The One Hundred and Sixty-Sixth Day

One of the first pieces of advice you will get from more experienced hikers when you start the Appalachian Trail will be to “embrace the suck.” I heard this for the first time several days into my thruhike when, on a blistering February Georgia day, I struggled to hike 11 miles to the road where I would have shared a shuttle to town with three others. It took me too long to climb the 700ft/mile cliff on the other side of the road, so I missed them. I exhausted myself and ended up paying 30 dollars both in and out of town. I embraced the suck. These things just happen out here. I’ve had more than my share of misfortune—from delays to unseen expenses to failing equipment to unsavory company—but in retrospect, I have been tremendously lucky. Most lucky of all, I have dodged any serious injury that could take me off trail. No doubt thanks to the intercession of St Christopher, who has hung around my neck all day every day for six months now. If I didn’t say it at the beginning, I’ll say it now—it pays to have a second pair of eyes on the road. But eyes aren’t everything.

When I rolled into Stratton, ME, I was excited. When I was hiking the White Mountains, I started running into herds of Sobos—southbound AT thruhikers, those who start on Mt Katahdin and end in Georgia. Their hikes begin in June and end in November/December. Theirs is a tough trail, hitting the most difficult sections of trail early and unconditioned. What’s more, most hostels and other trail-centric businesses aren’t open throughout the Southbound season. By the time many Sobos reach the South, their options dry up.

There are very few Southbound hikers, comparatively, but the ATC, in their efforts to spread the yearly thruhiker a out along the trail, have been encouraging Southbound hikes and flip flop hikes to great effect. So there are many more Sobos than usual. But all of them, every single one I spoke to, urged me to stay at the Maine Roadhouse Hostel in Stratton, ME. The best hostel on trail, they said, and the reviews left by Northbounders were in unanimous agreement. I had a few weeks of hype in my mind when I made my reservation for two nights.

And I needed the day off. From Bethel, ME, when I last posted, you still have quite a few brutal climbs and descents to endure as you fight your way through Southern Maine. It just doesn’t let up. Every ascent feels near vertical, and every descent is a joint crusher. As mentioned before, though, unlike much of the trail further South, you are rewarded at the top. I spoke of climbs as poetically appropriate, and it is all the more true now. To spend an hour with nothing to look at but dense deadfall and miles of burning miles and nothing in your ears but your own wheezing and panting and gasping, with no thought but the irrational but persistent dread that there is no top, that there is only another false summit until you can go no further—to suffer all of that for hours only to crest the mountain, and to suddenly be given more vantage than your mortal eyes could take in, more genuine a silence than your mortal ears could take in, to gain a perspective, literally and abstractly, that your mortal mind would struggle to fully appreciate. I understand why people hike for fun. There is a payoff, when you hike the proper mountain. And you forget your tools at the top, if only for a few minutes. Like all good things, merely a shadow of the Beatific Vision.

After crossing the Baldpates, Old Blue Mountain, Mt Spaulding, the Saddlebacks, and the Crockers, I was bushed. More than bushed, actually—the day I climbed and descended Mt Saddleback and the Horn, the entire range was whipped by 60 mph winds and dense clouds. I came off the range damp, and I slept in the shelter with my head exposed to a chilly Maine summer night. The next morning, I was achey and sniffly. You may be surprised to hear that getting sick is pretty rare on trail. Mostly it’s Lyme disease for the unwitting, but even that is a super minority. But I found myself with what felt like a head cold, which made the light 14 mile day ahead of me just a tad more exhausting than expected. The day before, a hearty 20 mile day, was quite easy in comparison. I didn’t think much of it, not even that night when my nose closes off from congestion. That has happened to me for as long as I can remember—that at night, one or both nostrils would clog up when I lay down. It didn’t mean much anyway, because I knew the next two nights I’d be staying in the most talked about hostel on trail.

Stratton is like most trail towns—less than one street of amenities, but with more than enough charm to go around. One place to eat, one place to get groceries, and one hardware store. The Roadhouse is the most happening place in town, run by The Two Jenns. Neither Jenn is a hiker, but they are both consummate caretakers. Their hospitable reputation is known up and down the trail. They’ve been so successful with the Roadhouse, which only opened last year, that they have bought the only other motel in town—formerly notoriously crummy—and are renovating it into a new arm of their business. They don’t like turning away anyone who needs a room. They even maintain their own supply of hiker food essentials, since the stores in town have very little in the way of variety. Like almost all other hostels, they barely mark up these goods at all. This isn’t about profit. So little on trail has been about profit.

I waited for them to come pick me up at the trailhead with some other folks who were waiting for their shuttle to another hostel in a nearby town—the Hostel of Maine. Older than the Roadhouse, the HoM wasn’t originally for hikers, but as volume increases, everything in these towns eventually dip their toes into the clientele pool. I would later learn that the owners of the HoM were out of town for the summer, handing management off to some former hikers—the first time they had done so, I was later told by the Jenns. That explained a lot, because when the shuttle arrived, one of the first things the driver did was offer me free weed and shrooms from his 1 pound bag. No escape.

When Jenn arrived, she came in a short yellow school bus. Perfect. From the get go, she was touchingly accommodating—which did I want first? “Pizza or a shower?” I chose grooming. The head cold wasn’t bad, but a nice hot shower would clear my sinuses and ease the scratchy throat. When I mentioned this, Jenn made a request that took me completely off guard, and, looking back, it’s funny how naive I was. She asked me to take a COVID test. My feelings aside, it makes tremendous sense to me. The Roadhouse goes through dozens of people a day. So naturally I agreed, in no small part because it wasn’t possible I had COVID. I’d spent days in the Maine wilderness, which is the closet you come on the trail to the *actual* wilderness. I’d spoken to literally four people in three days. It was ludicrous to think I had it. So it should come as no surprise that within ten seconds, the test kit sample showed up as positive. And just like that, on the porch of the Roadhouse, I was refused entry. On reasonable grounds, of course, but deep in my heart I was livid. For about fifteen seconds, I struggled to think of what I wills going to do. The symptoms were nothing, but I was now a walking liability to every business and conscientious hiker around. Automatic pariah, which would be fine if I wasn’t out of food.

