AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (4 page)
Read AWOL on the Appalachian Trail Online
Authors: David Miller
"Should I tell Gary you are not coming back?"
"Yes."
I wake up with a sore left thigh, probably because my left leg has been compensating for my sore right knee. In no hurry to get going, I lounge around the room picking through my gear and mail drop. I've concluded I don't need maps, and my seven-ounce guidebook weighs too damn much. I cut the pages from the binding, divide them into four sections, and mail three of the sections home to be mailed back as I need them.
Hiawassee is a compact and attractive town. It's an easy walk to the library and post office. I hitch a ride from Paul, a college student at Young Harris, who turns his car back toward town after dropping me off. He drove ten miles out here just to help me. I don't get on the trail until 12:20 p.m. Because of my ailments, I will take an extra day to reach my next planned stop, the Nantahala Outdoor Center, but an extra day of food is heavy and takes up all of my pack space. It's a catch-22; going slower means struggling with more weight.
The trail climbs from the road, as it always does, and rises steadily to the Georgia/North Carolina border. A twisted, sprawling tree has a simple wood sign reading "GA/NC." One state behind me, thirteen to go. Normally, this would be a cause for celebration, but it is starting to rain. I continue, hardly breaking stride.
I wonder how they will write my obituary as I walk in the lightning and rain on this ridge. How will they find me? With my shoes blown off in the woods? These are some of the less wonderful thoughts I've had walking the AT. I thought I was near the top at the border, but the trail kept going up. The trail and my hopes play tricks on me. I want to believe that I see the top just ahead. The trail leads up the highest mound in sight. When I get there, the trail makes a turn, ever so slight, and reveals more uphill path, even steeper than before. I slip on slimy, muddy rocks. I lean forward and grab rocks, tree branches, tree roots, anything to maintain my uphill progress. The trail levels out, even dips downward, but then goes back up. I'm angered by the brief reprieve. It's not worth the gumption lost on false hope. I want it to just go up until I get "there." I don't even know where "there" is. "There" is a nameless peak somewhere on this trail that I will reach and then head reliably downhill for as long as I've spent climbing up. Never mind that I'll just start the process over again. Hey, what if the trail was just level for a while? There's a novel idea. This has been the most difficult, disheartening climb so far.
I've been playing a game with my rain jacket. The cold rain is no match for the heat that I am generating, so I get completely wet from sweat anyway. I loosen my shoulder straps so I can worm out of the sleeves of the sauna suit one arm at a time while walking and without taking my pack off. It takes a few minutes, but I'm covering ground. About the time I finish, the rain picks up again, and I have to wiggle back in, still walking. I must've done this eight times.
Three men are in Muskrat Creek Shelter ahead of me. Two of them look out from the dripping edges of the roof, grinning in recognition of what I have been through. They've been through it, too, and know how good it feels to finish a day like this one. I meet a hiker named Crossroads, who is as much my contemporary as anyone I'll meet on the trail. He is just a few years younger than I am, and we walk at roughly the same pace, so we will see more of each other on this trail. Crossroads left his job in midcareer, but unlike me, he was granted a leave of absence. His employer wants him to move up to a position with more responsibilities. Crossroads finagled time off, saying he needs the time to decide. "Crossroads" is an apt moniker. He wants to finish the trail, but doesn't think he has enough time to do so. He is not enthused about the new position, or even going back to the same job. He gives lip service to skipping parts of the trail, but at heart he is a "purist." More about that term tomorrow.
A young hiker from Tennessee joins the conversation. The only other hiker staying the night is an older gentleman already in his sleeping bag. He has on headphones and speaks not a word for the remaining hours of daylight while the rest of us talk, cook dinner, and spread out our gear. I know he is not asleep because he pulls his hands out of his bag a few times to tune his radio.
