AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (12 page)

I sit on the platform of War Spur Shelter for a lunch break, with my food bag just inches from me. A huge black snake emerges from inside the shelter, brushing my leg as he slithers betweeme and my food. I'm too stunned to react. He drops to the ground and proceeds into the woods at an unhurried pace, as if I were inanimate.

A few miles beyond the shelter, near an intersection with a dirt road, the trail passes over a stream on a footbridge. Someone has left cans of beer in the stream. The first thought that pops into my head is "calories," indicative of how my thoughts on food and drink have changed since starting the hike. After gulping down two cans of calories, I begin a long uphill segment of trail. Mountain laurel crowds the trail with dense green leaves and abundant white blooms.

Gray Matter marches uphill ahead of me, legs like pistons, arms pumping in synch with trekking poles. I envy his youth. For a while I keep up, using his pace, as I did with Bigfoot, to pass difficult miles quickly. But I fall behind. Looking up at him making the climb accentuates the steepness of the trail. In that moment I make the mistake of despairing over the difficulty of the task at hand, rather than just doing it. I opened the check-valve on my gumption and feel my energy drain away. Thoughts are the most effective weapon in the human arsenal. On the upside, it is powerful to realize that goals are reached primarily by establishing the proper state of mind. But if allowed the perspective that our endeavors are propped upon nothing but a notion, we falter.

For most of the day, the trail bounces up and down between twenty-four hundred and thirty-six hundred feet. The fantasy of easy walking in Virginia has not materialized. The rain has subsided, though, and my clothes, even my shoes, have started to dry.

I descend into a grassy pastureland, bisected by a road. Looking ahead to the road, still a mile away, I see a car stop to pick up two hitching hikers. The last fifty yards of pastureland are submerged ankle-deep in water, and my shoes get soaked once again.

A lone cherry tree has more low-hanging fruit than I can eat. Time in the pastureland is all too brief before another long uphill segment. I stop twice to snack, trying to power my way up with a sugar boost. Atop the ridge there are a number of stone piles, mounded up to five feet high. In the late afternoon, the mounds have the eerie appearance of funeral cairns. Sarver Hollow Shelter is off the ridge, reached by a precipitous downhill side trail. The shelter is new and sizeable, with a roof large enough to cover a picnic bench in front.

Soon after I reach the shelter, a thunderstorm erupts. Lightning drops like bombs. Bigfoot arrives in the midst of the storm, barely able to see through his wet and foggy glasses. He is covered in mud. "On this shelter trail my shoe strap broke, and I slid down," he explains, followed by curses about the steepness of the side trail. His running shoes are secured by Velcro straps instead of laces, and I look down to see the offending strap flopped to the side of his shoe.

Well after dark, we awake to the sounds of two hikers singing in the rain as they approach the shelter. The hikers call themselves Riff and Raff. They are the same two hikers I saw earlier, getting a ride at the road through the pasture.

Early into my morning walk, I nearly jump out of my shoes when I am startled by a sound like a baby's cry amplified through a foghorn, coming from ten feet away. Lucky for me I used the privy before leaving the shelter. The sound is so unnaturally loud I first suspect a hiker is hiding up a tree to play a joke on me. It is a fawn about two feet tall, waking up scared and bleating for its mother.

A fawn bleating after I startle it.

Near the top of the ridge, the trail passes over large slabs of stone. The trail is slightly off the peak, making the walk precarious on about a forty-degree side-hill slope. I look for cracks in the stone for good footholds. Only small, sparse trees gain purchase in the limited soil, so I have open views to the east. The sky is clear. Another ridge, parallel to the one that I am on, is a few miles away, rising about three thousand feet from the plateau that separates the ridges. The side of the ridge facing me is rippled with valleys, sharply contrasted by the stark midmorning sun, but the top of the ridge is surprisingly level. A trail running along its peak could go on for miles with little elevation change. I hope my ridge is like the one I see in the distance.

Fire pink, a delicate red wildflower, adorns tufts of grass along the sides of the trail. A rusty metal wheelbarrow sits abandoned in the middle of the trail, suggesting backpack replacement. The air is filled with a droning hum, similar to the sound of power lines, of the seventeen-year cicadas. The insects are about two inches long, with transparent wings, a thick black body, and beady red eyes.

Ahead, the trail leads directly into a pond. In the middle of the pond, there is a tree whose trunk is deep in water. Higher on the trunk there is a white blaze. I explore to my right and to my left, looking for any signs of how hikers ahead of me have navigated this mess. Often when there is an obstacle such as this, the best path around it is indicated by the trampled ground on the detour most often used by previous hikers. Here, there is no uniform detour; this flooding must be fairly recent. Current is discernible toward each end of the "pond." There is a stream under all that water, vastly overflowing its banks because of the daily rainstorms. I take some deadfall and try to drop it across the water, but it floats away with the current. After wasting fifteen minutes searching for dry footing, I've already soaked my feet with missteps. I do what I should have done to begin with: march straight ahead through the knee-deep water.

I catch up to Gray Squirrel, another thru-hiker that I have seen almost daily over the past week. Gray Squirrel has the look of an old-timer, lean and leathery with bright white hair and beard. I pass him in a zone of blooming white mountain laurel, where he blends perfectly. Gray Squirrel walks at a slow and steady pace, so all of our meetings on the trail have been like this, me passing him as if he is standing still. The first time I met him, I was sure he'd never catch up. But the next day, I found him ahead of me again. He starts early and walks late into the day. He sleeps in a hammock, so almost anywhere on the trail is an acceptable campsite. I'm more inclined to end my day when I come to a shelter or a town, not necessarily at nightfall. We will continue our tortoise and hare routine until Daleville, when I take a few days off. I will not see the tortoise again after that because I will never catch up to him.

