North

by Scott Jurek

  But like execution and adaptability, will is just another ingredient in the recipe for success. You can buy the ingredients for a dish, but putting them together for the perfect meal is a whole different story. Anything can happen over two thousand miles. It’s a span that resists the influence of planning. In the early stages, I’d considered that a positive. I knew that my prior experiences in dealing with unforeseen adversity would be a secret weapon. I’d gotten through a lot of tough spots in my life, and I knew I would be fully capable of tapping into my best self once again to meet whatever challenges inevitably cropped up over six weeks.

  I just needed to find that best self. Quickly.

  Because I was beginning to realize that there was a contradiction at the heart of my journey north. Those two big reasons that had been so clear were starting to wash out and bleed away in the rain. Worse than that, they were starting to seem antagonistic.

  Was I here for adventure—to test myself, improvise, discover, and refill myself so I could meet midlife with an open heart and mind?

  Or was I here to win?

  Thunder rolled above and brought me back to earth. The trail didn’t care why I was here. But with, at the minimum, thirty-five days to go, I realized that everything depended on whether I did.

  The rain, the muck, the rocks, and all those doubts that could trip me up worse than a gnarled root were reminders of how ruthless and sinister the trail could become. But, damn, it could be beautiful too.

  Earlier in the day, at a place called Sams Gap where I-25 slices through the belly of the North Carolina Smokies, I’d been joined by an old ultrarunning buddy, Will Harlan. The trail tracks the North Carolina–Tennessee border for many miles, and Will knew these mountains like the back of his hand. He lived near Asheville, North Carolina, so this was basically his backyard. As we ran, he told me about the area’s natural history, the flora and fauna, the stories about the indigenous people who first roamed these mountains and the mysterious prairie summits we were climbing. We climbed over fifty-five-hundred-foot Big Bald and fifty-two-hundred-foot Little Bald into open fields of grass.

  “These balds are an ecological enigma and a conservation dilemma. Scientists still can’t figure out why they exist,” Will said as my crippled body struggled to keep up with my sightseeing tour.

  He gave me a primer on the little crimson newts—officially called red efts—that crossed the trail and explained that this small area of the Appalachians was home to several species of amphibians found nowhere else in the world. Will’s natural-history lesson was taking my mind off the pain, but throughout the morning, the muscle tear in my left quad continued to worsen. The pain must have been affecting my ability to hold a conversation because Will kept reminding me that if anyone could get through this, it was me.

  That sounded right, and I appreciated it, but right then it didn’t feel right.

  During those moments of quiet, my mind snapped back from newts and grassy balds and homed back in on the pain. To try to take command of my ruminations, I started repeating my tried and true mantras: Sometimes you just do things. This is what you came for. I’d chosen this path, and I’d chosen to push myself to the limits of my body and mind. I knew that adversity bred transformation, that there would be an enlightening ease at the other end of this struggle. The sweetest reward lay in that ease, and it was a feeling that neither money nor power—nor a healthy quadriceps—could guarantee. And it existed in each one of us. Stay the course; keep pressing forward, I told myself, but part of me—a lot of me—kept questioning the choices I’d made that had gotten us out here.

  The schedule and logic of the FKT made my predicament worse. It was hard to imagine that I had hit this low of despair and self-pity so quickly. Just one week in. And we had started so well. Before the injuries, I’d felt like I was getting into a groove, like JLu and I were working out the kinks in our take-things-as-they-come adventure.

  I kind of blamed the Smokies and their long, steep descents. And I blamed Horty, wherever he was. I should have just stayed up on top of Max Patch and watched the fox fire.

  I was still waiting for those new legs to materialize. Will and I were now a couple of miles from the next road crossing at Spivey Gap, where JLu would meet us. Noticing my hobbling and slowing pace, he decided to run ahead to see if he could find a hiker who might have some ibuprofen. He was shocked that I didn’t have any on me, but I never use it.

