AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (7 page)
Read AWOL on the Appalachian Trail Online
Authors: David Miller
Steve O. himself joins the circle of hikers inside. I had not seen him leave the hiker box. He doesn't appear to have overheard. He's wearing a green boonie hat, with the side flaps tied up. It's a flattering look for him, which converts his worn look to a look of ruggedness. He launches into a story of his son being killed in Iraq. Park rangers tracked Steve O. down on the trail to tell him, but they were not able to find him until after the funeral. "There's no sense in me getting off the trail now to go to Arlington," he says. "My son's already buried." Steve O. tells of his son's death in graphic detail with the emotional detachment of a reporter. I don't know what to make of it.
I've decided to take my first zero day here, to give my knee a rest. I ask Elmer about doing work around the inn in lieu of payment for another night. There is a trail term for this, too: "work-for-stay." Elmer is tentative. He wants to know what kind of work I can do.
Most people running hostels do it as a business. They are doing thru-hikers a favor by providing lodging cheaper than what is available to anyone else. But recipients of favors tend to develop higher expectations. In many cases, hikers look upon work-for-stay as a nominal amount of busywork for a free night's stay: another handout. Some hostel owners don't mind giving up a bed for work that they don't need done, but other owners rightfully expect the arrangement to be mutually beneficial. This is the undercurrent of my exchange with Elmer.
He lays out a plan where I will get an hourly rate that I can apply to my bill. I know he is hedging. If I'm not doing anything useful, he'll be able to say "that's enough" without committing to the full value of a night's stay. I'm a worker, and I know how to fix nearly anything in, on, or around a house. I'm glad that he expects something from me, because that means he will appreciate my work.
By noon I've replaced the screens on two doors, planed the front door so it opens more easily, and fixed some wobbly chairs. There are more things to do. Elmer and I rush down to the hardware store for fittings before it closes at noon on Wednesday, as do most other stores and the post office.
Things are going well. In the afternoon Elmer takes me, Paul, and Casey out to his organic farm, where we plant corn and butternut squash. I get a tour of the property while Paul feeds me every edible plant he can fugh"sourwood leaves (taste like citrus), cucumber plant (not a cucumber, but roots taste just like it), ramps (really strong onion), and chives. Elmer is building a home for himself on the farm. The walls are made from cords of wood packed in mortar.
We load a malfunctioning tractor into the bed of Elmer's small pickup, taking all the bed space where Paul and I had sat on the ride to the farm. So I end up riding back into town sitting in the seat of a tractor in the bed of a pickup, pretending to steer, feeling very much a part of this small town.
Meanwhile, more hikers have come into town. Crossroads, Snail, and Patience are here. I walk down to Paddler's Pub in the evening and hear a few calls of "Awol!" from hikers surprised to see me again. Magic Rat and his friends (Nova, Bear Bait, Moss, and Tito) are in the pub, having spent another day in town. "We have a ride to Damascus!" Moss says, in reference to Damascus, Virginia, where a weeklong hiker party called Trail Days is under way. "We can come back here in four days."
"Or not," Nova adds, implying that they could just continue north from Damascus.
This is a scenario I would see thru-hikers get themselves into, I thought unnecessarily so. It would be anticlimactic to reach Katahdin, then come back and "finish" my thru-hike by walking fifty miles in North Carolina. It would also create travel and planning logistics more difficult than hiking it while I am here. I am skeptical of hikers actually returning to do the mileage, and often the hiker making the claim seemed to be saying as much: "Yeah, I'll do it later," they'd say with a wink. Moot point. In my observation, hikers who broke the continuity of their hike were much more likely to go off the trail altogether.
I am reinforced in my belief that walking a continuous path and sticking with the white blazes is the best way for me to hike. My attitude about this is not rigidity for the sake of principle or unfeeling discipline done out of habitual compliance. More at issue is doing things in a way that enables me to sustain purpose and drive. I will do some things on this hike that will make purists cringe. But if I were to blue-blaze away a chunk of trail, or leave miles to be done "later," then it would be tempting to pare away even more of the trail, eventually concluding that there is no purpose to it.
