Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (16 page)

I wandered outside to get away from him when Flying Pig, a burly, soft-spoken math teacher from Pennsylvania, approached me. “I don’t know if you’re aware,” he said in a hushed voice, “but there have been some rumors that this Air Puppy guy might have stolen some things from other hikers. It all came to a head at Miss Janet’s hostel back in Erwin. She actually had to hold some guys off from beating the hell out of him.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, but didn’t know who it was,” I said alarmed.

I went to bed that night bothered by Air Puppy and worried about the ski pole (used for balance) I had left in Outrider’s truck. I had chosen a spot up in the loft, in order to maximize the distance between Air Puppy and me. Then, suddenly, I heard some quiet steps coming up the ladder to the second floor loft. “Jesus Christ,” I thought. “
Is this guy really that brazen
?”

But it wasn’t Air Puppy. It was Outrider. “Skywalker, you left your ski pole in the back of my trunk,” he said.

“Yeah,” I responded. “But when did you realize it?”

“When I got to Damascus and unloaded Seth’s backpack.”

“Well, for Godsakes, I hope you didn’t come all the way back from Damascus just to deliver this,” I said amazed.

He mumbled an answer that made me think he had done just that. I went to sleep, swept up with gratitude.

“Boy, I’ve been waiting for this opportunity,” Mark, a biologist from Indiana who couldn’t stand Air Puppy, said eagerly. “I’ve tried speeding up, slowing down, even taking a day off, and still haven’t been able to shake him. But today I’m gonna’ haul ass and lose him for all time.” We had all been packing up to go back to the trail after a hiker-sized breakfast when the owner had diplomatically asked Air Puppy to stay behind and help clean up.

So off we galloped, Mark, Nurse Ratchet, Whitewater, and I, all hoping to do big miles and lose Air Puppy. Nurse Ratchet chided her husband, “Adam (Whitewater), you’re the reason he’s still with us. You always fall for his sob story and give him money or food.”

“Well, gee, when a man has four dollars to his name it’s my custom to try and help him,” Whitewater answered, obviously conflicted. “And to be honest, while he may be a thief, he’s also a nice guy.”

“Yeah, but it’s not fair to the rest of us for him to be out here with no money,” Mark interjected heatedly. “I’ve been saving up for this thru-hike for three years.”

Our “escape” plan got more complicated when it began to rain cats and dogs. I was worried about getting a spot in the shelter at Moreland Gap, which was eighteen miles from where we had started the day. If not, I would be forced to try setting up the tarp in the rain. That line of thinking was a sure sign my lightweight tarp strategy had backfired.

My heart sank upon clearing the final hill and seeing the shelter in the distance. It was surrounded by what appeared to be a big group of Boy Scouts. It was a Saturday, which is when these groups tend to congregate. One veteran hiker had said, “Of all the cruel fates the hiking gods can play on you, a large, boisterous group of Boy Scouts is the worst.”

But fortunately, the group had set up a big, sprawling tarp for all of them to sleep under.

The shelter filled up as usual on a rainy night and the Air Puppy jokes were merciless. As we all lay in our sleeping bags, with the rain pelting our shelter, Whitewater remarked, “This is the real sweet spot. You hike hard all day, get to the shelter, eat, arrange everything, and listen to the raindrops tumble down on the shelter roof. It makes it all worth it.”

“Gee, Adam (Whitewater), I never knew you were such a romantic,” Nurse Ratchet commented.

“And we’re free of Air Puppy,” Mark added.

Amid the laughter I heard steps fast approaching the shelter, and a silhouette appeared, followed by the disembodied voice of Air Puppy. “What the hell!” Air Puppy exclaimed. “Did you guys take a shortcut or something? I’ve been almost running all day to catch up with everybody.”

Mark, lying right next to me whispered, “Am I having a nightmare?”

“He missed you, Mark,” I consoled him.

According to the guidebook the Moreland Gap shelter holds eight, which is what we already had in there. But Air Puppy confidently said to two people on the far end, “Ha, just let me slide in there real quick.” Now we had nine, although Mark briefly considered making it eight again.

As Air Puppy went about the usual campsite duties, he was in a chatty mood. “Did I ever tell you guys about how I hitchhiked all the way across Canada with no money?” He then let loose a veritable Niagara of tales, each one containing the theme of his brilliance and savvy triumphing against all odds, including hunger, sexual predators, and anti-narcotics laws. A common denominator among many thieves is their compulsion to feel they have outsmarted people, and that was evident here.

