AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (16 page)

As kids we dared each other to jump off the roof of our house, antics I escaped without injury, but I remember the pain. On landing, I felt the impact on the soles of my feet, as if I had stomped them on a concrete surface. My knees folded up into my chest faster than anticipated, and my ankles were sore from the jolt. Jumping off a roof is what comes to mind as a comparison to the wear I feel from backpacking this far.

After resting, my foot pain is more tolerable. The trail moves onto softer, more shaded ground. The pattern is familiar. My aches approach the limit of what I am willing to bear. I rest, take ibuprofen, and, fortunately thus far, the pain subsides. It doesn't take a debilitating injury to end a thru-hike. At the moment, it is easy to see why hikers choose not to continue walking when it causes such discomfort. It is a tough decision to make. Wisdom is knowing when perseverance will be rewarded.

By noon I have reached Skyland Lodge and Restaurant and continue the wonderful string of store-bought and restaurant-prepared meals. I get a seat in the large, air-conditioned restaurant by a window overlooking a creek. Indiana Slim and a thru-hiker friend are at the restaurant, too. I use a pay phone downstairs to call my friend Scott Strand, who will meet me later at Thorton Gap. Indiana Slim's friend is on the pay phone next to me, and Indiana stands nearby waiting.

Stretch and Tipperary are here. Crossroads arrives when we are all set up at the shelter, drop-jawed at seeing me again for the first time since Tennessee.

I am a rotisserie sleeper, periodically turning so all body parts share time being compacted on the hard sleeping surface. Tipperary is next to me in the crowded shelter. I worry that the noisy rustling of my bag is keeping him awake; I hear him stir every time I turn. I apologize for it in the morning. "No, not to worry," he replies. "I turned when you did so you wouldn't have to listen to me turn."

All seven other people in the shelter clear out before me. Usually, I am one of the first on the trail around 7:30 a.m. It is getting hotter during the day, so hikers are motivated to do their walking early and late. Ten miles north, at Tom Floyd Shelter, there is a tent set up inside the shelter. Three hikers who stayed here last night still haven't left and don't look as if they will be leaving anytime soon. Elwood is one of them; the other two are a couple out for a few days. Both the man and woman are pale-skinned, riddled with tattoos, and have dyed hair. "Hello, Awol," Elwood says in his raspy voice, smiling because of the odd coincidence of us meeting so often, and giddy with the company he has found. The three of them are ribbing each other about hanging out here all day. I make a trip to the privy and to get water while Elwood and his bawdy buddies cackle about "getting back into the tent."

The trail is all downhill from the shelter. Below, I see a young bear in the woods, unaware of my presence. I lose sight of him in the trees, but I suspect he is on a course that will intersect with the trail below. I get my camera out and continue stalking downhill as quietly as I can. I see the bear emerging from the trees out onto the trail a short way ahead. He turns his head to look uphill and freezes momentarily when he sees me, giving me a perfect opportunity to snap his picture before he runs away. Sadly, this picture, and all other pictures that I took in the latter part of the SNP, were lost in my attempt to mail home a digital camera card from Front Royal.

I hitch into Front Royal from U.S. 522 after leaving Shenandoah National Park. Again, I have a ride within minutes. My driver is a young man in an eighties-era muscle car. He spends his spare time and money getting his car into racing form and gives me a sample of its acceleration on the short ride to town.

I get a shower and set out to explore the town. The chamber of commerce has free goody bags for hikers, similar to what was given out at Waynesboro, but also including granola bars and single-serving cereal boxes. I head out to a restaurant at the west end of town, walking nearly a mile on the hot pavement. Along the way, I stray off to visit with other thru-hikers. By some coincidence, they are all couples. Superman and Torch are lying under the shade of a tree in a park; Ken and Marcia are at the library updating their journal; Doc and Llama and their dog, Coy, are at a cafe.

I circle back by the hotel and then head for an outfitter on the east end of town. Again, my walk is nearly a mile, this time on streets without sidewalks. I try hitching, halfheartedly because it is such a short distance. No one stops, anyway. It is much more difficult to hitch within town than it is to hitch from a remote trailhead. My backpack, which I don't carry around town with me, is my ticket to hitch.

I look over trail shoes, insoles, and socks at the outfitter, but I see nothing that looks promising. I don't know what I was expecting to find. I've already worn four different pairs of shoes. I've tried many different types of socks, wearing two pairs of socks, and different types of inserts. There is no magic insole, no wonder shoe in which I will be able to backpack twenty miles a day and feel as if I hadn't.

Doc and Llama are on their second thru-hike of the AT. They did the PCT the same year as Ken and Marcia. They are in the small sect of thru-hikers that could be dubbed "career hikers." During the off-season, Doc does landscape work and Llama waits tables. These aren't jobs with "a future" they're jobs that will fund their next adventure.

