Not all hostel
guests are bad. Sure, they smell bad and snore too loud and always make the
room too hot, but they’ve got great stories if you can look past the
crazy-eyes. One night in Pearisburg, I listened to an elderly
biker-turned-hiker‘s endless vault of violent, hyper sexualized stories for a
solid two hours. I tried to match him at first, telling him about my own
run-ins with police and bouncers or about the tenants and subsequent deeds of
16 year old Northern Virginia punks, but none of my anecdotes could stand up to
knife fights or loose German women. Apparently, 1980’s Berlin was the place to
be if you wanted to raise hell and get away with it, but that didn’t stop
George from trying to do the same in the deep south after he came back to the
states. This, of course, ushered in a discussion about the Catch-22 of freedom
in modern day America. If you do whatever you want to do, you’re free; but
eventually it will catch up to you and there is nothing less free than a jail
cell, so you have to make a compromise and live a life of self-censorship and
is that really freedom at all? Neither of us knew for sure. I had never thought
that much about it, and George had figured out that living in the woods for an extended
period of time pretty much solved the problem entirely. In any case, I went
outside both humbled and painfully aware of my youthful inexperience as I
pitched my tent in the front yard and slept deep into the next morning.
After I woke up, I
rented the first motel room of the trip and spent the day eating and ruminating
with Matt. With the aid of a television and one of two beds, The day before,
Matt and I had met up after a few days of separation and he announced his
admittedly shaky plan to go home. It took me a while to figure out that he was
serious, and sought consolation in the bottom of a Dairy Queen Blizzard Cup. I
didn’t want to talk about the decision too much, preferring to accept the
things I couldn’t change. I did, however, manage to coax Matt into staying an
extra day in town before “yellow-blazing” (hitchhiking) home. After our second
dinner, I decided that it was funny that he was the one leaving.
He was the one who
had started on me on this whole hike. Previously, we’d gone on 3 backpacking
trips, always together. The longest outing we’d ever done was 2 nights through
the West Virginia/Maryland border. Up to that point, that trek had been one of
the most miserable trips I had ever been on, including my 18 years of
family-planned, red-blooded,
look-son-there’s-a-majestic-blue-tailed-sapsucker-right-on-our-front-porch-hey-how’s-that-poison-ivy-treating-you
“adventures”. I think part of the reason I hated it so much was the fact that I
was the slave driver. I was the one pushing and cursing to get myself to get to
the top of some ridiculous rocky hill, with a backpack full of soup cans and
extraneous gear. Still, as terrible as it had been, I don’t know that I had
ever enjoyed a hot shower or greasy, disgusting meal more than I did afterwards.
3 days was an eternity back then, 36 miles was as distant and out of reach as
anything had ever been.
What’s
more is that we hadn’t been supposed to hike 36. Somebody (either Matt or
Lauren, an earthy overachiever from Reed College in Portland) had messed up the
math, and made sure our route took through the most challenging section of the
Appalachian Trail in Northern Virginia, to boot, ominously named the “Roller
Coaster”. The misevaluation, coupled with the inexperience of our group,
resulted in exhaustion, low morale and periodic lapses of civilized behavior. I
was so hungry that after discovering a mass of ants that had infiltrated my
trail mix, I took my calculated revenge by tipping the bag back pouring a
shower of little black bodies and peanuts into my mouth. Wasting protein was
not an option when you were stranded in the mountains, a full hour’s walk away
from civilization.
Matt called me a few months after the ordeal,
talking madness about an attempted through-hike of the AT the following summer.
I had him talked down to May 2010 before long, arguing that the year-plus of
preparation would allow for a comfortable shakedown/gear buying period. We
would slowly work our way up to weeklong trips, and then we would have a solid
idea of how the real thing would be. A
month later, in January of 2009, Matt called again, this time adamant about
doing the trip the coming May. My hands were tied; I couldn’t budge his resolve
and under no circumstances would allow one of my best friends to show me up by
going alone, so I was in. A few shopping sprees and one overnight trip later,
Matt and I found ourselves on a greyhound bus destined for Atlanta. We met up
with 2 brothers from Maryland who were attempting through-hike too, the only
difference between them and us being the fact that they had planned and
practiced meticulously for several years. At this point, I was still betting on
our team quitting after 2 weeks, and looked forward to having a pleasant summer
filled with beach trips and cool sunglasses.
