by Scott Jurek
“Are you Warren Doyle?” I shouted through the driving rain and thunder.
“Yes, I am,” he said, a bit surprised.
I got up in his face. “You don’t need to be spying on me. I’m covering every single inch of this trail and being completely transparent. If you question my integrity, you ask me directly! Don’t just sit in your car and freak out my wife, next time I’ll have State Troopers on your ass!”
He mumbled something in the pouring-down rain.
I raged on. “I thought you folks down here celebrated decency and etiquette! Whatever happened to Southern hospitality?”
By day twelve, I was only a fifth of the way to Katahdin, but I felt like I’d run the gauntlet already. I’d hit a towering wall, and a text message had catapulted me over it. I’d nearly given up in a motel in Erwin, but I’d gotten out and walked it off. My legs were feeling better—somehow—and I was beginning to remember what it felt like to be racing out ahead of the pack. I was outrunning my doubts for the first time, and I was back to doing fifty-mile days.
It wasn’t all roses and runner’s highs. I was also thinking about getting Jenny a handgun. It was a ridiculous thought; I knew she’d never touch a gun. But after twelve days, I was finding it impossible to ignore the darker side of the AT. The side that only slowly exposes itself to committed hikers and AT-history buffs.
When we arrived at the quintessential trail town of Damascus back on day ten, we drove through the little downtown. There were posters still up from the Trail Days festival, which is like the Woodstock of the AT community. We had just missed it and all the drama that surrounded it a few days prior. Apparently, the FBI had arrested James Hammes, a fifty-three-year-old man who had been a resident thru-hiker on this section for the past four years, a contributor to the A.T. Guide, and a regular guest at the Damascus boardinghouse where the FBI found him. Hammes, known to most by his trail name, Bismarck, sported an unruly beard and seemed to fit in well with the AT crowd. What none of us knew was that the FBI had interviewed him back in 2009, in Ohio, about the embezzlement of $8.7 million from the company he’d worked for. That was when he’d disappeared from Ohio.
He wasn’t the first hiker to use the AT as a place to hide out. The trail has the same attraction to wanderers as railcars used to have in the old West—a kind of permanent itinerancy, a place to go where you could just keep going for as long as you liked. JLu and I both had experienced that pull and wanderlust. We just didn’t pair it with evading authorities.
Certainly, there are some scoundrels among those who wander the trail, but there are redemption stories as well. For instance, David Lescoe. Back in 2005, David Lescoe started hiking south from Rhode Island. Along the way, he got into the habit of stealing other campers’ food and gear. Then he came upon a trail angel in New Jersey. David didn’t need to steal from the angel, because he freely offered him dinner, a warm bed, and a hot shower. Then he showed David a video featuring born-again Christian celebrity Kirk Cameron. Apparently, the video took, because the two men prayed together and David got religion and swore to make amends to those he’d harmed. The angel gave him some money and David kept heading south, mailing letters of apology, cash, and stolen equipment back to those he’d stolen from. He changed his trail name from Injun to Saved—the name he was known by when law enforcement caught him stealing food and gear from a cabin just south of Damascus. So in that case, the redemption was temporary.
Temporary also describes how things are on the AT and in towns like Damascus. The trail has something for everyone—peace, nature, and a chance to get away from it all. But this Eden has end points. And sometimes things get nasty. Sometimes it’s the fault of the locals, like the fishhook booby traps Horty told us of. But hiker misbehavior was more typical, and we weren’t immune to it. With my partner logos on Castle Black, the van was often mistaken for a company promotional vehicle. Some thru-hikers grabbed Clif Bars out of the back one day as JLu was unpacking and then, even worse, left the wrappers scattered all over the trail.
If petty theft and littering were the highest crimes on the AT, it’d be pretty much like any other parkland in the United States, but unfortunately, there have been far more serious offenses. Eleven people have been murdered along the AT since 1974. Randall Lee Smith brutally killed a thru-hiking couple in 1981. He was convicted of second-degree murder, sent to prison, and paroled fifteen years later—and he promptly tried to kill two more people on the trail. In 2007, a Georgia couple named John and Irene Bryant disappeared while they were on a hike not too far from Damascus, and the next year, a twenty-four-year-old hiker named Meredith Emerson also vanished. Later, their bodies were found. Some of the killings have never been solved. People disappear on the trail. Perhaps some of them intended to.