People living normal lives are ruffled by folks like Doc and Llama. Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can't work, why it doesn't even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can't buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom.

In Somerset Maugham's
The Razor's Edge
, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to "loaf."
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The term "loafing" inadequately desc
ribes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: "Common sense assured...that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability."

Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry's acquaintances didn't fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform.

I'm no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn't even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit.

Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement "I am a..." with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize "defining priorities" and "staying focused," euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don't normally do to keep loose the moorings of society.

Hiking the AT is "pointless." What life is not "pointless"? Is not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

From the start of the day, I am sluggish, and I struggle even on undemanding climbs. The drenching rains don't help. At Manassas Gap I stop to adjust socks on my hurting feet, and it starts sprinkling. I have to unload most of my gear to get my pack cover and rain jacket from the bottom of my pack. This day I'm peeved by these simple inconveniences. Why did I leave town? I could still be sleeping in a comfortable motel bed in Front Royal. The feeling is comparable to wanting to turn your car around midway into the morning commute.

This day would turn out fine, even though I wouldn't regain any spunk. The terrain isn't too tough, and I enjoy the company. I cross paths with Ken and Marcia a few times. No-Hear-Um is taking his lunch break, and he shares carrots he brought from town. This is the last I would see of him on the trail. I meet section hiker Molly, and she tries to help me out with powdered Vitamin C.

I flop down in Dicks Dome Shelter, a small dome-shaped experiment of a shelter. The arching roof provides less headroom than a typical shelter; it is low enough for me to extend my legs and rest my feet on the trusses. The leaky roof has left water stains on the ceiling and floor, so already I know I don't intend to stay here. Molly enters and starts setting up her sleeping bag awkwardly, perpendicular to my position. The oddly-shaped floor space does not lend itself to a uniform sleeping arrangement. Elwood is here, too.

I head on into the late afternoon. There is dense undergrowth and no room for a tent. I don't mind, since I am covering miles in cool weather and putting distance between myself and Elwood. A side trail to Sky Meadows State Park branches off to the right. At the intersection of the AT and the side trail, there is an open piece of flat ground and a park bench. The little bench is a convenient place to cook and eat. The ground here is dark, packed dirt studded with pebbles and hard to penetrate with a tent stake. But as expected, I don't feel the pebbles through my air pad. I settle in for a memorably comfortable night of solitude.

Harpers Ferry is thirty-six miles away, and I intend to get there by noon tomorrow. I've arranged to meet my friend Tim Kesecker, who is visiting his parents in West Virginia. Tim is on vacation from the same workplace that I quit at the start of my hike. In the early going, my desire for rapid progress is waylaid, first by muddy trail, then by the Roller Coaster.

The Roller Coaster is a nine-mile-long series of hills in northern Virginia over which the trail ascends and descends, as the name implies, straight up to the peaks and straight down to the valleys. Although no peak is higher than fourteen hundred feet, there is five thousand feet of elevation gain and loss. The first part of any uphill climb is the most difficult. It takes time for me to establish a pace that I can sustain. Especially hard is the transition from walking downhill to walking uphill. On the downhill my pace accelerates, momentum carries me into the uphill, and then I make the panting realization that I'm headed uphill at a near-jogging pace.

The last ascent of the Roller Coaster ends on a rocky plateau called Bears Den Rocks. I take a short side trail to Bears Den Hostel. The hostel is in a beautifully rustic stone building that houses the hostel caretaker and a small supply store. Stretch is at a park bench out front eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Stretch has a friend, Justin, out to hike with him this week. Elwood is also sitting at the table.

"Elwood, you beat me here!" I exclaim.

"Hey, you know it, man. I got up early and hauled ass," he says.

I camped ahead of him and never saw him pass me, so I know there is some other explanation. Stretch and Justin head back out to the trail, and I leave soon after. "Until next time," Elwood says, alluding to our continuing encounters on the trail. This time, there would be no next time.

The trail stays atop Bears Den Rocks for the next half mile. On this stony ridge, there is a steep drop-off on the western edge with many overlooks. At one of these overlooks, Stretch and Justin are taking in the view. I pause to take a picture for them.

"Back there when Elwood told you that he 'hauled ass'..." Stretch says, not bothering to finish the sentence. "We were sitting right there when a jeep pulled up and dropped him off." I suspected that Elwood was again having a Rosie Ruiz day, but his brashness in telling the lie in front of people who knew better renews my wariness of him.
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The trail dips down to Snickers Gap and then ascends steadily. Near the peak, I say hello to a couple of teenagers wearing daypacks walking in the opposite direction. Soon after, there are more small groups of teens and parents, obviously all part of one troop. A man and woman shepherding a distressed youth are straggling behind the rest. The adults are more likely counselors, judging by the patience with which they are handling the young man. The boy is overweight, red-faced, and listless. In an obvious attempt to engage me in their efforts to motivate him, the adults stop me with questions.