The
bus took 12 hours to get to Georgia, and not many people slept on it, despite
making the trip overnight. The reason for this was the operatic vomiting
performed by a disheveled passenger, strategically located in the exact center
of the bus. Looking back, I’m now sure he chose this spot for its acoustic
value, though my suspicious are unlikely to ever be confirmed. He expelled for
a solid 3 hours, only to leave both the bus and his plastic-bag receptacle
(perched daintily on the seat) in North Carolina. Needless to say, morale was
not at its highest as 4 tired, slightly nauseated hikers rode in a taxi to the
top of Springer Mountain, the official southern terminus of the AT. After a round of picture taking, we headed
out; ready to see where the trail ahead led us.
A
few hours later, our group split up. The brothers, being much more experienced,
went further than the 8 miles Matt and I settled on. That night in camp, he and I discussed the
average mileage necessary to complete the entire trail in the time we had. We
would have to average a little over 20 miles a day, a task that seemed
insurmountable. Still, we decided to give it a shot the next day, and picked
our destination, an established campground a mile or so off the trail. By the
end of the real first day, I was tired enough to get hopelessly lost looking
for the campground and Matt was sufficiently dehydrated to convince himself
that there was a good chance that I had never existed and was a figment of his
imagination. I found him, wide-eyed, when I backtracked a couple miles up the
spur trail. After listening to his relieved confession, I briefly wondered if I
had agreed to walk 2,000 isolated miles with a lunatic. Eventually, we both
calmed down and set up camp nearby, vowing to know our limits in the future.
Over the next 600 miles, we would meet a smorgasbord of people, ranging from
the common, irresponsible hippie to the timeless, deranged vagabond (my
favorite was an grizzled old man, who, when asked exactly why he was scattering
cans of yams around his sleeping area, responded with a gruff and
matter-of-fact “Keeps the animals away.” Needless to say, we did not sleep at
the shelter that night.). We would walk through thunderstorms and injuries, and
learn to swallow pride and accept anything that was given to us by the almost
suspiciously generous trail angels (people who took the time and effort to
bring soda or snacks to ravenous hikers).
Rest
days or “zeroes” were few and far between, but always enjoyed thoroughly. Town
or resupply days were more common and the amount and quality of food we ate
when it was available was simultaneously impressive and disgusting. I quickly
learned to count calories when resupplying, making sure that I got the most for
the least amount of money possible. Even with binge eating and at least 3
dessert snickers bars a day, it only took two weeks to drop 20 pounds from my
normal, healthy weight. My clothes all started to look too big on me, and what
I ate was the exact amount of energy I received; in short, my fat reserve was
exhausted. If I ate one candy bar, that gave me about an hour of walking, but
that was it. If I tried to go further, I’d “bonk” or totally run out of energy.
I ran out of food one day in the Smokies, and it took me 2 hours to walk a
single mile to the shelter. Towns also offered some uncomfortable reminders of
how disheveled and dirty hikers seemed to normal (or as we celled them,
“employed”) people. It was not long before I got too tired to be polite and
stopped caring about how bad I smelled, and let other people avoid me at
supermarkets, instead of politely hanging back. I would joke, later, that I
aged 60 years on the trail. I had no fat, so I got very cold very quickly; I
smelled awful, didn’t shave my face, had the same bland food almost every day,
went to bed at 9 pm and above all, did not care enough about anybody’s opinion
to change.
Weight loss aside,
It was surprisingly easy to get used to the conditions of life outdoors. It had
been the second week of the trip when I started to feed peanuts to the mice
that plagued every shelter on the trail, and began to completely ignore the way
they tickled you when they ran up and down your sleeping bag all night. Bears
went from spiritual to irritating in a matter of days, and I know now that their
ingenuity and kleptomania is matched only by their cowardice and inclination to
scare the crap out of hikers. I cannot count the number of times a bear would
blunder into sight, being all large and intimidating, only to unabashedly flee
after identifying me as a potential threat.
At first, I was
truly worried about them. I had heard stories about the bears of the Smokies,
the way they had learned to steal packs from hikers. By some miracle, the brain
behind their beady little eyes had figured out that if they were to charge at
any food-carrying human, the person would invariably fail to call the bluff and
run. Of course, the hiker would drop their backpack in order to retreat faster,
and there were several accounts of bears running around the park with backpacks
in their mouths, happier than a dog with a new milkbone. Conversely, I found
the furry, black creatures to be completely harmless and easily frightened
until I entered Shenandoah National Park, where the black bears have learned to
be bold. I should have known they would be problematic from the start; on my
second day going through the park, I witnessed a man feeding a bear a sandwich
from his car window. I was floored by
both the lack of concern for nature and the man’s failure to offer me a bite.