  My thoughts dried up and I started to feel the rain again. I wished I could enjoy the calming sound of its pitter-patter on the canopy of leaves above me. Back in Seattle, the rushing sound of water and tapping of raindrops was something I’d grown to love. But back in Seattle, the rain didn’t feel like a wet and inconvenient metaphor for my world crashing around me and flowing down a flooded trail.

  When things got really bad, I instinctively thought of Jenny. I thought about how she might be even more disappointed than me if I had to stop. I had told her I was doing this one for her. I knew almost down to the word what she’d say if I told her I was thinking of pulling the plug, and the thought of that conversation crushed me even more.

  Hobble. Limp. Hobble. Limp.

  Creak. Thump. Electrifying jolt. Thud.

  And of course—

  Searing burn.

  I was at the lowest of lows and couldn’t imagine things getting any worse. And then I heard that voice.

  “There’s that runner! How ya doin’, boy?”

  Good old Horty was back in his usual form.

  Quite frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for Horty or for his boundless energy. I’m not sure what I was in the mood for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t Horty. But he knew this trail, and twenty-five years ago, nearly to the day, he had been chasing the same speed record. Now, at sixty-six years old, he had a wealth of experience and wisdom—and, unfortunately, he knew that.

  “What’s da matter? You lookin’ like an ol’ man,” Horty hollered for the entire forest to hear.

  I shook my head, wincing in pain and signaling my mood. Don’t even start with me, I thought. “It’s bad. Real bad,” I said. “I’ve never had a muscle tear like this, right in the belly of my quad. I can barely hobble. It’s taken me two hours to go the last two miles and I’m getting slower and slower.”

  Horty knew where I was at, physically and mentally, and, to his credit, he used the opportunity to be helpful rather than just loud and obnoxious.

  Fortunately, we weren’t far from the crossing.

  “Let’s get down to the van. Jenny’s made you some sandwiches and she’ll get ya some dry clothes. Will found some ibuprofen. Got a real nice, long climb ahead. It’ll get you feelin’ better. Those eccentric contractions are the worst for that quad and knee. These downhills are naaasty!”

  I let out a big sigh of frustration and said, “Horty, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  He started off, and hobbling down the trail behind him, I tried to put on my game face, but dark emotions were running through my veins. I sensed the tears welling up deep behind my eyes. Just when I felt like I couldn’t hold them back a moment longer, Horty spun around and looked straight into my soul.

  “Remember this, boy: This is who I am, and this is what I do.”

  He was still crazy old Horty, and on any other day, that would have sounded like nonsense. But in that moment, it felt like an answer to that question I couldn’t shake.

  Why?

  This is who I am.

  This is what I do.

  * * *

  I leaned over, grabbed the atlas sitting on the passenger seat, and traced my index finger over the red dotted line that signified the Appalachian Trail. I’d been driving up the seam that connects Tennessee and North Carolina for the past two days. I didn’t know which state I was technically in at the moment, but the nearest town was Erwin, Tennessee.

  I’d last seen Jurker at Sams Gap, and I’d left him there right when it started to pour. It came down so quick and hard it almost looked fake, like those
cheesy sheets of rain you see in old movies. The Jureks in Jurassic Park. He was wearing a tank top and shorts and I could see the bright red bumpy rash that had appeared overnight and crawled over his entire torso. Along with that rash, there was the poison ivy that he’d picked up before we left home. And the humidity meant that his skin was constantly chafed by his wet clothes. Everything got—and stayed—wet. In Colorado, we were used to clothes drying out nearly instantly. We weren’t in Boulder anymore.

  Having lived in the Northwest for years, I was used to the rain. In fact, I’d grown to love the rain, especially running in it. But out here, you got soaked even when you had a roof over your head. The humidity made sure that beads of sweat constantly rolled down my legs from the back of my knees, and I wasn’t even the one running fifty miles a day. Nothing escaped the wet. Even everything inside our van got damp. The bag of Scott’s dirty clothes reeked of wet dog; loaves of bread got moldy within twenty-four hours, and fruit went bad nearly as quickly, all of which added to the odors of the sixty square feet I called home.