Gumption is the most important thing for a thru-hiker to maintain. Compare rounds of golf, one played while keeping score and one in which you hit a mulligan every time you are unhappy with a shot. In the latter case, being on the golf course loses significance. Rounds that are memorable are the ones that you make count. In a broader context, all rounds of golf are of no consequence, whether score is kept or not. But you are the center of your own universe. You are free to create meaning for yourself.
When you attempt to capture the highlights without burdening yourself with the tedium, the highlights lose the foundation that elevates them to the status of "highlight." Analogies abound because a focused attitude defines the quality of all that we do. In playing a game, dieting, or hiking the AT, you benefit most when you commit yourself to it, embrace it.
Stretch is the most athletic person I've met on the trail. He's two years out of college, where he played soccer. He and I seem to be the ones most concerned about stopping our weight loss, but I can't match his eating: six pancakes, two bowls of granola, cantaloupe wedges, and probably stuff he snatched from plates on either side of him.
Fourteen hikers are having breakfast at Elmer's. One of them comments that he has to stop taking these zero weeks. Hot Springs is a hard town to leave. "Would you consider staying a while longer?" Elmer offers. "I'd like to build a bay window in that farmhouse, and I could use your help. You could stay at the inn, and your knee would get more rest."
The offer is tempting, but I'm determined to keep to my fast hiking plan. Before leaving home, I had laid out my plan on a spreadsheet. The plan had me hiking over eighteen miles a day with no zero days, and finishing in 116 days.
17
It was a crazy plan. At the time, I had never backpacked, run, or even walked unburdened on flat Florida ground eighteen miles in any single day. Remarkably, upon arriving in Hot Springs on May 13, I am still on schedule.
Leaving Hot Springs, I see Steve O. on the other side of the street, talking to another hiker. He doesn't have his pack with him. "Good," I think to myself. I plan on walking a few long days. I'll never see him again.
From the French Broad River, I follow the trail along switchbacks up to the rocky cliffs of Lover's Leap. At the cliffs, the narrow path bends along a vertical rock wall. There is a view back to the river and the city I have left behind. In Hot Springs I had time to stand at a pay phone in the middle of town and talk with my wife and say hello to my kids. As I look back on the town, I miss this connection to home.
I take my time at a stream crossing, getting water, eating lunch, and writing a letter to Juli. A young man in sandals and day pack walks by, carrying a butterfly net. He sees that I am writing, nods, and continues on. The trail bends at the stream, so I am able to see him in profile up ahead. He slows, pauses, and slaps the net down over nothing on the side of the trail. It's best if I stall and let him move on. Now he sits and starts writing. Okay, I can get ahead of him.
Forgoing the urge to compliment him on the nice batch of dead leaves he snagged, I ask, "What are you looking for?"
"Oven birds. There is a nest right there," he says, pointing to where his net landed.
He shows me a hole about the size that would be made by stabbing the handle of a shovel into the ground. Inside there are three eggs, but no bird. He is a naturalist gathering data on the small, ground-nesting birds. If a bird had been in its nest, it would attempt to fly out and trap itself in the net. This encounter is a tip to be more observant; surely there is much more wildlife I pass without noticing.
The AT just north of Hot Springs, North Carolina.
Tenderfoot is one of the few hikers on this section of trail today. She does not come as far as Little Laurel Shelter, so I have it to myself. It's a lonely transition from the crowd at Hot Springs. Soon after I settle in, an hour-long tempest begins. I cook on the sleeping platform of the shelter, having to back away from the open front to avoid the spray of pounding rain. Lightning shocks the sky with light. I wonder how Tenderfoot is doing out there.
I leave the shelter at 7:30 the next morning, and about a half hour later I hear an animal crashing through the woods. A small bear is running away from me. By the time I get my camera, the bear is out of sight. I chide myself over missing the photo--that may be the only bear I see. I should be more attentive. I put my camera away, and as soon as I take another step, two more bears drop from the trees and bolt in the same direction as the first.