Later that day, I
found myself face to face with a totally unafraid adolescent bear. It lumbered
towards me while I ate my lunch inside of a shelter, blissfully unaware of the
pile of “huckin” rocks I had hoarded in case of such cheekiness. A few direct hits
to its posterior put the fear of god, man and all that is unknown back into his
thick hide, at least momentarily. It’s not that I don’t love animals. I do, but
also have respect for them and their place in this world. A bear is not a
domesticate dog; it is a wild animal capable of hurting human beings. Granted,
black bears are extremely unlikely to attack any average sized person under
normal circumstances. Mother bears will become aggressive if they believe their
cubs are in danger, and starving bears have been known to prey on physically
small backpackers. However, the total lack of fear displayed by the resident
bear population in SNP was cause for concern. If a bear stops
fearing/respecting humans or vice versa, something is wrong and conflict is sure
to arise. Conflict will almost always work out worse for the animal than the
person, and so I felt that it is much better to keep our wildlife wary and shy
as opposed to brave.
This same
sentiment prompted me to wake up several people the following night, when I
heard loud snuffling and heavy footsteps a few feet outside of my tent. I woke
up before dawn, so I knew something was wrong right away, as my subconscious
would only withhold sleep when completely necessary. I heard an animal nearby,
identified it as a bear and clapped loudly. I heard underbrush crashing and
went back to sleep, only to be awakened again a few minutes later. Clapping
scared the animal off a few more times, but eventually it acclimated to the
noise and continued to investigate my tent. I wondered why none of the other
people that were camped out nearby had a problem with a big, dumb bear sniffing
around their tents, when it suddenly dawned on my that I was the closest tent
to the bear-proof hanging poles that held food bags out of reach. The bear’s
plans must have been foiled and it clearly thought that if it walked over to my
tent, it might be able to rustle up some food. I was clearly being harassed,
and my patience wore thinner with each footstep, each snort. The situation reached
critical mass when I burst out of my tent, wearing only my headlamp and boxers
and armed with my weapon of choice, a trusty rock. My war cry of “FUCK! OFF!”
echoed around the camp as I saw two terrified deer sprint away from me as fast
as possible. I quietly apologized to the tents a few feet away, and returned to
bed red-faced. It took 10 minutes for the deer to return, and I drifted into
sleep to a lullaby of smacking lips while the animals grazed a foot away from
my head for the rest of the night.
All in all, I got pretty lucky in terms of
wildlife. Tales of rabid raccoons
attacks circulated around the trail that year, along with a particularly epic
log entry about a hyper-aggressive skunk that chased 3 hikers away from their
tents, only to meet its end at the end of a hiking pole (it had finally bitten
one of its victims). I clashed with territorial bulls and horses, along with a
wolf spider that was as big as my hand (I tried to shoo it off the wall I was
sleeping against one night and instead of running away like a normal bug, it
bit my diary. I could see fang marks in the paper. It was only a little bit
more terrifying than impressive.) Still,
the worst wildlife encounter I had was in, big surprise, Shenandoah National
Park, where I was forcefully exiled from my shelter by a gigantic rat that was
fearless and tame, though much too noisy for my taste.
Again, I remember
waking up late, my gut telling me that something was wrong. I flicked on my
headlight and saw what I initially thought was an adult rabbit staring at me
from a few feet away. Once my head cleared, I realized that this creature had a
long, hairless tail and was just an impossibly large rat. I slammed my fist on
the wooden floor of the shelter to scare it away and it ran. Pacified, I went
back to sleep only to be awakened by a loud, rhythmic knocking, as if somebody
was dribbling a basketball above my head, on the top bunk area of the hut. I
turned on my light again, identified the culprit (guess who), politely asked it
to stop being loud and went back to bed. After 4 more cycles of this, I was
getting pretty pissed, so I started yelling. The rat stood on its haunches to
peer at my rage. The next time it woke me up, I started throwing rocks (aimed
to miss) to scare it off. It stood there, furry and stoic of every missile or
threat I hurled at it. I zipped a small rock at its head, and smacked it right
in between the eyes with some force. All that stupid thing did was blink at me,
so I wrote a long, rude note to it in the shelter log and went out to set up my
tent in the rain. When I returned to put the rest of my gear in my tent, there
were two behemoth rodents, staring at eye level from the corner of the upper
bunks. I understood and acknowledged the show of force and went to sleep after knuckling
my forehead to the rightful tenants of the shelter.