Hence my idea about a gun. The murders were rare, but by the time we crossed over into Virginia I’d heard enough disturbing stories from JLu that I’d had to recalibrate a bit. I knew a professional female climber who kept a Glock in her van’s glovebox. JLu didn’t even have a can of mace. The Appalachian Trail was a path toward higher consciousness and a test of character, but it was also a wild, lawless place. I called my buddy Rick, who lived out in the California desert and served as an EOD navy diver. We discussed the possibility of him accompanying JLu through Virginia. I wanted him to protect her and asked if he could pack some heat.
Luckily, I came to my senses, high up on a spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Well—my good judgment was helped by the fact that Rick wasn’t able to come out. There’d be no gun and no backup from my friend. But still, I stuck to my decision to stop having JLu meet me at backwoods road crossings where she would have to hang out alone in the wilderness for long stretches. I would meet her at major roadways, with numbers and pavement. No more remote dirt roads. That was tough for both of us, and it meant fifteen- to twenty-five-mile stretches for me and fewer stops for food. After all the strange encounters, I was freaked out and kicking myself for thinking that JLu would be fine on her own. Why didn’t I make sure we had at least one friend with JLu at all times? Man, I could be an idiot.
It was an anxious time for me, but it was also frankly…mind-numbing. The AT in Virginia is deceptively punishing. It’s hot and sticky when you’re heading up, rocky and root-filled when you’re going down, and seemingly endless. Thru-hikers call it the Virginia Blues because the trail meanders 554 miles through the state. In fact, Virginia is home to nearly a quarter of the entire AT. And there are multiple rubble-laden mountains riddling those miles. The Smokies might officially end in Tennessee, but the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia are their formidable stepsiblings. Many of the four-thousand-foot peaks had foreboding monikers: Bruisers Knob, Dragon’s Tooth, Buzzard’s Rock, The Guillotine, and The Priest. Fittingly, this range was Horty’s playground. As I climbed those mountains, I recalled many of their names from his training stories and tall tales.
The beginning of the Virginia Blues also marks the beginning of a surprisingly sadistic stretch of the trail itself. The AT becomes increasingly gnarly and demanding as it twists through the Virginia Appalachians, inspiring a witticism I’d heard plenty by the time I got through the state:
Q: Which is better, taking your chances with the rocks or taking your chances with the roots?
A: Which is better, being hanged or being shot?
My injuries were slowly healing up, as Horty had predicted they eventually would. Physically I was feeling strong, but the midday heat and the repetitious terrain lulled me to sleep. I started taking power naps on rocks, in leaves off the trail, anywhere I could lie down, and I got pretty good at it. One time I spooked a few hikers who were cautiously inspecting me, afraid I was dead.
I would have loved to sleep eight hours a night and not have to take naps that interrupted my progress. I would have loved to hang out at campfires, kicking back with all the colorful characters who had decided to spend a summer of their lives ambling through the wilderness. I would have loved to hear more stories about the w
eird history of the trail and its many eccentrics, from the dangerous maniacs to the gentle souls. There were opportunities to kick back. There were plenty of temptations.
A few days after we’d passed Damascus, JLu met a young group of thru-hikers who told her they were having a big “hicker” party next to Dismal Falls and really wanted me to join them. JLu immediately told them I would attend—she knew me well. I knew it would cut into my sleep, but I wanted to hang out and meet more of my clan.
It was pouring rain and near dark when I got there, but I had a beer while a dozen or so half-naked hickers danced in the river by the falls. One guy wearing only boxer briefs held a kid’s pink umbrella and pranced on the rocks, unfazed by the rain. They were forest nymphs in their natural habitat.