He spoke in rhapsodic tones of his lust for weed and other chemicals. “I’ve got two Mountain Houses (an expensive brand of dehydrated food he got from God knows where) in my backpack. I’d give both of ’em up right this minute for a joint.”

At that, the leader of the group camped out under the tarp next to the shelter rushed in.

“Hey, man,” he said anxiously. “This is a group of recovering drug addicts out here for wilderness therapy. Can’t you find something else to talk about?”

Air Puppy, feeling himself in a commanding position as he was safely ensconced in a packed shelter, shot back, “I’ll talk about whatever the hell I want. You got a joint, man?”

“My God,” the wilderness therapist said as he walked out in disgust.

It was great being with Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet. They seemed to go almost exactly my speed and shared my task-oriented philosophy. This was a once-in-a lifetime chance that needed to be treated like a job much of the time.

We were deluged with rain again near the top of White Rocks Mountain, and as we started down the mountain I was traversing a big, slanted rock. Just like that my feet went straight out from under me. I hit the rock hard on my left side and my AT dream flashed before my eyes. Whitewater rushed to help me, and I quickly started flexing my left leg to be sure it wasn’t broken. I had already fallen several times, like most hikers, but this was by far the worst. I had a deep bruise for three weeks.

Falls were one of the more prominent hazards of the trail, and have ruined many a thru-hiker’s dream. They tended to come in three situations:

• When it was wet.
  
• Late in the day, when you’re tired.
  
• When you’re in a hurry.
  

We ended the day at Watauga Dam Shelter, right by the second largest dam in the east. Pioneers Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket had once lived and hunted in this valley, which is now often flooded by the dam.

Two days later, I was psyched to make the twenty-five and nine-tenth-smile hike into Damascus, widely advertised as the “friendliest town on the AT.” I got off to an early start and it was the easiest terrain yet on the AT. Two miles before Damascus the trail crossed into Virginia, the fourth state. After eleven hours and 25.9 miles, I descended into Damascus and followed the blazes right through the main street. My mood was ebullient, and not just because of the day’s high mileage. I had always figured that making it to Virginia would mean at least partial success.

Walking through the streets of Damascus were bikers speaking many different languages.

The coast-to-coast National Bike Trail runs through Damascus. It was hard not to notice how much less famished they looked than the hikers strolling around. After all, while they traveled considerably greater distances on their bicycles every day, they usually slept in motels and ate real food.

Just three days before there had been upwards of
ten thousand hikers and ex-hikers
celebrating “Trail Days” in this tiny little town with a population of one thousand. Most had camped out in a field known as “Tent City.” Events ranged from a parade down the main street, to a best-ass contest among female hikers in a section known as “Assville,” to a speech by Warren Doyle.

The Place is a well-known Methodist Church hostel, with the sole purpose of putting up hikers. The four-dollar-per-night suggested payment was on the honor system. I had run into a healthy-looking, brunette named Lizard on the main street on the way into town. Surprisingly, Lizard, who was in her late-twenties swung by The Place to see if I wanted to eat, which added to my sky-high morale. In disbelief Nurse Ratchet asked, “Did you ask her on a date?”

“In fact I did,” I responded, “and she said that with extensive plastic surgery it’s not at all out of the question.”

At dinner Lizard appeared to be in just the opposite spirits as me. “I’ve been with a great hiking group, but we all got separated and some quit. I’ve considered getting off the trail myself.”

“My big problem is I’m hemorrhaging weight,” I said.

“You want to know something funny,” she laughed. “Almost every guy out here has lost at least twenty pounds, but I don’t know a single girl who has lost over ten pounds. I’ve actually
gained
six pounds.”

“Get outta’ here,” I said in disbelief. “We’re expending five-to-six thousand calories per day. You can’t carry that much food.”

“Oh, but we’re different animals from you males; I’m telling you,” she said. This sounded amazing so I listened intently. “Even thin women have lots of fat reserves for child-bearing, breast-feeding and so forth,” she continued. “And when you do this much exercise those fat reserves turn into muscle, which weighs more than fat. So we get thinner out here, but we don’t lose as much weight and get stronger.”

“Well I hear you and believe you,” I said taking in all this. “But short of a sex change I’ve got to figure out a survival strategy for the next seventeen hundred miles. At the rate I’m losing weight I won’t make it.”