Aside from the odd
instance, the wildlife wasn’t too distracting. Generally I was too tired to
care about anything but sleep and food. After Matt went home in Pearisburg, I
really started to push myself, and soon was doing at least 25 miles a day, 30+
in flat areas. I made myself hike 40 miles a day on a few occasions, and Advil
became as much of a diet staple as ramen and trail mix. I cut all the tags off
of my clothes and sent every single unnecessary item home. At the end of any
given area, the pages in my guidebook that were outdated were ripped out and
tossed in the trash. There was no room for things that were not completely
necessary.
The things I
carried were the basics and not a whole lot more. There were hikers who were
hiking with no tent or sleeping bag, just a cotton sheet and an awful, entitled
attitude (they would demand a shelter spot because of their self-imposed
handicap), and there were some who had a backup machete in case their primary
one was damaged. I walked the line between the two, and eventually settled on a
comfortable 30 lbs. pack, food and water included. My luxury items were a thin
book and an extra pair of boxers (so I wouldn’t have to wrap a raincoat around
the lower half of my body while I waited for my clothes to be washed in
Laundromats, as other hikers did.) A brief list of what I carried would read:
1 Tent
1 Sleeping Bag
1 ¾-sleeping pad
1 Headlamp
1 Cell Phone + Charger
1 Diary
1 Trail guide
1 small pot
1 Spork
1 (homemade) Fancy Feast alcohol
stove
1 Nalgene bottle
1 3-liter Camelback
1 Small Knife
1 Child’s watch
1 Pair of absurdly expensive hiking
poles that you only bought because they were the only ones that the outfitters
were selling and you were tired of falling so much
2 Nylon Dry bags (Food and Clothes)
2 pair socks
2 pair underwear
1 t-shirt
1 pair shorts
1 knit cap
1 raincoat
1 fleece coat
1 bandana (to never, ever be placed
out of sight)
1 pair trail shoes
And
that was it, excepting fuel, medicine, duct tape and Para cord. After a few
weeks, I felt I could survive with much less than what I carried, but I was
willing to deal with the weight in return for security and comfort. My life
could be packed up in a little bag and I knew I’d be okay in any situation.
Living like this helped me understand the lack of necessity for most of my
material possessions, though I won’t pretend that I was or am a minimalist. I
began putting more thought into the importance I placed on the things I own,
with one exception. About a month in, I backtracked 2 miles uphill to retrieve
my bandana. The thought of leaving it behind was abhorrent to me.
While the physical
side of the journey was just as important as the mental/emotional side, both
had their challenges. Matt and I had been pretty close before embarking on the
trip. We’d gone to the same high school and worked together for a year or so,
but the trail illustrated our differences vividly. Once we began, I became
infatuated with pushing personal limitations. Matt was more laid back,
concerned with the flora and fauna around us. We clashed a few times, and
separated for extended periods of time. I would forge ahead while he would
amble along, at most a day behind. My technique took a toll on both of us,
though the brunt of it landed on me. I can remember sitting down after a mild,
boring climb in Southern Virginia and crying (manly tears, I swear) while
explaining to the saplings around me that “This sucks. It just sucks so much.”.
I was homesick and exhausted most of the time. I had lost too much weight and
could see the upper body muscles I had worked so hard being whittled away with
each day. I was frustrated with Matt, torn between loyalty to him and the urge
to complete the trail in time and my relentless attitude was wearing me thin.
It was later that
another hiker would tell me that starting the trail with somebody was usually a
poor idea, unless you knew for a fact that your paces and goals were identical.
There was a saying on the trail that I initially shrugged off as a cop-out, but
later came to adopt for many situations. ‘Hike your own hike” meant to live
your life and let others live theirs. There are a million ways to backpack and
live, nobody can say for sure that theirs is the right one. Keeping this in
mind, I decided after 3 days of internal conflict, to slow down and walk with
my friend all the way to Maine the day before we met up in Pearisburg and he
went home.