As I made my way back to the trail, I thought about the differences between the AT and the long trails out west that I knew so much better. The Appalachian Trail is by far the most social of the three mega-trails in the United States, just by dint of being in a place where there are a whole lot of people. Population density is a lot higher in Virginia than in Colorado, and while the trail can feel like wilderness, it’s almost always a short walk or hitch to a town. Some hikers even call it “the world’s largest pub crawl.” Others are no doubt disappointed by this; they arrive with a mental picture of isolated landscape but quickly learn that contact is the norm.
It would have been fun to hang out more and not think about mileage quotas or an itinerary, the way we’d traveled on the PCT. But we would get back to that later. This time it was about pursuing that edge.
I covered 51.6 miles on day fourteen, and made my way over Angels Rest and Senator Shumate Bridge in Pearisburg. I finished that night in a haze of déjà vu. I could have sworn I was walking in circles yet I found myself on Mountain Lake Road in the middle of nowhere at 11:00 p.m. Sketchy trucks had slowly driven past JLu as she waited for me to arrive; I was hours late. The next day I hiked over Lone Pine Peak, passed the three-hundred-year-old Keffer Oak (the largest oak tree on the AT in the South), went up Dragon’s Tooth, and made it to just shy of McAfee Knob, all the while picking my way over softball-size rocks that were hidden among the roots and ground cover of the overgrown trail. I’d covered another forty-six miles by the time I closed out the fifteenth day. I survived the early Virginia Blues in the most tedious manner possible: by staying focused. No secret. No superpower. Miles became a moving meditation.
* * *
We were a quarter of the way through the Appalachian Trail. It was hard to believe we’d made it this far and even harder to imagine how much farther we had to go. We hadn’t crossed a state line in a long time, which made the next sixteen hundred miles seem impossible to cover. It was easier to think of the trail in bite-size pieces represented by each state. Progress was just less tangible in Virginia; it felt like we were spinning our wheels and going nowhere.
Yet in twelve days, Jurker had covered so much ground that we were catching up to more and more company. Traditionally, northbound AT thru-hikers depart from Springer Mountain at the end of March or the beginning of May. Most of the people we met were just out of college. We felt old, but at the same time, it was inspiring to be around these adventurous kids. I knew Jurker would get a boost from meeting more hikers out here.
When I drove through Marion, Virginia—the first big town I’d seen—I jumped at the chance to stop at a Walmart. Out here in rural southwestern Virginia, the store seemed like an oasis! I loaded up on plant-based protein sources, organic fruit, and a lot of Jurker’s favorite vegan treats. He’d been going through them at an alarming rate. Normally a whole-grain, low-fat, healthy eater, out here he was all about oily, high-fat, sugary junk food. It was almost scary; he could drink an entire pint of melted vegan ice cream in one gulp. In the fabric department at Walmart, I bought a couple of yards of tulle to use as a makeshift screen for the van’s sliding door to keep the bugs out. Hands down the best two dollars I ever spent.
When I returned to the van with my treasures, there was a fluorescent-green note stuck to the windshield. It read Good luck Scott Jurek!! See you out on the trail! Best wishes, Cujo (Sam) and Sarah (no trail name yet). It was simple but so sweet. Not only was he catching up to the thru-hikers, but some of them were rooting for him, and that meant a lot to me.
He had been spending more and more hours alone in the confining Green Tunnel, running through cobwebs and occasionally listening to music. Without others around to take turns driving the van, I could run only short out-and-back sections with him. I could tell he was missing the company. I certainly was getting lonely.
Our haphazard trip planning and our desire to be alone meant that most of our friends hadn’t even known we were on the AT until we started. By the time we were in the belly of Virginia and realized we could both benefit from some friendly company, it was too late to ask anyone to join us. Nearly everyone had already made summer plans. A few friends offered to come out and pace Scott, but I couldn’t tell them where we would be or even what airport to fly into on any particular day. Plus, they’d have to find a ride to meet me on the trail. Our friends were a resourceful bunch, but they were way too busy to seek a needle in a haystack on their days off.
Then, out of the blue, I got a text from Jenn Shelton. She was at a race in Arkansas that Luis happened to be photographing. Luis, Jenn, and Scott were part of the original ragtag group in Born to Run—they were family. El Coyote mentioned to Jenn that he was flying straight from Arkansas back to the AT. Jenn immediately asked if she could come with him. For some reason, he said no. Not being one to take no seriously, she texted me.