Luckily, the reputation of the Jenns is nothing if not well earned. Immediately, they offered to let me stay at the Stratton Motel, which, while old school, had plumbing and electricity and Wi-Fi and AC. All for the same price as the hostel. In thirty seconds, I had gone from down and out to ahead of the curve. That was five days ago. I have been in Stratton for almost a week in comfortable Quarantine. The Jenns go to the store for me and being back what I request. I have a TV with lots of movies. I have WiFi. I have everything a hiker could want, with my own room, my own kitchen, and my own bathroom and shower. Mysterious ways, ladies and gentlemen. Where I am staying was once the living quarters of a hiker who had stayed with the Jenns for several months as an assistant, helping to run the Roadhouse and Hostel. He had gone home for a few days, only to come back and discover his quarters were now a leper colony. He moved on the next day, but it was not just the sudden change. It turns out that this hiker had not been willing to stop his side business while working for the Jenns. Can you guess? That’s right. Weed and shrooms. I’m profoundly anti-weed now, but the Jenns are not—but what they are against is being the unwitting partners in a massive recreational drug shop. Weed is legal in Maine. Shrooms are not. This guy had turned the motel not just into a widely known hub for drugs, but into a de facto hike pad for him and his pals, openly partaking on the front porch and posting ads on the FarOut App under the Roadhouse accounts. The split between him and the Jenns was amicable, and he was as generous as they, but I’m less than sympathetic. This whole trip has exposed my sheltered, fragile interior, because drug culture, innocent as it often seems, physically sickens me now. I struggle not to lose respect for the otherwise decent or at least inoffensive folks I meet out here who bend to the stuff. The extent to which people will demean themselves to partake and keep partaking is frankly disturbing. And this is the most innocuous substance, they say.

It’s not just young people either. In fact, in recent weeks, I’ve found myself noticing a sad trend on trail: the state of middle aged male hikers. There are lots of them out here, and at least half of them are almost completely broke. I genuinely don’t know what they’re doing out here. I indict myself by saying this, and I will be judged as harshly, I know, but I feel it all the same—the grossly undignified way these guys act on trail sickens me. If they were back in the real world, I’d feel real sympathy. But to come out on trail with almost nothing to your name, to nickle and dime your way through food and supplies (one dude I’ve heard of eats dog food because it’s more “efficient”), to essentially beg for discounts and work-for-stays… what are you doing out here? It may simply be that I am just not a hiker at heart, that I’m soft and not actually a survivor. I’m prepared for that. It’s probably true. But to see grown men debase themselves for what to me seems no reason does nothing but puzzle and disgust me. I remember listening, stupefied, to a semi-broke man with a dog (even more annoying) complain to a hostel owner that he needed work for stay to afford an extra night—and work for stay isn’t some industry standard thing. It’s wholly dependent on the needs of the hostel, but even more so the generosity of the owner. More often than not, they don’t need you to spend two hours sweeping the floor. This same spirit of entitlement infects many of the hubs of trail magic—stories of the good deeds of angels and hostel owners go around and create ironclad expectations for a certain element of hikers, who then punish everyone when they don’t get their fair share. Every demographic gets snotty, but it’s particularly painful to see grown men get mealy mouthed and mopey when their hike isn’t the vacation they want. I don’t give details of the charity shown to me by the good people on trail. Nothing good comes of it.

Just yesterday, I read that the Drive In movie theatre in Warwick, NY, an institution of the trail which allows hikers to camp on the hill opposite the movie screens for FREE, posted a notice saying they are considering stopping that service, because sufficient numbers of hikers take terrible advantage. They trash the place, the complain when they don’t get treated like celebrities, and OF COURSE they just. Can’t. Stop. Smoking. Weed. Despite the ubiquitous signs BEGGING them not to. Physically sickening. But that’s just the culture out here, and it isn’t changing anytime soon. If anything, it will just get worse, and future hikers will suffer for it, not to mention the people and businesses who put themselves out to help. I’m a coward, too, because I’ve seen the pothead groups do what they want, and, like a well trained urbanite, I say nothing.

It’s not all negative. Again, I’ve been extremely lucky to have been where I am when I got COVID. Other places would have just turned you away, and suddenly you have nowhere to go but back on trail. Not with the Jenns. It’s a strange feeling though, to stall for several days in one spot… with only ten days of hiking left. I leave tomorrow morning to return to the trail, with a COVID test in my bag to be used in four days, when I reach Monson, ME—the last stop before the 100 Mile Wilderness. True to its name, it is prohibitively difficult and expensive to get to town for the next hundred miles, and so people take supplies for 5-6 days. Much of it is almost completely flat, but the trail is rugged and there are mountains. It is, however, routinely cited as one of the most beautiful sections of the entire trail, winding through fairy tale woods, loon filled ponds, and plenty of rivers, streams, and brooks deep enough that you have to ford them. Before the Wilderness? Just a 15 mile hike over the Bigelow Mountains… the last 4K ft peaks before Katadhin. After the Wilderness? Katadhin herself. After all the worrying and fretting and frustration of trying to finish quickly, I’ve at last come to terms with the reality—that things just lined up in such a way that I would finish around August 15, just short of 6 months after I started.

The way the trail goes from here, it is possible this will be the last entry. Ideally, I’ll get one more in before I summit, but if not, there will be one after, a final reflection. This has been too huge an endeavor and too heavy an experience to do otherwise. Even just a month ago, it felt as if this would never end, like I would simply walk and walk forever, a truly purgatorial march into eternity. But evidently, even this, too, shall pass. Funny how it always does.

The One Hundred and Fifty-Sixth Day

Bethel, Maine is much the same as most of the towns I’ve stayed in over the past five months—it is essentially one street worth of businesses surrounded by a smattering of trailer parks and colonials. Bethel is on the quainter side of things, however, and although there isn’t really any business/restaurant that distinguishes the little village, it has an air of dignity that I have always, if only in my imagination, attributed to the state of Maine. My impression has always been one of quiet refinement, as if the whole state existed in the same pocket dimension in which you will find Ocean City or Ventnor in Winter. There is a stillness here. Even in the sun, there is a greyness that anywhere else would be melancholy, but here in Maine (and in Ocean City) is instead serene. It must be the influence of the ocean. The sea breeze of Maine penetrates deep inland.

I am struck by nostalgia here, and it is in no small part due to where I’m lodged. The Bethel Village Motel was once a grocery store. Fifty years ago, Ruthie, born and raised in Bethel, took it over and turned the place into an 8 room boarding house. she always had a steady stream of regular clients—“middle aged bachelors and divorcés who still want to ski their asses off,” says Kevin, Ruthie’s lifelong business partner and friend… not husband, not beau. They are 70 year old Irish Catholics who felt a vocational call to hospitality. They work 7 days a week at the motel and the ground floor boutique. They stumbled into thruhiker clientele only just last year, and have been busy ever since. From the moment I met them, I was struck by a strange sensation of familiarity. They have Moffit energy; they have Jim and Millie energy. They have been extraordinarily kind—and affordable, which always helps.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Last we spoke, I was on the threshold of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I spoke of their reputation—grueling, steep, slow, magnificent. It was all that and more. Months ago, I said I would speak of the final benefit of the trail—in addition to the unlimited diet, the contemplation, and the singular focus. That final benefit is the exposure to the grandeur of nature: the views.