I woke up at 2:02, 3:15, 5:08, 6:30, and more times when I didn't check my watch. That's how sleep has been for me, caused by a combination of soreness, sleeping on hard surfaces, and odd (but typical) shelter noises. One of those noises must have been the headphones guy packing, because he is gone. One of the aches is the bunion on my left foot.
Five years ago I had surgery to fix a bunion on my right foot. Recovery from foot surgery is painful and lengthy. I had hoped that I'd never have to do it again. I take my sock off and see that the bunion is grotesquely swollen. It looks as if half a golf ball has been implanted under my skin on the "knuckle" of my big toe. It is such a captivating deformity that I sit there staring as thoughts race through my head. I need to get new shoes. Where's the next town? Is there an outfitter? A doctor? My foot doesn't hurt that badly; maybe it will get better. Why kid myself? This will just get worse. I should get off the trail, go home, and have another bunion surgery. Maybe I can try the trail again in a few years. With this sense of finality, I stuff my swollen foot back into my shoe and head north.
Oddly, I feel as strong as I ever have on the trail. The rain has stopped, and the terrain is better. My foot feels more numb than painful. Before long I catch up to the older gentleman, sitting on the wet rocks that line the trail, looking over his map. He introduces himself as Russ. He makes no apology for being unsocial last night, and seems polite and only slightly reserved.
Pointing to his map, he says, "You see this big loop here? Well, that's the AT. It goes around here to hit Standing Indian [Mountain] and Albert Mountain. I can take the Kimsey Creek Trail and cut all that off. I can't make it to Maine any other way." Using this shortcut, he could walk less than six miles to rejoin the AT. That point would be about nineteen miles if he were to follow the white blazes. And two mountains could be avoided. Standing Indian is the highest mountain south of the Smokies, and Albert Mountain is famously steep.
The Kimsey Creek Trail, like most other side trails, is marked with blue paint blazes. What Russ is proposing is dubbed "blue-blazing," and it is heresy in the minds of many thru-hikers, but he had announced his plan unapologetically. There is contention over what it means to be a "thru-hiker." A "purist" is a backpacker who believes a thru-hike is traveling every inch of the AT in one direction, carrying your pack every step of the way. Others will say they are thru-hiking even though they take blue blazes to shorten the distance, avoid obstacles, or to explore a more interesting route. There is a tedious abundance of customs and opinions about how to thru-hike. Conversations about the purity of a thru-hike will last the duration of my hike, and of course come to no conclusion. Everyone does his own walk, guided by conscience or by expediency.
The Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC) is the organization with primary responsibility for the trail. The ATC issues "2000-miler" certificates to "any hiker who reports he or she walked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail." The certificates are awarded on the honor system. The ATC does not differentiate between hikers who hike the trail in one trip, or piece it together over a number of years. Their minimal 2000-miler policy states that blue-blazing is acceptable in emergency conditions. The trail can be hiked in any direction, in any sequence, with or without a backpack. The important point exposed in my current conversation with Russ is that the topic is touchy. Russ snapped out his plan as a preemptive strike against any purist preaching I might be inclined to offer. Even in trying to stay neutral, conversing about plans can be misconstrued as making judgmentsiv height="0%">
A snake crosses the trail right as I pass, somehow slithering between my feet without getting trampled. He freezes, so I look him over but cannot identify him. And I thought I knew them all. The trail tunnels through patches of rhododendron; otherwise, visibility is good. Most deciduous trees are still leafless, and some of the evergreens are dead. Standing Indian Mountain has a nice, long, steady grade with switchbacks. Even though it is the highest mountain so far, the ascent is easy. At one switchback, I can see Crossroads up ahead, flying up the trail. He must have been taking a break as I pulled close.
The climb up Albert Mountain is steeper than anything to this point, but relatively short. I actually enjoy the hand-over-hand climbs. I stand at the fire tower atop the mountain and look out over the mountainscape. My visit is cut short when I see rain clouds rolling in at a startling pace. I throw my pack on and hustle down to Big Spring Shelter. A man is in front of the shelter, topless, with his pants down around his knees. He's taking a sponge bath, and I guess he wasn't expecting company. "I'm going down to the stream," I say, giving him a few minutes to dress and me a few minutes to decide if I want to stay here. A derelict tent is set up next to the shelter; it looks like it's been here for months. The shelter is a wood structure with a metal roof and an ample overhang in front.
