Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (36 page)

“Because the AT is a tougher trail than the PCT or CDT,” interjected Pirate, an old hiking mate of hers from the PCT.

The sense of relief at having cleared Mount Washington was short-lived. After laboring from one rock to another, one arrives at Madison Summit and is confronted with a descent over big, loose rocks. I had never seen anything like it.

“This looks like they detonated an underground nuclear explosion here,” Wilderness Bob said, observing the landscape. Each step was tentative and deliberate in order to avoid getting wedged between sharp rocks or losing one’s balance. One New Hampshire hiker, Tink, told of being blown fifteen feet from one boulder to another on Mount Madison. “I honestly wondered if I was being hurled from the mountain,” she recounted.

After three hours and a three thousand-foot descent, but only three trail miles, we finally arrived below treeline and some more hospitable footing. If there was one place on the entire AT a hiker could wish for good weather it probably would be this very rocky fifteen-mile stretch above treeline, encompassing Mount Washington and Mount Madison, which we had just covered. After several days of foul weather that old bitch, Lady Luck, had shined on us with two days of good weather at the single most critical point.

At dusk, at Pinkham Notch, I got lost looking for the designated campsite. I ended up wandering up some ski slopes, and while backtracking saw the perfect field to camp. However, it was ringed with “No Camping” signs. It was now completely dark and I started to set up my tent. But again I remembered my late father’s words, “Be a pig, but don’t be a hog.” Setting up a tent was being a hog, so I just lay out my sleeping bag in this forbidden territory and spent the evening looking up at the stars.

The Pinkham Notch Outdoor Center on a Saturday morning held an atmosphere foreign to me. The masses of people setting out were almost reminiscent of people pouring out to the beach or the golf course on a Saturday in Florida or Georgia. Only in this case, everybody was headed into the high mountains for hikes of various lengths on one of the sixty trails in the White Mountain chain. Fernand Braudel, the famous French historian, theorized that geography is the most important element that influences any culture. Nobody who has hiked the White Mountains could disagree.

Wildcat Mountain had a ski lift going to its summit, and several thru-hikers had unapologetically taken it after the brutal pounding of the previous several days. Again, the trail traveled steep inclines and over ledges, and the going was slow. Unfortunately, when I reached the ski lift building at the top I didn’t have the luck to see any sheepish-looking hikers unloading with their backpacks.

Time was also more of the essence now in northern New England, with the days rapidly shortening. Splashes of color were appearing in the trees. We had started in the southern Appalachians in early spring, when the forest was still mostly bare at higher altitudes. I had passed most of the summer in the Mid-Atlantic States, with its lush forest, dense vegetation, and glorious blooming flowers. Now there was a hint of autumn in the forest, with its pageantry of brilliant colors heralding the approach of winter. This perennial cycle of life and death plays out vividly in front of the long-distance hiker.

The last night in the Whites at the Imp Campsite the caretaker squinted through his glasses and asked, “Don’t I know you?” He happened to be the ridge runner in the Smokies who had cussed me out on that awful third afternoon in the Smokies. We both got a good laugh out of that and it was a fitting coda to the Whites.

A helluva tough job he and all the other trail maintenance people had, indeed. And needless to say the pay was thankless.

I was relieved to finally make it to the thriving trail town of Gorham, in the rain, after eleven days covering only one hundred miles in the Whites. Remnants of Hurricane Wilma were blowing into the area, which would strand dozens of hikers in Gorham.

Hikers rarely get sick. All in all, it is actually a very healthy lifestyle. One obviously gets lots of exercise and fresh air, and water constitutes almost the entire liquid diet of a hiker.

But then something strange happened to all of us. A lot of us got sick at one time. It happened toward the end of our time in the Whites. Gorham resembled a sick bay.

Almost surely this stemmed from heavy exposure to humans in the huts in the Whites, after a long period of absence of such heavy exposure. The vast majority of Native American deaths came from exposure to Europeans carrying diseases for which they had no immunity. Likewise, we had lost our immunity to various viruses and bacteria after a prolonged period outside with little exposure. I spent three days bottled up in Gorham. It was the most time I spent off the trail anywhere, but it didn’t get rid of my fever. It was only when I got back on the trail, and the routine of exercise and fresh air, that it cleared up.