Near the three-hundred-mile mark, there are head-stones for three boys killed in the Civil War--the Shelton brothers and Millard Haire. Three bears, three hundred miles, and three weeks on the trail. Twelve miles into my day I feel drained, exhausted. I roll out my sleeping pad at Flint Mountain Shelter and take a nap. I wake an hour later, feeling fine, and hike nine miles to Hogback Ridge Shelter, arriving at dusk. This was the only time I would sleep midday during my hike. I saw no other hikers on the trail, but there is an overflow crowd at the shelter. Thru-hikers Cimarron and Wall Street are here, along with a handful of section hikers. The section hikers have a campfire going, and I take note of the fact that this is the first campfire I've seen. Cimarron has just finished his longest day, fourteen miles. He groans in his sleep: "Arrrgh...oooohh...my achin' body."
18
On the early part of my hike out of the shelter, I feel strong and convince myself to go for Erwin, twenty-seven miles away, mostly under the influence of my stomach, which is calling for a big meal. My average hiking speed has been two miles per hour, including breaks. I should be able to get to Erwin before dark with my 7:00 a.m. start. But it sounds unrealistic to carry a backpack over mountains for a distance longer than a marathon.
The biggest climbs of the day are within the first ten miles. Big Bald (fifty-five hundred feet) is an expansive, double-peaked bald, totally covered in windswept fog. I struggle with these climbs. My Achilles tendon is still tight. On the same leg, I feel shooting pain in the tendon on the outside of my knee. I walk with a limp and with an aversion to bending my right knee. Distress affects more than my gimpy knee; it takes the wind out of me. It doesn't make sense that I should be out of breath because my knee hurts. I argue with my body, contending that I should be doing better aerobically because my sore knee slows my pace.
On the downside of the mountain, I duck into Big Bald Shelter and gulp down water and ibuprofen. I recover quickly and make good time. The trail stays sidehill for a pleasant stretch, maintaining roughly the same elevation as it passes through a pine forest. The trail is never straight and level for very long. When the elevation is somewhat constant, the trail is usually on the side of the hill, bending along the contours of the mountain to stay at the same height. It is common to cross streams running down the crease formed by the intersection of hills on the same ridge. Sidehill trails sag downhill where the trail is not supported by the root system of a trailside tree. The profile of the trail hangs between supporting trees like the scalloped fringe of a curtain.
Imperceptibly, the wystemhange from pines to hard-woods. The surface of the trail changes from needles to gravel. Switchbacks mark the beginning of the descent to Erwin. There is a break in the trees, and the lay of the town is evident. Looking down at the base of the mountain, the Nolichucky River and railroad tracks run perpendicular to the trail. Highway 23 is parallel to my path, off to the left, forming the western border of the city. Straight ahead, puffy green treetops hang over the city like clouds.
I am worn from the effort of covering sixty-seven miles in three days since leaving Hot Springs. Over these days, other than at the shelter last night, I've seen more bears than hikers. I look forward to rest and the company of people in the town below.
Near the trailhead there is a bunkhouse and a small store. The place is called Uncle Johnny's Nolichucky Hostel, run by a man of the same name. A few miles into town, Miss Janet runs a hostel. Word has spread among hikers that the competition between these hostels has gotten ugly. I had planned to stay at Miss Janet's. Her listing says to "call from the trailhead" to get a ride into town. The pay phone at the trailhead is on the porch of Uncle Johnny's.
Last year a hiker calling Miss Janet from this phone was chased away by Uncle Johnny. One guidebook removed a reference to Uncle Johnny's Hostel on account of complaints from hikers. So I sheepishly try calling Miss Janet from Uncle Johnny's phone and get an answering machine. I loiter a while and try calling again. No one is there. I start the walk into Erwin, sticking my thumb out whenever a car passes. I need to get out to the highway, walk a few miles up to the next exit, and find my way through town to Miss Janet's. I make it to the highway by the time a van stops for me. There's a sign on the side of the van: "Uncle Johnny's Hostel." The driver is Uncle Johnny himself. Before getting in I come clean: "I'm going to Miss Janet's Hostel."