From Georgia to Virginia, you are forced to climb mountains over 3000 ft. Fewer and fewer as you head north, but this contributes to the inverted bell curve of difficult that constitutes the trail experience. From Maryland to Vermont, you climb above ~2k once or twice. Your natural experience is in forests and lowlands and farmlands. There is still tremendous beauty, but not from the tops of the mountains. In Vermont, you start to climb again, and when you start to climb again, you get the views that make the struggle worth it. Brutal ascents and descents are rewarded with a witness of true American Majesty. This dynamic is epitomized by the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

It begins with the enormous and precipitous ten mile ascent and descent Mt Moosilauke. Then the near vertical rockslide ascent of Mt Kinsman. Then the endless climb up Liberty Trail up into the long, dry, completely exposed Franconia Ridge, where you crest Little Haystack (not little), Mt Lafayette, and Mt Lincoln (colloquially known with grim respect as The Emancipator). Then the short, agonizingly steep spike that is Mt Garfield and its overgrown, tangled ridge. Then the sun blasted Twins, North and South. And then through the flat but bug infested wetland around Ethan Pond that leads to the dizzying Webster Cliffs, half steep grind, half four point rock climbing exposed vertical cliffs. Then the long trek across the Presidential Traverse, a huge expanse of exposed trail above tree line surrounding Mt Washington, the nexus of three separate weather systems, making this area the most meteorologically unpredictable and dangerous area in the entire nation. And then the terrifying climb up the Wildcat Peaks, including the steepest section of the whole trail (~1500ft rise in less than a mile, God help the Southbound). Up and down the Wildcats, and then the long rock scramble up to Carter Dome. And finally up and down the modest Mt Moriah, the final White Mountain. There’s too much to say about every mountain to put here. But it’s nice to have stories with exclusive details for when I return.

This is 75 mile ordeal. Legion, the man who hiked the AT twice and hikes the Whites multiple times a year every year for twenty years, recommends that folks do 10-12 mile days. I, because I naturally knew better, did an average of 17 miles. I did two 19 mile days in the Whites. This was a mistake. The Whites are brutal hiking. You do as much rock climbing as you do hiking. It’s a good thing I only had one trekking pole left, the other essentially disintegrated. I needed that hand. It’s forming it’s own callouses, slowly. The trail as I’ve known it for five months was gone as soon as I crested Moosilauke. Very little traditional trail. For the past 100+ miles, it’s been an almost endless stretch of rock scrambles and smooth stone faces that you walk up. And I do mean walk up. Most of these climbs are a test of your shoes as much as your body. If your shoe treads aren’t in good condition, you’ve got a serious problem. But if the climbs are grueling ordeals, the descents are now harrowing. Going up is a grind. Going down is a heart attack. I’ve been spooked quite a few times, so much so that I’ve done the ignoble butt scoot. I just couldn’t trust my feet. I tried taking pictures, but I don’t think they capture the silliness. In fact, there is some controversy among hikers about the ATC’s (Appalachian Trail Committee) decision to route the trail through this nonsense. I’m absolutely stunned that older folks manage to make it through some of these sections. My knees are brutalized. My theory is that the routing is for environmental purposes. The alpine zones of New England are very delicate, home to fragile and VERY slow growing vegetation. Perhaps they made the trail so “direct” to minimize the impact. Otherwise, this is sadism.

And you know what? It got worse.

When you’re prepping for your thruhike, you hear about the Whites nonstop. But it isn’t until you start spending time among the experience hikers on trail that you hear of a haunted little place called Southern Maine. It is generally held among thruhikers that Southern Maine is the most most difficult section of the trail. I have made it through almost 40 miles of Southern Maine and I can confirm this. New Hampshire, especially the Whites, while rugged and filled with steep technical climbs, is a far more curated experience. There is order to the trail. Southern Maine is chaos. From the moment you cross over, the already messy trail becomes positively deranged. All comparisons to the rest of the trail fail. You are asked to navigate your way through downright treacherous piles of huge boulders, between which you could disappear forever. Rotting planks sit on vast bogs of mud, mud that is literally 4ft deep. And most troubling: the ascents and descents have largely become more and more of those near vertical rock walls up which you are supposed to walk on the balls of your feet, hoping you maintain traction. Thank God it’s been pretty dry. Rain would have made this terrifying.

So first and foremost: the past twelve days have been absolutely devastating. My body is genuinely busted up. This has been without question the most physically difficult time of my entire life. I came on the trail in part to push myself, and I have been pushed, almost off the edge, honestly. But not quite. I am thankful that I’ve had to stay two full days at this motel to wait for my 4th pair of shoes. They were much needed, although my summit date has been again pushed back accordingly. It’s somewhere around August 10th now. The good news is that I think I’ve gotten over that. This trip will take as long as it needs to take.

The flip side of this ordeal? The aforementioned views. I’m not quite sure how to convey the sensation that takes over once a king climb is done. In NH and ME, most of the trail is somewhat claustrophobic, hemmed in by fir trees and blow downs and a tangle of roots. As you go further up, this slowly fades away, as more of the bush gives way to the characteristic rock faces of the New England mountains. Yes, I’m already completely soaked with sweat as if I had jumped in the ocean, but it only makes the windswept peaks all the more refreshing. How to explain the relief of being done a climb, to rise above the mess and suddenly be faced with 360 degree views all the way to the horizon. To be surrounded by the gentle roar of the wind as well as the looming shadows of the mountains that stretch in every direction. Even when it isn’t a perfectly clear day, you are confronted with a sense of perspective that you cannot access any other way, that you would never access if you were the average Joe. The pain is a fading memory. Every infamous climb that you’ve been dreading for weeks is suddenly behind you, and the great expanse of the American wilderness fills in the void. I don’t have words for it. I’ve sat panting on the giant piles of boulders on the peaks at 4000+ feet and have been struck dumb, particularly when I’m the only one up there. How can it be anything other than a spiritual experience? The struggle, so slow and tedious and seemingly futile, rewarded with a beatific vision. Difficult not to draw endless spiritual comparisons. How Great Thou Art indeed.

The majesty redeems so much of the tedium of the past few months. But truth be told, the real revelation came from far below, not just from above. In Southern Maine lies “The Hardest Mile.” This is the infamous, notorious Mahoosuc Notch—a ravine between two mountains into which have fallen countless car to house sized boulders. The trail disappears. It is you navigating the labyrinthine mile long pile of rubble—climbing, hoisting, crawling, swinging, leaping, and sliding your way over, under, and across the deranged pit. It took me an hour and twenty minutes. And it was an absolute blast. I have not had that much fun in six months. The ravine is so deep and is so starved of direct sunlight that snow still piles in the deep cracks of the rocks, and large stretches of the Notch are essentially air conditioned. It is also the source of the best spring water of the whole trail. Ice cold, crystal clear, and slightly sweet. It may even have natural electrolytes, it was so energizing. The Mahoosuc Notch is by far the highlight of the whole trail. All the weightlifting and upper body strength finally counted for something, allowing me to finish under par.