  But I wouldn’t have traded places with Jurker.

  Wherever he was.

  When you crew for someone at a race, you rush to the next aid station, get everything ready, and spend the rest of your time checking your watch and craning your neck to look for signs of movement on the trail. They say it’s the hurry-up-to-wait game. Every time I checked my watch, more worry set in. I was scared I’d somehow missed him, but that wasn’t likely. He couldn’t have already passed through—or could he really be moving that fast? The majority of the time, I was waiting at trailheads that didn’t have cell service, so I couldn’t check the GPS tracker like we had planned on being able to do. The irony was that all the people following along on their computers at work or home had a better idea of where he was than I did.

  All I knew for sure was that a guy I’d never met before, Will Harlan, was running with Jurker. Jurker hadn’t told many people about the trip before we left, but once he’d posted a picture of a white blaze on social media, people started asking if they could help.

  Help can be a complicated word.

  It all came from a good place, I knew, but I wasn’t as chatty or as patient as Jurker. The last thing I needed was a bunch of friends, runners, and strangers trying to coordinate plans with me, especially out here where it was hard to communicate with anyone beyond shouting distance.

  It’s almost impossible to get lost on the Appalachian Trail, but driving around and finding all the rural backroads that intersect the trail is another thing. So far it seemed that for every ten miles Jurker ran, I had to drive thirty miles. And whenever I thought I was getting close to the trail, I’d have to slow down to a crawl and try to catch a glimpse of that white paint through an opening in the trees.

  I drove a little farther, around another curve in the narrow road, and that’s when I saw Horty’s unmistakable bright orange Honda Element parked at the trail crossing. I felt my shoulders relax. I knew I’d found the right place.

  I’ll admit it: I cringed when I first heard Horty was going to meet us on the trail. My only prior experiences with him were from years ago, back in 2003, when he’d made fun of my high-pitched voice at the start of my first fifty-mile trail race. I’d started running only two years before that, so I was nervous, and here was this revered ultrarunner David Horton mocking me. “Ginnnny!” he said, imitating my voice. “Ginnnnnnnny, are you gonna run this race? This is a man’s race, Ginny!” I walked away and thought, How in the world does this flagrant heckler teach at a Christian university? When I crossed the finish line (only fifteen places behind Horty, just for the record) and saw him lying down in the medical tent, I realized that the old dog was all bark and no bite. I’d come to realize that taunting was his love language. If you could take it and, better yet, dish it out, then you were A-OK in his eyes. So despite his bullying, Horty turned out to be really helpful.

  As I parked Castle Black behind his car, I could see Horty hunched over in the driver’s seat studying his AT data book and scribbling notes. I figured he was reflecting on his own AT FKT run, and I hoped he was remembering something useful.

  While Horty was hatching plans, I started making sandwiches for Jurker and getting his supplies ready. The rain pounding on the van was lulling me to sleep, but I had to stay awake, so I cranked up some music and almost forgot about worrying until I saw somebody running toward me.

  “Hey, Scott’s a few minutes back,” Will said. “He’s hurting. He can’t put weight on his left leg and his right is messed up too.”

  About five minutes later, Jurker staggered out of the woods, using his trekking poles like crutches to support his body. I wanted him to stop, sit down, and tell me what was going on, but Horty was taking charge.

  “When I was on this section of the AT, my shins were killing me, but I just walked and got the miles in anyway.”

  Jurker, wait. Talk to me. Don’t just keep going because Horty wants you to was what I wanted to say. But I swallowed my words. Horty knew the AT. But I knew Jurker, and I knew he wanted to stop. He ducked into the van and sat in the passenger seat. He stared blankly out the windshield, through the rills of water and raindrops.

  Horty rapped on the passenger window. He had a plan. He would leave his car here and walk the next ten-mile section with Jurker. This sounded like a terrible idea to me. I knew that Horty had had knee-replacement surgery just last summer and hadn’t walked farther than five miles since then, but again I bit my tongue. Maybe having Horty out there would be a kind of balm. Or maybe I was about to be responsible for two gimps out there on the trail.