"That's okay, get in. I won't take you to her doorstep, but I'll get you close." Uncle Johnny's tone is repentant. His business has been damaged by the guidebook omission and by negativity coursing through the hiker grapevine. I am the beneficiary of his contrition as he strives to get back into the collective good graces of thru-hikers. Still, he drops me off at a gas station near the highway. It's more of a walk across town than I want to make this late in the day. By now I've learned that jaunts made in cars are deceptively far on foot. Possibly drivers assume that hikers don't mind trivial walks. If you walk twenty-seven miles in a day, a few more blocks should make little difference. Not so. All off-trail mileage is anathema.
A young man in a pickup pulls up to a gas pump just before I start walking. Pickups are ideal rides since I can throw my smelly pack (and self) in the back.
"Do you know how to get to the Sonic drive-thru?" Uncle Johnny had told me directions to Miss Janet's, the last part of which was to go one block behind the Sonic. I'm asking for information that I already know, but there is a point to this.
"Go up to the light and turn right, then it's up the road, on your left."
"How far do I go after I turn right?" I choreograph this question with a move to sling my pack on my back, wilting under the weight and the prospect of a long cross-town walk.
"Do you want a ride?"
Unlike any other hostel I would see on the trail, Miss Janet's is on a street in town among other homes. It is a framed house with wood siding, a picketed front porch, and a crawl space below. It is locked, no one is home, and a sign on the door says that they've gone to Damascus for Trail Days. My mail drop is inside.
I walk over to an eclectic Mexican restaurant, Erwin Burrito, and eat a burrito the size of a small dog while listening to a soundtrack of Johnny Cash singing covers of Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. I consider my options. It's been a long day, and it's still light outside. I'm eager to see other hikers; maybe I could take a zero tomorrow and stay with the crowd at Miss Janet's when they return tomorrow night. I could resupply and get cleaned up. But before buying anything, I want to see what's in my package.
Back at Miss Janet's, I walk around the place, looking for a way in, trying not to look like a criminal. I climb through an open window into a bedroom. The bedroom has been converted into a bunkroom, with a pair of bunk beds fashioned out of unfinished lumber. It's cramped, with gear strewn about. The carpet is matted and musty. I smell dog. I make my way to the front of the house. Where is the dog? I see two dry piles left by it and take the time to pick them up and flush them. Hostels look grubby when empty.
The foyer closet is packed with cardboard boxes, and I find mine among them. It's starting to get dark. I strap the box to the top of my pack and head back toward the highway. There's a motel out there. I'd better hurry, it's starting to sprinkle. The road crosses a railroad track, and a train is passing. Rain falls more heavily, and it's dark now. Standing roadside, waiting on the train, I am a sad sight to the people in the cars lining up beside me. I wonder if I look like I feel--run down, ticked off, and all wet.
In college I owned an aging VW Beetle. Its red paint had faded to orange, and leaking battery acid ate through the floor under the back seat. The gas gauge no longer worked. Driving through a rainstorm one afternoon, the Beetle stalled in the middle of a flooded street. I stepped out into water over my ankles, assuming the water had killed the engine. It was still raining heavily as I pushed the Bug off the road to higher ground.
I had taken for granted the insulated little bubble of existence that a car provided. Life outside a car was shockingly different from life inside on a day like that. Outside I was pelted by cold rain, and I sloshed around in shoes full of water.
I tried to start the car again, only to hear the spin of the starter. Then it dawned on me what the problem was--I had run out of gas. Just coincidentally it happened at the deepest point of a flooded street, at the most inopportune moment. The gas gauge needle was always on empty, and for once it was right. I knew what I had to do: walk until I found a gas station, buy a can, buy gas, walk back, and hope I could get the Bug started. There was no gas station in sight, so it was sure to take a while.
On my walk in the rain, I came to the odd realization that I was happy. I would be okay. Being annoyed at my misfortune had been overtaken by my sense of coming alive when presented with obstacles. I was pleased with myself. I felt resilient and resourceful. Nearly every other day of my life would contain nondescript commutes, but not that day. That day was valuable, a day #8217;ll always remember.
