by David Miller
The AT passes within sight of the camp store. If I had ignored the posted side trail and stayed on the AT, I would have come within thirty yards of the store. Rather than meandering back through the campsites, I take a side trail out from the camp store, causing me to miss about a half mile of the AT. It’s the first time I’ve wavered from purist white-blazing, and I feel no guilt about it.
“You can’t throw a rock without hitting a deer,” Bearable comments. Deer are noticeably more plentiful and less readily spooked since we have entered the Shenandoahs. A deer with a fawn stands only fifteen yards from the trail, frozen as I pass. The fawn stands under the safety of its mother, their bodies perpendicular.
A bear, startling, shiny black, steps out onto the trail ahead of me from the right. I freeze, and the bear bolts across the trail. A cub follows and dawdles long enough for me to get a picture. Then a second cub comes out and the two take curious steps towards me. I hear mama bear rustling in the woods to the left, probably trying to figure out what to do. I try “shoo” hand gestures on the cubs, imagining that mama bear would not want them too close to me. The sound is now running; mama bear is rushing back. She gets on the trail fifteen yards beyond the cubs, running towards them and me. I take a few steps back, feeling in my belt pouch for the pathetic lipstick cylinder of mace. I will not be able to get it out in time anyway, so I lift my trekking poles into a defensive position. When mama bear reaches the cubs, she cuts back into the woods and the cubs follow her.
Most of the crowd from last night are together again at Hightop Hut. Bearable arrives early in the morning while the rest of us are fixing breakfast. He had chosen to walk through the night to mix things up, and to walk in cooler weather.
Cubs in Shenandoah National Park. Mother bear is unseen in the woods to the left. She would soon return.
I make great time in the morning, covering twelve miles before arriving at Lewis Mountain Campground for lunch. I spend two hours at the camp store, making phone calls and plans. For lunch, I buy a prepackaged sandwich, chips, packaged snack cakes, two sodas, and ice cream. Carrying so little food and eating like this is bliss.
Many thru-hikers who are hiking with another person will walk separately so that they can walk at their own paces. They will wait for one another at designated points along the trail. Married couples sometimes hike in this fashion as well, but more commonly, they will walk in tandem, staying within earshot of each other the entire day. This is the style of Ken and Marcia. I catch up to them late in the afternoon, and I walk with them for the final six miles into Big Meadows Campground. I’ve been looking forward to getting to know them better, and we engage in conversation that lasts the rest of the day.
Ken and Marcia Powers are from California. Ken was able to retire from his job as a database administrator in his early fifties, and since that time they have backpacked an impressive number of miles. When they complete the AT, they will have accomplished the “triple crown” of backpacking, which also includes the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT: 2,658 miles) and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT: 2,764 miles). Both trails are less traveled than the Appalachian Trail.
With all their experience, they are in great hiking shape and are very efficient hikers. They plan well and stick to their plan. They don’t carry any more than is necessary. On one break, I observe them counting out their ration of cookies. Hiking as a couple also helps to keep their pack weight down since they share a tent, stove, and food. Most of the time, they both have backpacks weighing twenty-five pounds or less. They do not walk fast. Marcia confides that “everyone passes us.” But they are regimented and are further along the trail than most thru-hikers who started earlier. They pack quickly in the morning, and they walk late into the day. They walk few short days and rarely take days off.
Big Meadows Campground is set upon a plateau skirted by rocky cliffs. The trail passes over the cliffs as it heads into the campground. The hard surface, the heat, and the long day are wearing on my feet. We’ve been walking nonstop since I joined Ken and Marcia. They seem unaffected, but I am eager to get this pack off my back and to get my hot feet out of these shoes. We share a campsite and walk over to the lodge for a meal at the restaurant—the same restaurant that we will return to for breakfast.
The next morning, I don’t make it far from Big Meadows before my feet are aching again. My feet are sending me messages, all of them bad: they are hot, sore from bruising, itchy from blisters, and squeezed as if cramped into shoes that are too tight. I stop on a rock outcropping, take my shoes off, and ponder my future. It concerns me that the pain is starting so early in the day. Taking a larger view only makes my outlook bleaker. Even if I tough it out today, I still have many more days ahead. I’m not even halfway to Katahdin. From this precipice where I have stopped, I have a view over green hills extending to the horizon. The setting, like so many others, is beautiful and serene. It is unfortunate that the pleasure is inseparable from the pain.
