason for going to Blacksburg must have been one of the things I missed. I deduce that he is getting away from a person or situation in Pearisburg. "Where will you go from here?" I ask.

"I can get back on the trail up by Four Pines [a well-known hostel near Catawba, Virginia]. I'll come back later and do this section."

In Blacksburg, I pick out lightweight trail shoes, similar to the pair with which I started. Even though it is 5:00 p.m. when I return to Pearisburg, I head back out on the trail. It was only three days ago that I was laid up in Wytheville. The AT parallels Highway 100 for a weed-ridden half mile before returning to the road to cross a river on the auto bridge. Here, I meet thru-hiker Bigfoot, who is coming out of a grocery store at the north end of town. Together we head uphill, back into the woods.

Bigfoot is tall and lanky, just out of college, where he ran cross-country all four years, perfect preparation for the AT. He started May 5 and is the first hiker I've met who is this far along having started later than I did. We walk seven miles nonstop while climbing seventeen hundred feet, talking the whole way. My new shoes are definitely an improvement over the boots. I am content to follow him up the trail since I want to reach a shelter before dark. I try not to let on that I am winded keeping up with his pace.

Our ascent levels off, and we enter a cow pasture. Off to the right, just outside of the barbwire, is my destination, Rice Field Shelter. Bigfoot continues to hike, planning to tent a little further along. Hungry Hiker is at the bench in front of the shelter, creating an elaborate sketch in the register. Indiana Slim is asleep and would still be sleeping when I leave the next morning. Andy, Dude, and Gray Matter come in just about dark. They spent the day lounging around town. Andy and Dude brought along thirty-two-ounce White Russians mixed in their water bottles.

Andy scurries into the shelter, convinced one of the cows is chasing him. "Awol, you want a drink?" he offers.

After pouring about eight ounces into my bottle, Dude stops him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm giving Awol a drink," Andy answers defensively.

"Yeah, but that's my bottle," Dude chastises him. "Now give him some of yours."

This shelter register has a theme; hikers are encouraged to submit jokes. Andy, Dude, and Gray Matter take turns reading the jokes aloud until rain drives everyone to bed. Dude stays awake, sitting at the foot of the shelter reading the register jokes with his headlamp and alcohol, giggling into the night.

It is still raining lightly in the morning. There are no views, and I trudge along dodging mud puddles and watching water gush out of my shoes. By lunchtime, it is a constant, drenching rain. I take a long lunch break at the aptly named Pine Swamp Shelter. While I eat, I am joined by Jason, Shelton, their dog, Mission, and Gray Matter. All of us thirst for a bit of dry time.

This shelter, like many others so far, has the message "SMOKE WEED" scratched on the ceiling in big, bold, charcoal letters. I can't imagine that nonsmokers are converted by this commandment, or that those who do bring pot are waiting to be told. On cue, another hiker enters the shelter and lights up, offering to all present. I've been on the trail less than two months, and already I've been asked more than a handful of times if I'd like to share a joint.

We all move ahead four miles to Bailey Gap Shelter to stay for the night. I give some attention to my soggy, prune-wrinkled feet. One broken toenail has come off with my sock. Another toenail is broken at the base of the nail, and I'm trying to dislodge it by flapping it side to side.

"If you get that off," Jason says, "I'll take it for my collection." Soon enough it does come loose, and I hand it over. "The skin still hanging from it is a nice touch."

We litter the shelter with wet clothes and gear. All shelters have an assortment of pegs and nails, and often there is a web of strings forming makeshift clotheslines. On wet days, there are never enough nails or lines. I drape wet socks over my muddy shoes and stuff them under the shelter floor. Another hiker, Vic, arrives, and five of us are cramped in the small and damp shelter.

My shoes and socks aren't a bit drier in the morning, nor is the sky. Gray Matter is the first one to head out into the drizzle. The rainfall increases. Vic leaves minutes later, and again the rain intensifies. "Rain on the Appalachian Trail is proportional to the number of hikers on the trail," Jason submits.

I am in a positive mood in spite of the dreary weather. I put on wet footwear and head upstream. I am as strong as I've been since leaving Damascus, and I have minimal pain. Dead skin falls off of my once-infected heel in soggy chunks, but the redness is gone. Juli and the girls will be here in three days.