The price, of course, is exhaustion. The night before I return to the trail for the final ~two weeks, I still feel sore, and, while the worst is behind me, there are still challenges ahead. How to articulate the feeling of having only 267 miles left? I won’t bother now. The time will come soon enough. There is an emotional and spiritual climax building, now. It isn’t a tingling. I’m almost sheepish to call it a certain growing solemnity.

The One Hundred and Forty-Fourth Day

The man known as Legion has hiked the Appalachian Trail twice, and, having lived next to them for so long, has hiked the White Mountains of New Hampshire every year for at least ten years. He knows them like the back of his hand, which makes his Hikers Welcome Hostel an incredible place to stay before you start your own trek through what is without a doubt the most infamous section of the AT. He and his friend Caduceus run the place on their own, on the outskirts of a tiny isolated town in New Hampshire, where the only resupply is a gas station deli. Legion is a short, athletic, confident guy with sharp features and a sharper tongue. He’s seen every kind of hiker, and he’s been every kind of hiker. He told me that in all the years he has hiked Mt Moosilauke (the first mountain you cross in the Whites), he will never willingly descend Moosilauke northbound again. I’ll be doing that tomorrow morning with a full pack.

This is just one example of how the new air of anxiety and excitement that has taken over since arriving in New Hampshire has manifested. Northbound hikers like myself have heard of the Whites and of Southern Maine for months, knowing that no matter how hard the hiking may seem in the moment, the true challenge awaits at the end. More than 5000 hikers at least set out from Georgia to attempt a thruhike. By now, 80% of them have dropped out. Those that remain eagerly await the final stretch, which is unanimously considered the crown jewel of the AT. And that’s where I am now, on its very doorstep. I took two days off at the Hikers Welcome Hostel, avoiding the rain that, naturally, never materialized. Normally, this would be yet another frustration, another day lost. I must be close to a month of Zeros by now, almost all of them involuntarily. But the situation has changed. New Hampshire and Maine, even now, have altered the metric of value. Mt Moosilauke is the first time I will be rising above the tree line above 4000 ft, and Caduceus opined that while there are technically better views North, Moosilauke is a 360 degree revelation for the northbound hiker. No more PUDs (Pointless Up and Downs). My next update will address the Sights and Views of hiking, but it is worth waiting for clear weather to summit these mountains. True spectacle.

Last I posted, I disembarked from Great Barrington, MA. Massachusetts and Vermont both went by quickly and without much incident. It was the return to 3k+ foot mountains, starting with Greylocke at the tail end of MA and continuing with Glastonbury, Bromley, and finally Killington in Vermont (and then Smarts and Cube in New Hampshire). I had my biggest mile day so far—27 miles. And I had some of the most miserable days on trail, due almost exclusively to chaffing. It is an issue I have not managed to conquer. No amount of Bodyglide, baby powder, or Vaseline can withstand 8-10 hours of hiking while perpetually soaked in sweat. Eventually, it gets to you. I have scabbed over many times now, healed and scabbed cyclically seemingly for weeks on end. The award for most miserable day of hiking goes to the day I crossed Mt Killington. I had hiked 24 miles in the rain the day before, and I had gone to bed chaffed up in a shelter all to myself. The next morning, the rain continued. And so did I, despite the fact that my skin had not fully healed. I was, after all, out of food, and, like many places on trail, the only way out was through. There was an incident that need not be fully explained shortly after leaving, but suffice it to say that I was primed for a day of disaster early on. I hiked 17 miles up and over My Killington, a 4K foot peak, hobbling like an old bow legged man. I am proud to say that through sheer grit, I not only managed to do it in the first place, but I managed to catch the hourly bus (free!) into Rutland, VT almost paralyzed by chaffing. There, I secured a bunk at the most infamous hostel on trail—the Yellow Deli Hiker Hostel.

The Yellow Deli is one of many compounds throughout the world run by the 12 Tribes of Israel, a Jesus Movement inspired collectivist denomination of Christianity that is widely considered to be a cult. I leave it to you to read up on them. I won’t spend time digging into their theology here—I’ll leave the research to you. Controversies abound. But nonetheless, they run two hiker hostels on trail, with the one in Rutland being the most popular. It is absolutely free—although they accept donations—and it offers everything a hiker could want. What’s more, they offer a free breakfast and a 15% discount at the Deli they operate next door. They make a dang good corned beef sandwich and dang good homemade bread. The people themselves are first and foremost subdued and quiet. There is a childlike deference they seem to have to hikers, as they, too, must be hyper aware of the massive elephant in the room. This was especially evident at breakfast, when they join you as you eat. The first breakfast was almost entirely silent and awkward, although they never once mentioned their beliefs except in passing. They were nothing but polite, and they attended to the maintenance of the hostel with an almost monastic solemnity, but it was clear that their reputation had preceded them for a long time. To everyone’s credit, hospitality and gratitude prevailed. I had a long and pleasant talk with a young man who was a dead ringer for a skin and bones Danny Corso, down to the smile. For about an hour and a half we swapped theology and trashed New Age beliefs (Satanism in sheep’s wool) that were sweeping the young folks. He slipped in some shade against the Church (Anti-Christ), but he and his subjective exegesis didn’t catch me slipping. Good times.

From Rutland, I made a beeline to Hanover, NH, the home of Dartmouth College. I and a fellow hiker lucked out and managed to score the last two dining hall guest swipes of a student, one of many who donate their guest swipes to hikers. Thus was I able to chow down on Ivy League cafeteria fare for lunch. I must have had four full glasses of local whole chocolate milk. I stayed at the Hanover Adventure Trail hostel, which is actually a river rafting center at heart. It offered a very professional hostel which for all its cleanliness and air conditioning and all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast managed to be one of the most uninspiring hostel stays of the trail. This was somewhat unfair because just the night before, I had spent the night at the Blue Barn.

It isn’t officially called that as far as I know, but Linda has never been one for formalities. She and her family have lived in West Hartford , VT since the 70s, and she carries on the tradition of offering her lawn and garage (the blue barn) to hikers passing through the town. The trail snakes through the town for almost a mile, but there isn’t much there. A recent Hurricane completely hollowed out the local infrastructure, destroying their house and several local businesses that used to cater to hikers. But Linda and her husband Randy are not to be deterred. She is a calm, collected, warm proprietor who stays in close contact with the other trail angels all the way down to Georgia. She has a fridge full of free soda, bowls of fruit, and plenty of gossip to offer those who sit down on her porch and watch the sun go by. Her husband and their son in law work in a small trucking company during nights, but that doesn’t stop the bubbly, half-mad Randy from pulling up six packs and talking for hours about the wild antics of his youth. He has a suspiciously high number of comically harrowing stories of his military life stationed in Panama. Imagine Frank Reynolds from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, except with thick powerful arms and legs. He’s a wild man. We ordered Dominos from their front porch, and Linda volunteered to go pick up the orders herself to save us money. The garage had no real ventilation and no sheets—only stuff mattresses—but we watched Shrek 2 and had the time of our lives. It was unquestionably more fulfilling than my stay at the modern hostel in Hanover. This dynamic remains an unbroken pattern. Primitive hostels are undefeated.