"How close are we to the top?"

"You're almost there. Another hundred yards, then it's mostly downhill."

The woman turns to the boy. "See, honey, we're nearly there. It'll be okay." And then she says to me, "How far to the road?"

"Oh, I passed the road about thirty-five minutes ago."

"Are you a thru-hiker?"

"Yes."

They continue with questions about when I started, how much weight is in my pack, how many miles I walk per day, and so forth pursuing this conversation to show the young man by inference, "See how long he's been hiking? It's not so hard." But I don't think the strategy is helpful, so I don't cooperate. The young man is deflated; I don't know how anyone could inspire him at this point. Anything said will cause him to search for the counterpoint, to rationalize why he's miserable, entrench himself in his position. If help is coming, it will be from within.

I've encountered many large groups, and within each there are always one or more kids not happy to be there. Do I see this because kids have less patience for hiking, or because they are more likely to be here against their will? Adults with the same aversion to the outdoors--if they came at all--would get fifty yards down the trail, decide it is "not their thing," and go home.

Not everyone needs to be a hiker, but using "not my thing" is too convenient. Activities that even momentarily cause discomfort, that don't provide immediate positive feedback, are subtracted from the realm of experience. We are outraged when we are constrained by others, but willfully, unwittingly put limits on ourselves. There are better solutions. The boy I saw struggling that day could conclude that he will get in shape so that he won't need to avoid physical activity. Or he may realize that the outing was not as bleak as he imagined and resolve to keep a better attitude. These are solutions that build confidence and put no bounds on future opportunities.

There are many thru-hikers on the trail late in the day. This is unusual. Ken and Marcia, Bearable, Torch, Superman, Doc, Llama, and Tipperary are still hiking past 7:30 p.m. All but Ken and Marcia take the side trail down to the Blackburn PATC (Potomac AT Club) Center. The Blackburn Center is located steeply downhill, about one-third of a mile from the AT. As we descend on switchbacks, music floats up to meet us.

A wedding has just taken place on the lawn of the Blackburn Center. A sign posted on the side trail told us so and informed us that hikers were welcome to come anyway. A modular dance floor is assembled on the grass and covered by a white canopy. Next to the canopy a band is playing to a crowd of about fifty people outfitted in suits and dresses. A few diehards still dance, but most have moved on to eating and drinking, scattering among a dozen linen-covered tables. The transition from the trail to this celebration is striking and exhilarating. What good fortune.

Crossroads and two other thru-hikers have already checked into the hostel and have been delegated the job of greeting hikers and showing them to the bunkrooms and tent sites. They say the time is near for us to dig into the reception leftovers. Many nights on my hike I would spend alone, or with few other hikers. By wonderful coincidence, most of the hikers that I've enjoyed spending time with through the Shenandoahs arrive here on the same night, camaraderie culminating at the moment we stumble into a beckoning party.

The bunkroom is one of the outlying structures of the Blackburn complex. There are other buildings for storage and equipment. The main building, a large, square building with a wraparound patio, is the caretaker's residence. Bill, a former thru-hiker, is the caretaker.

Bill tells us we are welcome to drink from the keg. We set up at picnic tables on the perimeter of the reception area, eyeing the buffet like vultures. Before long we are brought a tray of leftover meat and rolls. When guests take notice of us, they trickle out to mingle. The wedding photographer takes pictures of this anomalous intersection of people. Upon seeing how quickly the food dissolves, the guests take it upon themselves to bring more. We are treated to a remarkable feast of smoked pork, turkey, salads, deviled eggs, wedding cake, brownies, cookies, and champagne.

After the wedding party leaves, we move to a linen-covered table and continue to work the keg and talk with Bill and a couple of lingering guests. One of the guests brings out a bottle of his favorite whiskey, and we pass it around until it is empty. The same fate meets a second bottle. We discuss hiking, blue-blazing, politics, and the war in Iraq with logic and earnestness peculiar to those who have drunk alcohol in quantity. Bill has a proposition that we all accept: stick around in the morning to clean up after the wedding, and he'll drive our packs to Harpers Ferry.

I wake, confused, to the sound of running water. There's no stream outside and no water inside this bunkroom. Maybe the sound is from a dream. There are only two sets of bunk-bed platforms with floor space in between. I am in one of the upper bunks. The hiker in the upper bunk on the other side of the room asks, "Is someone urinating in here?" I hear that clearly. I'm not dreaming. The sound is someone urinating. A drunken hiker sleeping on the floor had made it to his knees, but couldn't struggle free from his sleeping bag before the urge to pee overtook him. He passed out, clunked to the floor, and started to drag the sodden sleeping bag back onto himself. I struggle too, between overwhelming grogginess and the desire to get up and help. I retrieve my watch and push the "illuminate" button. It is 1:30. Thankfully, another hiker gets up and takes the bag outside.