At the motel, I look at the blister on my left heel. It is much the same as the one on my right heel that I popped when I was at Standing Bear Hostel. This blister is a little larger, and the bubble of skin is taut with pressure from the fluid inside. I sit on the lid of the toilet in the motel and poke it with a needle. A stream of clear fluid sprays the side of the tub. I take a look at my right foot, where the twin blister has peeled away and healed over with tender pink skin.
Erwin, Tennessee, has the unusual distinction of being the only town in America to have hung an elephant. That was in 1916, and the elephant had it coming. Since then there have been no more elephant incidents. It is Sunday and most stores are closed. Bad timing for my zero day. I do what I can--write, call home, and laundry. I take a walk down to the grocery store and look over its meager first-aid aisle, trying to find the ideal bandage to stifle these blisters.
Periodically, I make return visits to Miss Janet's, impatient for her return. Late in the afternoon, Muktuk, a thru-hiker, lets me in. One other hiker is there, sleeping on the couch. Miss Janet pulls into the driveway, and hikers hung over from Trail Days spill out of her van. Miss Janet is a big lady with long, kinky brown hair, a tie-dyed shirt, and round glasses.
"We're all filled up," she says apologetically, "but I'm sure we can find a place for you."
"Probably on that carpet," I'm thinking. As welcoming as Miss Janet sounds, the whole scene is too Bohemian for my mood.
19
Back to the motel.
I speak with my sister on the phone. My mother recently had a blood test. She has been given these tests periodically over the course of her cancer treatment. My sister relayed that the results were not what the doctors had hoped for.
20
Back on the trail, I am dispirited. My zero day wasn't what I wanted it to be, and I'm still nagged by assorted aches and pains. A toenail has broken loose and causes me pain whenever it gets moved (every step). I wrap a strip of duct tape around the toe to hold it down. After getting the tape on, it occurs to me that there will be no way of getting the duct tape off without taking the toenail with it.
I think of my mom. Snippets enter my mind, like Mom crying when I left for college. Once, at the beach, she swam out to rescue my beach ball that was pulled out by the current. I stood wailing on the sand. A toddler at the time, it seemed to me that she was out impossibly far and would never come back. I remember her helping me, my brother, and sister put tinsel on a Christmas tree while we played forty-fives. There is no continuity to these images. They come out of time sequence, and some replay many times over. I make no effort to control my thoughts or make sense of them. I'm just allowing myself a session of melancholy reminiscing. Alone, cruising serenely through the woods, is a situation that nurtures emotional liberation. In the bustle of everyday life there is no time for frivolous thoughts. If they come, they contend for attention with thoughts of what needs to be done at work, getting the car in for service, and paying the bills.
Distracted by my thoughts, the morning passes quickly. I have lunch on top of Beauty Spot, a bald mountaintop with a view back to Erwin. Mounds of boulders push up through the grass, making for ideal seating. I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using a bunch of single-serving jelly packets pilfered from restaurants and a loaf of bread purchased in Erwin.
More hikers are on the trail, resuming their hikes after returning from Damascus. Cherry Gap Shelter, seventeen miles from Erwin, is full when I arrive near 5:00 p.m. Crossroads is here, sitting outside looking forlornly at the full shelter.
"There will probably be six hundred more hikers coming here tonight," he hyperbolizes.
"There's a hostel a little further along," I say, implicitly asking him if he'll come with me. I haven't even paused to take off my pack.
He shows a bit of inclination to go, then says, "It's too late to go seven more miles." His boots and socks are off, and I see his blisters. Putting boots back on those feet would take more resolve than he has.
I am alone for the rest of my twilight walk. Hundreds of crickets are in patches along the trail, feeding on fallen leaves. As I pass they scatter; it's like wading through popping black corn. Beyond this, there is little sound, accentuating my aloneness. I feel uneasy, cautious. Just beyond Iron Mountain Gap, someone has spray-painted brown paint over the AT's white blazes. Seeing this heightens my wariness. I take some comfort in noticing that the vandal did not continue very far from the road and did a sloppy job of obscuring the blazes. "It must be a recreational vandal, maybe teenagers, not someone with a serious grudge against hikers," I rationalize to myself.