It took two days to get from Hanover to where I am now, about 43 miles. That kind of mileage may be over for the next few weeks. The White Mountains not only have rugged rocky terrain, with scrambles and waterfalls and bogs to boot, but they are the nexus of four different weather systems, making every day a crapshoot. Given that you spend many miles above tree line—and thus completely exposed to the elements—you are grappling with an organic and capricious logistical situation. If the weather turns—and it can turn on a dime—you hunker down. Everyone moves rather slowly through this section, which is a good idea anyway given the spectacular beauty of the region. First Mt Moosilauke. Then the Kinsmans. Then Franconia Ridge leading into the Presidential Range. Then the Wildcats. Then Carter Dome. And finally Mahoosuc, which involves the hardest mile of the trail—Mahoosuc Notch, a canyon containing the rubble of centuries of rockslides from the neighboring Mahoosuc Arm. By then, you are in Maine, and the final lap begins.

I’ve run into many hikers old and new.

Catchup, a young athletic man known to hike huge mile days and then spend several days off. Hence, he is always catching up. He is incredibly pleasant, with an easy confidence. Perhaps due to his oscillating pace, he is seemingly friends with everyone.

Pauka and Starbucks, a pair of grandparents who have powered through the whole trail under budget and ahead of schedule. They have an easy manner, but, despite appearances to the contrary, they are tough as nails. We always argue about the best logistics moving forward, and they are almost always correct. They dodge weather like it’s the Matrix.

Sourcream, the 2nd black thruhiker I’ve met thus far. She is a former “exotic dancer” with, supposedly, a wealthy boyfriend. Sourcream is extremely socially adroit, and is beloved by pretty much everyone, and her legend only grew when they learned that she bought a goat and hiked with it for several weeks. I, however, am conflicted, as she casually told me a story of her behavior at a Franciscan cemetery that was so vile and sacrilegious that I was genuinely speechless. I should have said something, anything, but I couldn’t believe it. It kept me up at night with regret. I don’t quite know how to act around her now, so I haven’t changed.

We don’t need to end on a dark note, so let it be said that I am both anxious and eager to head into the Whites. A weight has been lifted. Majesty awaits. And I will be forced to slow down, which I should have done a long time ago. The long days did real damage to the experience. I don’t expect to finish until around August 7, but for the first time, that doesn’t sound so bad.

The One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Day

I have, perhaps unfairly, complained of bad luck on the trail several times, but I know now that this is simply the consequence of so long a journey. Given enough time, you will get screwed. However, the more Catholic I become, the “easier” (read: more stubbornly) it becomes to recognize that all things—ALL things—contribute to the salvific order, no matter how painful or confusing. This has never been more obvious to me than now, beard tangled in bits of fried chicken breading as I lounge like Dionysus in the Travelodge of Great Barrington, MA, six pack of ginger ale within arms reach. It was a long time coming.

Last I posted, I had just escaped the sundered heap that we call Pennsylvania. Ahead of me: a three state medley. New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. I was in high spirits, because the change of trail condition was immediate crossing into NJ from PA. Where I was once forced to walk across an ankle twisting nightmare, I could now step more confidently through a more politely rocky trail. The only thing that dampened my enthusiasm was the psychological beating I had taken when, taking two Zeros in Delaware Water Gap to escape a storm, I watched as not one drop of rain fell until late at night. An entire day of progress wasted. You feel like an absolute chump. Perhaps less neurotic folks are capable of taking that in good humor, but I was unamused. The hostel had become an overflowing halfway house of hikers looking to escape the rain that never came. We sweltered together. At length, however, I escaped, and once again began trail life, now in New Jersey.

New Jersey is known for two things in the AT community. The first is the beginning of boardwalks. In the northern part of the NJ trail and for parts of NY and CT, you cover several miles of walking across rickety boardwalks elevated over wetlands and bogs. Even western NJ has the marshy spirit I’ve come to know and love in the wetlands in the Ocean City area, albeit less “clean.” The ocean air and open skies are missing, making the sodden ground and thick brush very claustrophobic and even suffocating in the heat. Even in the beautiful portions of these nature walks, there is weight to the air you don’t find on the shore. But it is beautiful. And that is the second thing NJ is known for: being shocking lovely.

Most folks obviously know the reputation NJ has in the rest of the country—less than complimentary. But most people who walk the NJ AT find that there is a lot to love. While cut off from the cleansing influence of the shore, the New Jersey countryside is lush and teeming with life. It is wild. The endless Jersey urban/suburban sprawl does in fact end. There isn’t much elevation, but the forests wind through ponds and hills and wildlife preserves that rival any of the views I’ve seen thus far, even from mountaintops. I was particularly struck by Highpoint State Park, where, you guessed it, the highest point in NJ lies, marked by a memorial to veterans of New Jersey. However, to be fair, it was in Highpoint State Park that I found relief from the biggest problem in New Jersey (and New York): yellow water.

The quest for water on trail is one of the defining patterns of daily life. If you’re like me, and you sweat very easily, you need a lot of it, and you spend quite a bit of time collecting it. Water accessibility determines daily mileage, camping viability, physical comfort, peace of mind… surprising no one, water is very important to the hiker. You are spoiled for the first three states of the trail. Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee have cold, crystal clear at reliable intervals. In fact, the water situation was so good down there that for weeks I didn’t even bother filtering what I collected. Delicious spring water flowed from the mountains freely, no doubt more healthy than anything we get on tap. I have said before, and I will say again, that the number one thing I will miss most about the trail will be the ready access to spring water straight from the source. All of this is to say that NJ and NY water is by and large disgusting—if not in taste, then in color. The vast majority of water sources there flow from sources where tannins leech in from the bogs and wetlands that cover the land. There aren’t many mountains around, so there aren’t many mountain springs. You’re stuck with water emptying from stagnant sources. While the tannins (essentially pigments) from these sources aren’t necessarily dangerous, they turn the water a very unappetizing color—yellow, brown, even orange. And tannins, sadly, do affect the taste. Ocean City may be the best tap water I’ve ever had, but the natural sources are gross. I drank a liter at least of rust colored water before at last reaching Highpoint State Park, where I found a clear, cold stream to enjoy.