  No time to wonder. They set off. The two old friends crossed the road and immediately disappeared back into the green. I could hear their voices long after I could no longer see them.

  Horty left me a list of instructions cribbed from his notes.

  I drove to Erwin and booked a room at the hotel closest to the trail, the Mountain Inn and Suites. I didn’t want to end the day there; that would put us behind our schedule. However, the idea of a hot shower—the first in almost a week—and the prospect of drying out our clothes sounded nice. Next, I went to Walgreens to buy the strongest anti-inflammatory painkillers I could get. That’s when I knew things were really bad. Jurker never took pills or any meds at all, ever. In the suddenly foreign, fluorescent-lit cleanliness of Walgreens, I started to think our trip was over. Well, that was a bust. How’s he gonna explain this to the internet? I wondered. Perhaps: I blew my wad early…the end. Or maybe: I’ll get it next time; this was just a rehearsal run.

  No, there would be no next time. We were one and done.

  After my errands, I drove out to the trail crossing near Uncle Johnny’s Hostel and got a text from Horty saying that they were closer to the road than I’d expected. Somehow, some way, they were moving steadily. I texted back, Excellent! I have two wheelchairs and some Geritol on ice ready for you guys!

  I hiked up the trail to meet them and crossed their path right when there was a break in the rain. Horty was playing tour guide, pointing out where the old AT trail used to come down, and when we got a view of Erwin proper, Horty yelled, “Heeeeyyyy,” at the top of his lungs and the valley answered back. Jurker was still in pain, but for a moment I forgot about the impossibility of what we were doing and I remembered that feeling we’d both had when we were crossing the country to get here. We really were on an adventure. A little rougher than we’d imagined, but an adventure nonetheless.

  They had caught up to a thru-hiker nicknamed No Poles who was keeping a similar gimpy pace because his boots were so uncomfortable. When the four of us reached the van, Jurker pulled out his brand-new size 12 Brooks Cascadia trail-running shoes. (Scott wore an 11½ but he’d brought a size 12 just in case his feet swelled). He and Horty each autographed a shoe and gave them both to No Poles. If our trip was over, Jurker wasn’t going to need them for the drive home.

  I shuttled Horty back to his car and then the three of us went back to
the hotel room. I made dinner, fusilli pasta with red sauce with vegan-sausage bites. Horty was too tired to make fun of my cooking and even asked for seconds.

  The two trail-worn men lay down in separate beds with an old lamp on a nightstand between them while I cleaned up and got things ready for an early start the next day. But then Jurker, who had been more quiet than usual, came clean. “I just don’t see how I can do even forty miles tomorrow with two bad legs.” I stayed quiet. I didn’t want it to be over, but I knew it didn’t matter what I wanted.

  Jurker took out the anti-inflammatory pills, and Horty leaned over, stretched an arm across the gap, and said, “Hey, pass me some of those, boy.”

  It was nothing, a moment of shared pain and resignation, a little bit of humility between two crazy runners, but I started laughing. We had hit rock bottom.

  Before he fell asleep, Horty said with authority, “Your body will find a way to heal itself. It has a memory.” He turned off the lamp. “Your body will remember.”

  Chapter 5

  Never Bet Against

  the Champ

  Day Eight

  Horty said my body would remember.

  But Horty didn’t say what my body would remember. I think he meant it would recall the glories of my past victories and that it would rise for one final victory, like a battle-scarred veteran. The long-term memory of a lifetime of triumph. But when I woke up in that hotel, my body had only a short-term memory: the reverberation of every single footfall from the past eight days. Every step and misstep, every root, every rock. And the memories concentrated like clots in my right knee and left thigh.

  My injuries were bad. I knew it, and Horty did too. And JLu, who wanted this record as badly as I did, was worried because I was resorting to pain relievers. But truthfully, I could have skipped them altogether. In fact, I stopped taking them after a day because they weren’t helping.