I wrote back.
What?!?! You want to come out to the AT? And Luis said no? Is he HIGH?
I was annoyed. I think Luis was trying to protect me; he knew I had my hands full out here. But I’d never say no to Jenn Shelton. I knew she was just what Jurker needed! Not quite a balm for his soul—more like rubbing alcohol in a wound. It stings, but you know that means it’s working.
Last summer, Jurker and I flew out to support Jenn on her John Muir Trail FKT attempt. Jurker surprised her near Red’s Meadow in the morning and ran with her through the night. Somehow, the two of them managed to forget some essentials. Jurker left behind all his warm clothes and Jenn neglected to bring any food, so the two of them came rolling into Tuolumne Meadows famished with Scott wearing a space blanket around his legs like a skirt. They were quite the pair, not exactly a dream team, but always laughing and pushing each other.
I told Jenn to get here however she could, even if it meant stowing away in El Coyote’s monster backpack. We needed her. She changed her flights and I felt a huge wave of relief knowing that Jurker would have some colorful company in the hot, humid hills of Virginia, not far from where Jenn grew up.
This morning would be my last day alone, so I wanted to tidy up. I pulled into an empty gas station with a huge gravel parking lot and positioned Castle Black in the far end where I could clean and organize the van in peace. I wasn’t doing it for Jenn but for Luis, Mr. Neat Freak. I was happily in my zone, listening to music and washing the dishes, so I didn’t notice the truck approaching until it pulled in right next to the passenger side. Weird; this was a huge, empty parking area, and there was no one out here. Except for me. I turned off my music.
Knock-knock-knock.
Their truck was idling. I slid the van door open. There were three young guys, apparently locals. I assumed they had spotted the van and were fans of Scott. The one who seemed to be their ringleader piped up. “Hey, you’re looking good this morning,” the blond guy said. “Can I get my picture taken with you?”
I paused, then said, “Sure, I guess.” I tried to laugh it off. Maybe they’d never seen an Asian lady before and I was about to be a joke shared with their friends. I didn’t care; I just wanted them to leave. I posed with the blond guy while one friend took the photo and the other friend walked around Castle Black. He pointed at my license plate. “You’re from Colorado, huh? Got
any weed in there?”
I got it—they weren’t running superfans; they thought I was transporting drugs in a black van with no windows. I laughed again. “No weed, just running shoes. My husband is running the Appalachian Trail and I’m supporting him. He should be here soon, so I better get ready.”
The guys seemed to take the hint, and they got back in their truck. It was still idling. I quickly got back in the van and checked my phone. I had one bar of cell service. I didn’t bother finishing the dishes. I cracked the sliding door open and poured the water onto the pavement. Just as I finished, a hand from outside slid the door wide open.
It was the blond guy again, and he was alone. His two friends were in the idling vehicle, and now I started to worry. Who the hell did he think he was to open my van door?
“Hey, that photo didn’t turn out good. Can I get another photo?” he asked with a smile.
A thought creeped into my head, a line from the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. At one point the villain says, “It’s hard to believe that the fear of offending can be stronger than the fear of pain, but you know what? It is.” I didn’t want to assume the worst about these guys and I didn’t want to offend them.
I posed for an awkward selfie with the blond guy. He looked over the photo and approved. I got back in the van and slammed the sliding door shut as loud as possible. This time I wasn’t afraid to offend. I saw another truck pull into the gas station. The blond guy walked up to the driver and pointed in my direction. Now the guys in the other truck were all staring. Who knows what they were saying, what they were plotting? I started the engine and peeled out of there as fast as I could. Thankfully, nobody followed me.
I made my way to the next trail crossing, where I was surprised to see the orange Honda Element, with Horty sitting on the tailgate. He was on his way to start his bike ride, but he’d made a side trip to drop off Luis and see Jurker again. But where was Jenn? Apparently, the airline had canceled her connecting flight. I was crushed. I needed some female energy, but I would settle for good old El Coyote.