NJ is also known as the place you’re most likely to see a bear on the AT. Naturally, I saw none, and I have to this day not seen a single bear yet. Even when I dump my food in my tent, alone, in the middle of the woods, knowing bears have been aggressive days before, they never show. I don’t know why. Perhaps I am a bull in the China shop, crashing down the trail loudly enough to drive all life away. Maybe my aroma is just too rancid (I managed to go 31 days without washing my clothes; 31 days of sweat and… foreign substances).The deer don’t seem to mind me. I’ve seen plenty, and I have gotten within feet of them without them running (although most bolt on sight). Bears, however, have kept their distance, as have most of the animals one expects to see on trail: bears, beavers, rattlesnakes, and porcupines. I haven’t seen any. I’ve seen rat snakes, squirrels, deer, chipmunks, and bugs—lots and lots and lots of bugs.

Form New Jersey, I moved into New York, and I was immediately confronted by four of the gnarliest miles trail so far, which took me completely by surprise. In fact, it was only a mile or two into NY that I faced the scariest bit of trail so far. New York, going northbound, begins with you crossing smooth rock outcrops that require some very short but technical climbs and descents. one of those requires navigating a cliff that curves precipitously down a 20-30ft cliff. No edges or footholds to speak of. I had to throw my backpack down first and then, back to the smooth rock, shimmy along a crack in the cliff face on my heels, praying I wouldn’t slide down to my doom. Somehow it worked, as it always does. Did I mention it was a rainy day? Moments later, as I walked across an innocuous pit of slightly inclined smooth rock, I slipped like a cartoon character, and, feet flying out in front of me, I landed square on my butt. No lasting injury, but your life flashes before your eyes every time.

Truth be told, however, New York was the continuation of the revelation I had climbing out of Palmerton. I really enjoy the technical climbs, and New York had quite a few of those. The technical descents were terrifying and extremely unpleasant (and genuinely very dangerous, especially after rain), but the climbing was a blast. I was particularly emboldened by the Lemon Squeezer, a rocky climb in Harriman State Park (my pick for most beautiful section of trail so far) that starts with a very narrow crack corridor between two cliffs and ends in a 12ft vertical rock face that most people go around. But I scaled it myself, finding the path and everything. I genuinely may pick up rock climbing when I return—but we will see what New Hampshire and southern Maine have to say about that. For now, I enjoyed New York more than I expected, even if it brought me into unpleasantly close contact with an unpleasant number of muggles (ie, non-hikers). Hordes of them crowd Bear Mountain by the hundreds, giving you sharp pangs of culture shock as soon as you get to the top. Where once climbing mountains brought you away from the maddening crowd, in New York, they often brought you right back in. However, it wasn’t all bad. NY is well known in the AT community for being the hotzone for “Deli-blazing.” If you plan well, you don’t need to carry a lot of food in New York. There are delis and restaurants not far from most of the road crossings. But even more than that, New York introduced me to one of the most shocking Trail angels I’ve met.

Jess is a former evangelical (now atheist) with two kids. At the moment, she is (amicably?) separated from her husband, living in her hometown of Warwick, NY. She is tatted up, has a nose ring, and she is the most beautiful woman I’ve seen since I’ve started. Maybe it’s just being in the woods for four months surrounded by dudes, but when she called to us over the fence by the local creamery (best ice cream I’ve ever had, two hundred years old), my voice caught in my throat. She must be in her 40s, and although she is lean and athletic, she is obviously a mom of at least two, but she single-handedly convinced me that sleeveless turtlenecks are the height of women’s fashion. She’s an absolute sweetheart who spends *hours* of her daily life driving hikers in and out of town for no money. She has a small flower business (I think) and two kids in school, and she still dedicates entire dimensions of her day to accommodating the capricious, filthy, unreliable, often disgustingly entitled hikers that wander into her home. I had to stealthily leave ten dollars in her car—even now, has prices as they are, she refuses payment, even as she juggles phone calls from her husband, her clients, her kids’ school, and hikers. Who is this person? How does a person like this come to be? Is it just to distract her from pain in her life? By her own admission, perhaps her religious upbringing, but I’ve known far more pious people with much less capacity for charity. God’s call to virtue is strong, even in the heart of the apostate.

There isn’t too much to say about Connecticut, other than that you spend the whole time thinking of how close you are to the last four states (MA, VT, NH, and ME). My time in CT was brief—but I didn’t expect that. Providence had other ideas.

Cousins Stephen and Janet were kind enough to leave a care package for me at Mt Algo Shelter—the crown jewel being a new pair of cushioned insoles that have saved me from so much pain. The pair I was using I had bought in Hot Springs, NC—more than 1000 miles ago. Reminded of my humanity, I decided I needed to do laundry—it had been 31 days. I hadn’t washed my clothes since just after Shenandoah in Northern Virginia. 400 miles without washing. Imagine that. It was time. So I changed my plans and decided to hike a mile off trail to visit the very small “town” of Cornwall Bridge. Towns like Cornwall Bridge are a mystery to me. It has the economy to support an Oriental Rug store and almost nothing else. But it had a tiny country convenience store and a tiny motel with laundry facilities, and that’s all I needed. Prices in New England, as you can imagine, are not the prices in Georgia, and that has been a tough transition. But I’m Cornwall Bridge, I committed to the splurge, buying and eating an entire homemade apple pie and half quart of whole milk for dinner. I washed my clothes, lay on the motel bed, and resolved to extend my stay another night, my first Zero in a week. I have taken, or have been forced to take, WAY more zeros than the average thruhiker. I must have three weeks of them by now. 21 days of no miles. Most were a waste. After the demoralizing zeroes at Fontana Lodge and Pearisburg, it became second nature for me to take one whenever the mood struck me. It happened again in Cornwall Bridge. But when I woke the next day and waited for someone to appear at the main office, I soon discovered that they had filled up in the night. I was out of luck. I remember the owner telling me, and I especially remember the moment of fury that came after. The Joker from the Dark Knight was right—there’s no tragedy like an unplanned tragedy. For the first time in a long time, I had assumed—all night and most of the morning I had assumed I would get my way. And here I was, at 10am, with a crappy resupply and sore feet, forced to go back on trail on a rainy day. I quickly formed another plan—a short 15.6 mile day to the house of a woman named Jen, who out of the kindness of her heart has turned her shed into a cozy four-bunk cottage for hikers to use. She’s just a woman outside of Falls Village, CT. She charges 20 bucks per bunk, which is small return on an enormous hassle. But by the time I contacted her, she, too, was booked for the night. Now I was in trouble. I had gotten a very late start on a day I had expected to be a day off. The rain was coming down. The light was disappearing. The climbs were any and steep. There weren’t any convenient shelters in reasonable distance. You can’t stealth camp in CT. I was in an extremely inconvenient spot at 3pm.