The hiker is also from Florida, and he's out doing a section of the trail. It is easy enough to assess that he is harmless. He knows some of the thru-hikers on the trail this season from their Internet journals. It is windy and storming overnight, but I have a great night's sleep. My Big Agnes sleeping pad is working out well and is the envy of everyone else in the shelters. I still have to turn every so often. I have a side-back-side rotation. I've also learned that tucking my knees higher while on my side takes pressure off my hip bone.
It is a beautiful morning, cloudless but cold. I've finished one hundred miles of the trail. The bunion on my left foot is not hurting, and fears of having to quit no longer loom over me. My plans for the day are uncertain. One shelter is too close (twelve miles) and the next is too far (twenty-five miles). It looks like rain again today, so I'd like to avoid sleeping in my tarp. At Winding Stair Gap, the trail crosses a well-traveled road, and a hiker named Fujiboots jumps out of the bed of a pickup, having hitched in and out of the town of Franklin, North Carolina. The weather is clearing, so I continue on, even taking off my shirt to get some sun.
The weather quickly deteriorates, and it's raining within an hour of my leaving the gap. This storm is even more frightening than the last. The wind howls like a jet engine. I've never been in the woods with winds like this; I don't know what to expect. Is this what a twister sounds like? I look around for somewhere I might hide. There are no caves. I wonder if I should hang on to the biggest tree around so I don't get sucked away by the wind. The rain is coming down heavy and cold, blowing into my face and leaking into the neck of my rain jacket. Rain has destroyed the guidebook pages I am keeping in my pocket, but I know I should be within a mile of Siler Bald Shelter. Lightning flashes. I feel vulnerable. I wish the shelter was here.
Conventional wisdom says I shouldn't be near the top of a hill in a lightning storm, but there is not much I can do about it. I've been on a rolling ridge walk for more than a mile. I cannot backtrack and get down with any speed. If I was to bushwhack, I would have to go so far from the trail I'd probably I llost. My best option, or the option that is as good as any other, is to push forward and hope that I don't get struck dead by lightning. I feel powerless to mitigate the risk. There is no way to be careful on top of a ridge in a lightning storm. Is hiking the trail an acceptable risk?
Finally, I fork off onto the side trail leading to Siler Bald Shelter. The rain is so hard it hurts my exposed hands and bounces off the ground. It's hail! No wonder it hurts. I go a few hundred yards and still see no shelter. In my advance planning for the hike, I rarely planned on going to shelters that were far from the trail. But this is an unplanned stop. I wish I had taken the time to read the sign back at the fork in the trail. I'm seeing no blue blazes that should mark the route. Tentatively I backtrack a dozen steps, considering going back to the fork and making sure I'm on the right path. Damn! It's cold. I don't have time for this. I wheel around again and continue down the unmarked path.
Fortunately, it is the right path. Two hikers are in the shelter already. Two hours later, I finally stop shivering enough to write in my journal. Half of the shelter opening is covered with clear plastic to keep out the cold. It's not the half where I'm sleeping. The plastic is peppered with a colony of gnats, who get excited by our cooking. Kahota (from Florida) shares orange slices, Fujiboots (from Maine) gives me a bagel, and I eat my freeze-dried meal for two. I also eat Kahota's leftover scalloped potatoes. Then I go to bed hungry.
Morning is my time for doubting. It is cold, and I have to coerce my sore, swollen feet into my shoes. I plan to walk slowly, thinking it will be a sort of rest while moving. I have a pleasant walk through a field of wildflowers, seeing wonderful samples of Dutchman's britches and purple trillium. I spot a luna moth camouflaged in the leaves.