On the peak of Unaka Mountain, there is a grove of towering spruce trees. Like giant arrows shooting up from the ground, every one is perfectly straight. Short and bare branches are on most of the lower trunks. Near the tops are arrowheads of needles, the only green on the trees. The trees are tightly packed, choking out ground cover. Pine needles blanket the forest floor. This feels like sanctuary, and I am no longer wary. As soon as I am clear of the trees, I am treated to a field of golden wildflowers.
The guidebook directions to the Greasy Creek Friendly are: "From gap go right (downhill) on old jeep road, then take first left, and then the next right, go past old barn and around metal gate to first house on right."
There is no sign at "the gap," so from the start I am uncertain about heading down the side trail to my chosen destination. The trail is little used, overgrown with weeds, and hardly distinct from the surrounding woods. I need to push some shoulder-height branches out of the way to stay on anything resembling a path. I'm no longer taking the directions literally, I'm just picking the clearest downhill route. I nearly turn around but then see the metal gate. Beyond the gate, the jeep path is still in use, and it separates the only two houses in sight. The house on the left has a large yard enclosed by a tall chain-link fence. I'm glad it's there when two menacing, barking, mixed-breed dogs charge from the house. The house on the right stands in a sea of weeds. As I enter the yard, owners Pack-Rat and CeeCee come out to greet me.
They've named this place "Greasy Creek Friendly" as a pun on the word "hostel." "Why would you want to stay where it is hostile?" They've purchased this land as their own home, knowing its proximity to the trail, hoping that hiker businss will provide Pack-Rat with full-time employment. CeeCee works as a nurse. I am the only hiker here tonight, and I'll stay in a bedroom of the main house.
CeeCee cooks nachos for me while I watch from the dining room table. "Do you want jalapenos?" she asks as she cleans the lettuce. Pack-Rat sits behind me on the couch, shiftlessly fumbling with lawn mower gears and watching news of the Martha Stewart trial. The setting makes me aware of what odd situations this trip has put me in, this time in the family room of a tiny house with a couple living in the mountains of North Carolina. CeeCee works to stay chipper, seemingly to offset Pack-Rat's depression. They have been fighting to get permission from the local trail maintainers to post a sign on the AT to mark the side trail to their place. They aren't allowed to paint markers on the side trail, cut branches, or maintain it in any way. It has been a very slow year for them. I am the only hiker coming in tonight. Another sore spot for Pack-Rat and CeeCee is their quarrelsome neighbor, the one with the dogs.
"You hear that lawn mower running over there?" Pack Rat asks. I hadn't noticed it when I came in, but now that he asks, I can hear the drone of a mower, and I realize I've heard that noise ever since I've been inside. "Every day he parks that thing as close as he can to our place, and lets it run 'till it runs out of fuel." When I leave in the morning, I see that the neighbor had boarded over a section of his fence, on which he has spray-painted insulting graffiti.
Roan Mountain is the last mountain over six thousand feet until New Hampshire, and it is a hell of a climb. I pass Muktuk and the other hiker I saw sleeping on the couch at Miss Janet's Hostel, now struggling up the mountain. I also see three enviable thru-hikers walking downhill with barely filled daypacks. They got a ride to the top of Roan Mountain and are hiking south; tomorrow they'll get a ride back to the top and go north and avoid climbing the mountain. Some hostel owners provide this drop-off/pick-up service. They make money on the rides and by getting hikers back to their place for multinight stays.
For thru-hikers, walking weightless is a dream. Staying in town for a couple of nights isn't bad, either. Hiking without a full load is termed slack-packing. To purists, of course, slack-packers should be stripped of their "thru-hiker" title, and possibly dismembered. I have nothing against slack-packing, but I haven't arranged it yet. I have resolved to always walk on a continuous path northward.