After 16.5 surprisingly gentle miles out of Gorham I crossed into Maine, the fourteenth and final state. All along I had been telling people I was walking to Maine, and here I was. It was getting near dusk, and I squinted to make out some faded blaze down a steep rock chute. I slid down it, and struggled the next half-mile in jagged terrain, worried about beating the dark, to make it to the Carlo Col Shelter. That last half-mile would be a precursor of what lay immediately ahead.

Chapter 20

W
hen people debate the prettiest places on earth you often hear about the mountains, lakes, streams, rivers, and even glaciers of Patagonia in southern Chile and Argentina. Another place frequently mentioned are the windswept, grassy moors of northern Scotland. But any hiker on the AT who passes through Maine is bound to speak of it in similarly majestic terms. At 280 miles, it’s the second longest state on the AT. And by the time we finished, it would be almost everybody’s favorite of the fourteen.

Maine is a wilderness with more forest land than any other state on the east coast. Its sharp cliff-like climbs on silvery summits that overlook deep shimmering bodies of water tucked deep in the forest offers a solitude to stir the depths of even the most hard-bitten souls. The treks through brilliant balsam forests with moss and lichen floors create the fairylike atmosphere of a Disney movie. And the white-capped currents in rivers, which hikers often cross on foot, add a touch of flair that is absent in the previous thirteen states.

One other thing is worth noting. The AT in Maine is tough as hell. In fact, it was thoroughly debated among the hikers as to whether it or New Hampshire is more difficult. Maine has sections that border on the diabolical, with climbs straight up and down rock faces. What’s more, ubiquitous roots, deep mud holes, narrow log-lined bog bridges, and cold rivers to ford are part of the program in Maine. Yet it also has areas of hospitable terrain.

But, once again, I want to emphasize that Maine is a wilderness. Thoreau, who previously had been an unabashed proponent of pure wilderness, was shocked by Maine. “It is more grim and wild than you can imagine,” he wrote. “The landscape is savage.” And instead of his usual exultation in the presence of nature, he felt “more lonely than you can imagine.” It was in Maine that he went from being a unabashed cheerleader for wilderness to advocating a balance between civilization and wilderness. It was a shocking turnabout for a man who had previously said, “What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude, and their darkness? What solution is there for him?”

At the Full Goose Shelter I set up my tent and then wandered up to the shelter to see who had arrived. Stitch was there. So was Pokey-Pikey, but his hiking partner, DA, had not arrived. I had a soft spot for DA, dating to his self-deprecating humor on that cold, grim night on the porch of the Zealand Hut in the Whites. On just a few occasions I had felt I might be in over my head on the AT. But from what I had seen with DA, and from various wry remarks he had made, it may have been more than a few occasions with him. One veteran hiker had said that this twenty-mile stretch was the toughest on the entire AT. Now it was pitch-black dark and DA had not arrived. It was hard to see where in the jagged, steep terrain a lost hiker could pitch camp.

Finally, I started yelling “DA” at the top of my lungs. In the distance I could hear him respond. All was well, so I sat down and cooked a Lipton dinner. But at the conclusion of dinner DA still hadn’t arrived. “He has some serious vision problems,” his hiking partner Pokey-Pikey said. I yelled out again, and once again he responded in the distance. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the same distance away as before.

We sat around and chatted for fifteen more minutes, but the whereabouts of DA seemed to be putting a damper on the conversation. I yelled out again as loud as I could, “DA, are you okay?” Again, an unintelligible response came back from seemingly the same place. Since I had arrived at the shelter first, I was the logical person to try to help him. “I’m gonna’ go find him and show him the shelter,” I finally said, and put on my headlight.

“Do me a favor,” Stitch said. “Use my headlight. It’s incredibly powerful.”

Stitch’s lighter lit up the dark Maine wilderness like a stadium. And after tip-toeing up and down rocky terrain for a few hundred yards, DA’s responses to my calls started getting louder. When I arrived at the point of a steep climb, it sounded like he was right above me. Finally, I saw him. He was perched over a precipice the trail descended. But all he had in his hand was a backup key lighter. “I see you,” I yelled up, but he kept asking my whereabouts until I was almost on him.

“Skywalker, what am I supposed to say?” he asked.

“That you bit off just a little bit more than you can chew,” I said.

“This dang lighter,” he said with consternation. “My main one went out, and I can’t see five feet with this thing.”