My feet are ugly. Even my wife and mother think so. Not because they’ve been ravaged by the hike; they’ve always been this way. They don’t have enough meat on them. When I walk barefooted on smooth ground, my feet hurt for lack of adequate padding. I have a thick callus on the middle of my foot pad from a history of blistering there. My left bunion juts out, and blisters form where the bunion pushes on the shoe. My right foot bears a scar from bunion surgery. The skin on my feet is pale and thin, so a network of veins shows through. A friend once said, “If you drop anything sharp on your foot, you’ll bleed to death.” My feet are too long for my size. A few years ago, I wore size 10½. After bunion surgery, I’d occasionally buy size 11. Now, swollen by walking, anything less than 11½ is unthinkable.
Only my pinky toe is fleshy. It gets crowded where shoes taper in at the toe, and this toe was the first to blister on the hike. The next smallest toe is hammer-toed, curving in toward, and a bit under, my middle toe. Both toes blister as a result. My middle toe blisters on the underside, between the padded tip of the toe and the pad of my foot. This blister is most painful since it is on the sensitive area of the toe. The toe next to my big toe is longest and bears the brunt of impact with the front of my shoe, especially when I stub into rocks and roots. The toenail turned blue and fell off within the first weeks of my hike. My big toe is raw from contact with the adjacent toe. The toenail of my right big toe is cracked but holding firm. The left big toenail is one of only two that are still intact.
I tire of hiking in pain. Over the course of my hike, I’ve dealt with knee pain, a strained Achilles tendon, shoulder and hip bruises from pack straps, and an infected blister on my heel. But my feet are far and away my greatest physical liability. Foot pain is constant and exasperating. I expected to endure aches and pains during the first few weeks, but then toughen up and hike with relative ease. It hasn’t happened. I am getting more worn down by the miles.
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.
“What’s up, Indiana?”
“We’re making plans to get a ride out to Luray. From there we’ll aqua-blaze [take a canoe] up to Harpers Ferry. I’m ready to get out of the Shenandoahs.”
I have heard more disparaging remarks from thru-hikers about the trail through the Shenandoahs than about any other section. “I hate it,” one of them went so far as to say. The Skyline Drive, and the traffic that it brings, is one point of contention. Thru-hikers act at times as though they should have exclusive or preferential access to the AT. The attitude of thru-hikers can be downright uppity when confronted with a significant tourist presence, such as it is here, in the Smokies, and concentrated around the huts of the White Mountains.
I have no complaints about my time in the park. The treadway is smoother and less eroded than in most places on the AT. I’ve enjoyed hot meals and carried less food. Wildlife is abundant.
I see two more bears during the remainder of my day, about an hour apart. The first is very close when we notice each other’s presence. He lopes away about twenty yards and glares at me indignantly from behind the bushes, making me uneasy. He is rotund with a dusty coat. His disheveled look and carelessness in letting me get so close spur me to personify him as a couch potato of the animal world—a bear with a loose grip on his vices. The next bear I spot walking along on a jumble of rocks about one hundred feet downhill from the trail. He is refreshingly clean-coated and has simian agility on the uneven terrain.
Two day hikers are headed in the opposite direction of me, and I tell them of my bear sightings. They proceed, thwacking the brush with their hiking poles. I wish I hadn’t told them.
Scott picks me up at Thorton Gap and takes me to his home in Culpeper, Virginia, about an hour away. Scott has been my friend for over twenty years, dating back to when he taught me how to juggle in high school chemistry class. He is following the journal entries I make on the Internet, so he’s well aware of what I need most: food, a shower, and laundered clothes. I have a restful evening relaxing with Scott, his wife Carolyn, and their three kids. In the morning, Scott is awake to cook me a big breakfast and gives me even more food to pack for the trail.
Summer has begun, and we are all feeling the heat. Other than the warmer days, weather in the park is ideal. I’ll gladly trade a little more sweat in exchange for rainless days. I arrive at Elkwallow Wayside at midday, feeling lethargic from the heat. I eat lunch, write, and mingle with other hikers who trickle in and congregate around the camp store, all conceding the middle part of their hiking day. Some of us stay long enough to down multiple milkshakes. Many of us depart near the same time, making for an unusual late-day group hike into Gravel Springs Hut.
I have just met the couple Superman and Torch, and I walk nearest to Superman in the chain of thru-hikers headed to the hut. Time passes as I have an interesting, wide-ranging conversation with him. He is a well-versed, budding minister, and I am intrigued by his unorthodox views on religion. When hikers meet it’s not unusual to quickly delve into each other’s background. Where are you from? What sort of work do you do? What brings you to the trail? We digress into discussions about layoffs, broken marriages, religion…all within an hour of meeting. In the real world, we don’t open conversations with, “Where are you from? What brings you to Walmart?”
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 café.
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.
8
Front Royal to Pen-Mar Park
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 w
ould like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes 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.