Anxious and clueless, I was hiking through the woods when I stopped to quickly go to the bathroom. I am used to being totally alone 90% of the day, so I thought nothing of simply turning and taking a cheeky leak on the side of the trail. But before I could, I was hit with what I find to be one of the worst smells in the world—weed. Looking up, I saw another hiker gathering himself together by a nearby stream. I had met this guy briefly (and mostly just by proximity) before in Warwick. We both had spent the night at the famous drive in movie theatre, where the owner allows hikers to camp on the hill and watch movies for free. His name is Legacy (don’t know the origin) and he was halfway through the bone chilling Connecticut Challenge—completing all ~50 miles of CT in 24 hours. He had started at midnight, and had 20miles to go. He asked if he could follow me, so he could match my pace. I agreed, and we hit it off right away.

Legacy is in the bed next to mine, now. I hiked 25.5 miles on the day I had expected to hike 0, climbing several mountains after sunset in the rain. I hiked 18 the next day to reach Great Barrington, MA, which would have been prohibitively expensive on a weekend, if I had not split costs with Legacy and enjoyed one of the best days off of my journey so far. All of the anxiety and pain of the last three days culminated in a gloriously indulgent and relaxing experience here, while simultaneously allowing me to make great time, great mileage, and better habits. I am not so reliant on zeros anymore. I don’t expect to take another until New Hampshire. I am rested, well fed, well supplied, and ready to take on the remaining 600 miles. I made a new friend who, besides being a good companion (weed notwithstanding), will help with costs down trail if necessary. Things are looking up, and the journey that for so long has felt endless and purgatorial begins to feel surprisingly and pleasantly finite.

The One Hundred and Twelfth Day

Pennsylvania is known as Rocksylvania, for obvious reasons—the trail transitions from dirt and roots and stones to a seemingly endless lane of jagged rocks of all sizes, almost completely covering the ground. What on the elevation map might have once inspired joy and hope in a long peaceful stroll along flat ground now instills dread—from Palmerton, PA to the Delaware Water Gap (where I am now), you endure 40 miles of this torture. There is no safe place to put your foot. You either stab the sole, slash the unprotected inner arches, crush your toes between stones, or trip and stumble across the trail. I’ve done the last one countless times now, and every new lurch fills me with a single moment of rage. It gets old. Pennsylvania is by far the worst state in trail for this reason. An abysmal experience. It is a sundered heap of rubble. And it is in Pennsylvania that I’ve finally had my first significant injuries.

Duncannon, PA is generally considered the beginning of Rocksylvania. Southern PA is a very gentle place, where you spend many miles trampling across flat farmland—not nearly as romantic as you’d expect. You wade through the tall grass, exposed to the sun, surrounded by highway noise. It is quick, but it is brutal in the heat. Eventually, however, 4 miles out of Port Clinton, you hit Rocksylvania proper, and your brisk pace slows to an agonizing crawl. But before that, I was tramping down the trail in high spirits, making great time. The trail was already quite rocky, but I had navigated it well enough. I had rocks on the brain. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that I walked over a large stick that was stable enough to not break, but rather become stuck between my feet and sending me flying face first into the rocky trail, coming down hard on my knee. For about five seconds, I thought the whole trip was over. I shakily got to one knee, to see a dent in my kneecap and a whole mess of blood. For the next thirty seconds, I tried to stand up, nauseous with pain and and completely winded. Then a curious thing happened—I took a step, reflexively. Then another. And soon, I was walking quite steadily again. I was in pain, and my mind was whirling thinking of where I could stop and inspect things, and where I could camp early… but I kept walking. And soon enough, it was obvious that while my knee would hurt and ache and bruise quite badly, it would not stop me. It was just another vector of discomfort to add to the ever growing polyhedron of pain that I am becoming. I went another few miles, and in fact I crossed over Knife’s Edge an hour later. Knife’s Edge is a short by intense and precarious ridge of rocks and boulders that are quite dangerous when wet. Rain was imminent, and I knew I could not wait until tomorrow to cross. Dry rocks and a sore knee would have to do, and, although I was adrenalized at the end, I crossed without incident.

The next morning, I was in high spirits. I had only ten miles to go before I descended into Port Clinton, PA, where a church funded pavilion waited for me. I don’t know if I was distracted by my knee or the promise of a comfy civilized shelter that sat a short ride away from a buffet—or the promise of new shoes to replace my second pair, which had split down the sides, exposing my toes—but I never saw the rock that full on collided with my little toe. I can say with confidence that I can’t remember anything in recent years being as painful as that blinding moment of contact. I contorted on my feet like a modern art masterpiece, vocalizing in shock as much as pain. But once again, after about fifteen seconds, I took a step. And then another. And I was quickly ambling down the trail again. This time, however, I was concerned. I actually couldn’t bring myself to inspect my toe until I reached town. I expected to see a bloody nail-less mess when I peeled back the sock liner. Luckily, there was no laceration, and the toenail, while chipped, was still intact—but it was visibly twisted. And swollen. And purple. I spent two days wondering if THIS was what would end my hike. Would PA, in all its maddening banality, ring the death knell. About a week later, I’m relatively sure I didn’t break it. I took a zero to rest it, got my new—blessedly snug and cast-like—shoes, and forged on. It aches and complains from time to time, but it hasn’t stopped me. Horrible moments quickly recede into the noise and blur of the trail, once again. It’s still obviously askew, and perhaps I will pay a price for not directly addressing it I a timely manner, but I will set myself on frigging fire before I let this place take me out.

I talked at some length about my fellow hikers last time, and I stand by it. In fact, my experience at the Presbyterian hostel here in Delaware Water Gap has reinforced my opinion by contrast. While I was surrounded by young bloods for the past few weeks, I have enjoyed a mix of generations under the more watchful eye of hostel managers. No drugs, no booze—the difference is breathtaking. Mixing the generations and limiting the vices created the incredible hiker dynamic I recall from the early days of the trail. Lovely conversation, high positive energy, a deep sense of fellowship, and clear minds. I haven’t mentioned individuals for a while, so I thought I’d give a list of recent personalities:

Most relevant is my most recent hiking companion, whom I regularly intersect with. Bimble is a retiree from Great Britain, a former data analyst for the British army and one time B&B owner. He’s a walking stereotype: cynical, witty, and hyper articulate, with a stiff upper lip. always surprises when I, an American, know things. As much as I love him, I can’t decide if he’s an a-hole or not. He resents the Amish, and he takes no guff from the hapless clueless hikers who run into him. “Bimble” is a word in the British Army that means “a short walk in the woods.”

Buckeye and Whoopee are two very young Texans who got engaged and decided to live the van life before embarking on the trail. He is a photographer and she is a writer, and together they manage an Instagram account that follows their adventures. They are Texans through and through, attractive and forthright, and always charming. They take it slow. They are in no hurry. They were the first people I met in months that struck me as well put together young folk. They are inspiring in a way that’s hard to articulate—young and care free and in love.