After Matt left, I
had nothing to “hold me back” from my goals, save for financial and time
constraints. Still, I was conflicted. Matt was on a beach somewhere, drinking a
cold beer and I was dirty and muddy and sweaty on some mountain. He was eating
ribs and burgers while I ate ramen and pop-tarts. Still, I relished the pain
and strife of the trail. I had grown to love the silence, aches and pains
included. Add this to the fact that I was alone for most of the days and nights
afterwards, and it’s understandable if I was a little bit weirded out by the
entire experience. Of course, you are never truly alone on the trail, I’d see
people every day in passing, but sometimes I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone
and would just nod and keep walking. That got old and I started stopping and
talking to strangers for as long as they’d stay put. At one point, I got so lonely that I would
plan to eat lunch by road crossings, just so I could people watch and feel a
little less alone for an hour or so. The solitude was nice, but kind of
disturbing in its own right; it took me a while to get used to socializing normally.
I
hiked this way through Virginia, right up to the section of trail that had so
nearly defeated me a year ago. I did the 36 miles in a day, and the infamous
“Roller Coaster” wasn’t difficult at all. I laughed at relativity and kept on
walking through the halfway point in Pennsylvania before I ran out of time and
money and stopped. The last day on the trail, I took a picture at the halfway
sign with a guy named Rubble from Iowa. We’d been hiking together for the past
couple days, and had spent the night before in a campsite with a bunch of other
throughs; we’d gathered there because some Midwestern mission group offered all
hikers free burritos, as well as a flat place to spend the night. It was
wonderful. The next morning, he and I proceeded onto an ice cream shop just off
the trail where people bought their way into completing the customary
“Half-Gallon Challenge”. The idea was to eat a half-gallon of ice cream as fast
as you could. It was not a problem for me, and I finished mine in ten minutes.
During the course of eating, my Spork snapped and I studied it for a while
(after finishing the challenge, of course). The sight made me sadder than it
should have, some silly plastic utensil broken in half. I knew it was just a
Spork that I hadn’t looked at it once since the day I bought it, but it was
broken now. I had eaten with that thing for over a thousand miles, and it had
snapped in a second. But I had to go, and couldn’t dwell too much on it. I
walked gingerly to a shelter 2 miles away from a road crossing where my mother
was waiting to pick me up. I sat there and shot the breeze with a few hikers,
wrote a long shout-out list to everyone I’d met on the trail (at that point, I
was ahead of all of them, save for the 2 brothers) and gave everything I didn’t
need to my friends. I took their trash and gave them my food, my snickers bars
and my trail mix.
I ran the two
miles to the road crossing, and passed a hiker who had been at the feast the
night before. When he asked me why I was running, I answered as honestly as I
possibly could. I told him, quickly, that I knew if I walked, I wouldn’t want
to go back home anymore. And I was right to run. I came into a clearing and
touched the most northern blaze I have ever touched and ran to my car before I
really realized that I was closer to Maine than Georgia. I felt sick on the way
back when my mom covered mileage in an hour that had taken me 3 days to walk.
So, I went back
home and gained my weight back in 2 weeks, woke up at 6 every morning and did
all the household chores I could. It was odd, being back in society; it took me
a long time to get used to crowds again. I left more than one 7-11 when a few
too many patrons milled about and I started to get inexplicably nervous. I went
through a few horribly awkward interviews and kept my cell phone off. Still, I adapted back into the life I’d left
behind 2 months ago. I got a job, lost my trail-legs, shaved my beard and took
showers every day. I got used to groups of people and going to bed at 12
instead of 9, and tapwater gradually started to taste less and less like
chemicals. Eventually, I lost most of the supreme patience I had cultivated
while on the trail. My friends would tell me about their tribulations and I
would always just ask them why they cared so much.
“You
have a house and food and water and air conditioning. Do you really think this matters?”
They
all said yes and I told them they didn’t get it until I stopped getting it too.
It still bothers me that I didn’t
finish the entire thing. I don’t think it will ever not, given my propensity
for romanticizing things and periods of times after they’ve come and gone and
had time to ferment. I still backpack now, here and there, but usually only to
take people out for the first time or in the winter, special occasions, that
sort of thing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t truly and honestly miss it
though, and not just the good times or utter, unabashed lack of responsibility
(I still refer to it as a second childhood). I miss it because it was really
nice, living hard and honest. It was nice appreciating amenities, getting
excited when you had a chance to sit at all, never mind if it was on a rock or
a bench or a lazy-boy that was so damn comfortable you’ll never want to get up
again. I miss looking out and seeing rows of hazy blue waves, and I miss
refusing to stagnate. I know that I’ll probably, hopefully, go back one day and
start again. I’m trying to do it when I’m young and have almost no things to
hold me back from disappearing from the world for 3-4 months, but I won’t mind
doing it when I’m retired and need to get out of the house for a little bit. I
don’t think I’ll enjoy the attempt any less the second time around.