Over the past week I've also crossed paths with a young woman hiking southbound as I continue north. Incongruously, we crossed paths going in opposite directions three times. I had the same experience with a young man twice in the same week.

On passing the woman for the third time, I stop to ask how it was that we continued to meet like that. She and her husband are thru-hiking the trail together, and they have their car with them. On most days, one will drop the other off at the south end of the trail to hikcro The driver then drives to a point where a road crosses at the north end of the trail, parks the car, and hikes south. They meet at midday on the trail. The northbound hiker will reach the car at the end of the day, and drive back to the south end of the section to retrieve the partner. Having the car offers them many options; they can camp, sleep in the car, or drive to a nearby town. They carry little more than a water bottle and lunch.

Gray Squirrel on the trail through a thicket of mountain laurel.

My favorite cartoon of those that Hungry Hiker has drawn in shelter registers is the one he titled "Evolution of a Hiker." The first frame shows a hiker after two miles, taking long strides and saying, "I can do twenty miles today." The next frame has the hiker settled into a walk after eight miles, saying, "This is nice." After twelve miles, the hiker is stooped over, saying, "I'm hungry." Finally after sixteen miles, the hiker is in a sprawling crawl with the caption, "Shelter...where's the shelter?"

That's how I pass many a day, including this one. The last major obstacle of the day is the climb up to Dragons Tooth, which begins after I've already hiked eighteen miles. I crawl ahead and rest frequently, not caring how late I'm on the trail today. I take my pack off and sprawl out on a boulder, waiting for energy to return to my body. I see Bigfoot hiking by, so I put my pack on and follow him to the top. We both take a short side trail to Dragons Tooth, a spectacular pointed monolith jutting more than thirty feet high. He climbs the rock, but I'm too tired for the diversion. I want to move on, and I meander back toward the trail. From above, Bigfoot tells me about the views, and how the last bit of climbing was tricky. I can sense a little fear in his voice, so I wait for him.

Bigfoot climbs down without incident, and we walk the rocky trail together. The descent from Dragons Tooth is steep, often made by sliding down rocks on hands and butt. This descent is steeper and longer than the climb up Albert Mountain. From the rocky ridge, we see where we are headed: it is a house in the valley with four tall pine trees out front. Moving specks of people are visible and, unbelievably, we can hear some of the hootin' and hollerin' going on below. This registers slight concern with me, curious about what kind of a crowd we are about to join.

Four Pines Hostel is set up in a three-car garage behind a ranch house. At least twenty-five hikers are here for the night. Half the floor is covered with cots and cot-sized mattresses where hikers laid claim to floor space. Some are sorting through their gear, and there is a line waiting for the single makeshift shower in the corner of the garage. Other than the ratty attire, the scene is similar to any other house party; small groups mingling, drinking beer, nibbling on food. A few bottles of harder stuff are circulating.

Indiana Slim is on a lawn chair just outside one of the overhead doors, offering up a bottle of whiskey. He looks a little impaired, so I ask if he remembers meeting me.

"Oh, sure...Awol...I've got you here in my list." He fumbles through a tiny pad on which he has recorded the name of every hiker he has met. Good idea, I think of his list. He really is slim, no facial hair, so boyish-looking he could be sixteen. He insists on having me drink from his whiskey bottle. His smoking and drinking play like an attemparden his soft shell.

Another hiker approaches and blurts out, "Slim! How'd you get here?"

"Well, I hitched a ride, of course," Slim answers jocularly.

I'm happy to be back with some of the familiar crowd. AA wants to know how I got behind. Stretch and No-Hear-Um are here. I meet Popsicle and Moose once again. They are keeping to themselves at a bench outside, and set up their tents on the lawn away from the garage. Tipperary is here. Tipperary always makes me feel as if there is no person he's happier to see. I am greeted with a hearty "Awol!" and an engulfing hug. His unshakable good nature makes him popular among thru-hikers and certainly improves his chances of staying on the trail. On this trek, his temperament is more of an asset than conditioning or know-how.

One large group of hikers that I have been hearing about is here. The group is centered about the repeat thru-hiker Green Man. This bunch is all about having fun. They spent two weeks at Trail Days. There is beer wherever they go, noisy hotel stays, making a bit of a wake as they plow through the trail. It is a boisterous crowd, and FUBAR is the most outlandish of them, with his bare-chested exhibit of tattoos, hair cut in a Mohawk, and the demeanor of a wild man. His voice bellows without constraint. Clearly it is him we heard up on the ridge. His young wife is here, too. They were married at Trail Days in Damascus.

It is 11:00 p.m.--way past hiker bedtime--and only blissfully deaf No-Hear-Um is asleep. A circle of people just outside are passing around a guitar and doing an acoustic set. Two of them are excellent singers. Tipperary, who is not, sings anyway. Roman Around is incoherent, curled up in a chair with a near-empty bottle of vodka. The sprinkle of curse words in conversation has turned into a downpour. The circle is uproarious when Tipperary the priest joins in with an F-word of his own.

Suddenly, everyone is out of their seats, grouping over to one side of the circle of chairs. With little warning or apparent provocation, FUBAR has come behind the still-seated Indiana Slim and put him in a choke hold, and others in the crowd are trying to tug him loose. The party mood is broken, and most people head for bed. FUBAR and Slim stay just outside, now playing the roles of drinking buddies slurring out a disjointed conversation.

Slim's topic alternates between "I love you, man" and "Why you wanna' choke me?" FUBAR's words are impossible to categorize. In a final act of reconciliation, FUBAR holds Slim's head in his hands, forehead to forehead, making a final vow of friendship. Then they are bumping heads firmer and firmer, until they have a full-fledged head butt. Indiana, initially tickled over the bonding, is upset again when he finds that his head is bleeding.