At long last, on the day I met Buckeye and Whoopee, I met Tanner, trailname Tarzan (he tangled with ropes and vines helping others with their bear hangs early on). He is my age, he’s down to earth, and he is one of the most clearheaded people I’ve ever met. Steady, funny, and strikingly normal. He slowed down to hike with his mother for a week, and I pulled ahead, but perhaps he will catch me again. The four of us talked for four hours straight the night we met.

We talked about Ice for a while. I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned Ice, now calling himself Foggy, in previous posts. I’ve camped and engaged with Ice many times in the past two months, ever since the Grayson Highlands. Ice was one of the most popular hikers for the first week or so of his hike. Why? Because he brought a 1 pound bag of weed to share for free. He likes to party, and he was in the party bubble. But one day, on an acid trip with his group, he got the wrong idea, and followed two girls into their tent, terrifying them. The exact details of what went down are not clear—I’ve heard many different accounts. All that I know is that the girls left the trail and didn’t press charges. He IMMEDIATELY became Public Enemy #1. Online AT forums and Facebook pages put out the word, and overnight, Ice became a pariah. Hostels refuse to house him. Most hikers plan their miles to avoid him. People actively track his progress. But he isn’t getting off trail. In my interactions with him, I got the distinct impression that he is no more or less than a 35 year old child. I pity him. From what I’ve gathered, he isn’t a predator or monster—he’s a former veteran with not too many brains and a penchant for, you guessed it, booze and drugs. He talks a lot about getting drunk and getting high. He came out here, supposedly, to reflect on the suicide of his former comrade. I think Ice became a juicy bit of drama for all but the girls he accosted, and now everyone salivates over their own little Ice story. It is a drama everyone can feel a part of. The social punishment he’s ensuring now is most likely fair, but it is sad to see such a clueless guy march on. By the way, he got the name Ice because he inexplicably brought an ice pick.

Finally, on my way down to Delaware Water Gap, I ran into Evan. Evan isn’t a thruhiker. Evan, an ambiguously Asian 30-something, is a trail runner who spends his days working in coffee houses to fund his months long expeditions to run the trails of every National Park in the US. He has turned his car into a custom mobile home—a real bed frame and mattress, a deployable kitchenette, a mobile shower, and a large solar panel on the hood. He spends 80% of his time driving around the country and running trails. He had no idea what the Appalachian Trail was. We hiked down together, and he gave me a ride to the local supermarket to resupply. He even used his credit card for me when the ATMs and Debit went down in PA for a day. The whole time, I told him about the trail and he told me about his peculiar lifestyle. There is something monastic about the way he lives, sans the girlfriend that joins him from time to time. His life is stripped down and simplified. He seems very happy. He’s on his way to Indiana, now.

Pennsylvania is behind me. New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut are in front of me. There are ~900 miles to go. I expect to finish sometime around the first week of August. I take many zeroes, and I spend more money than I expected, but it is easier and easier for me to be at peace with the time and money investment. Despite all the aggravation and discomfort, there remains a spiritual mystique out here, even in the sundered heap of PA. Climbing out of Palmerton, PA was an enormous boost to my spirits. The tedium and discomfort of Rocksylvania were briefly interrupted by a 1 mile 1000ft+ climb and rock scramble. It was a new sensation. I was briefly terrified scaling the near vertical face, and the steep boulder hip overlooking Lehigh Gap was no joke either, but it was invigorating. Even with my smashed toe, it was a blast. I am told that this is what much of New Hampshire and Southern Maine is like—only longer and at a far grander scale. And harder. There is much to look forward to.

What encourages me most is that when I bashed my toe and fell on my knee, when I had those brief but intense thoughts of the end, what followed was a powerful sense of despair. I don’t want to leave the AT. Not like that. All of this is worth it to fulfill at least one promise to myself.

The One Hundred and First Day

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the local churches around the Appalachian Trail make up a significant portion of the AT ecosystem. At least 25% of available hostels or municipal shelters are funded by and/or managed by local religious communities—in particular the Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals. As I write this, I am lying comfortably in the basement of the house of the pastor for the Duncannon, PA Assembly of God. I’ve never met him. You simply walk down into the spacious lower level of his house, which has been completely dedicated to housing as many hikers as possible. There is air conditioning, crates of free Gatorade and water, a kitchen, a shower, a foosball table, and random goodies. It is entirely donation based. One of the church members walked in and offered his luxurious house and pool to hikers for free. Everyone accepted.

This update, and probably the rest of my updates, will be slightly less focused than previous ones. Other posts had their orbit around specific themes, some stronger than others, but now that familiarity with this once strange and alien world has set in, I don’t feel bound to chase a single theme down the whole page. You may notice more stream of consciousness at play. Some themes may take over posts, and it is likely that they become more personal, which will be unfamiliar to me. I’m not used to being so open. Odds are updates will come quicker but will be somewhat shorter.

It took me a decent amount of time to get here. I cleared Shenandoah National Park in five days, which is 20+ miles a day. Shenandoah was exactly what I was told it was—prettier from Skyline Drive (the highway) than inside. Many great views of course, but primarily walking through a lovely if repetitive green tunnel. From Shenandoah, I hiked to the exit door of Virginia, which is guarded by the incredibly tedious and exhausting Roller Coaster—14 miles of near constant steep 500ft climbs and descents. The experience of the Roller Coaster is largely defined by the weather. I dodged the rain, but it was 90 degrees that day. I made it to the end, but I was forced into an early end of day due to the brutal chaffing that comes when you spend 11 hours drenched in sweat. It has conditioned me for the next few states, where I can crush miles at last. I hiked 26 miles into Duncannon, the second time in a week I’ve done that many. This involved 14 miles to cross the Cumberland Valley, much of which is completely exposed farmland. Once again, it was a 90 degree day. It seemed unthinkable not so long ago, but the body really does adapt. These days, I do 18 miles at a bare minimum. This will do nicely to make up the time I’ve lost in past debacles. But I’m trying not to dwell much on that sort of thing, now. This will take however long it will take, and it will cost however much it will cost.

I do feel compelled to briefly talk about the price of thru-hiking, sans any strong politically colored resentment I may or may not have. The unfortunate fact is that this particular year has been a financially devastating one for the Appalachian Trail ecosystem. Several of the classic AT institutions (restaurants, hostels, shops, etc) were gutted by COVID restrictions, and some that survived were again gutted by the rising costs of business. Shuttle drivers in particular have been shellacked—hikers like myself will do anything to avoid calling them. Shuttle drivers, like most hostel owners, make a living under the table. Shuttles are not licensed taxis, and hostels are often not licensed hotels. They exist at the pleasure of hikers. Hikers rarely have regional affection or loyalty, so even the smell of a price hike is enough to clobber your business in days. Shuttles have become prohibitively expensive, and that has changed the game. On the one hand, many welcome this—there is a perception among the purists that the trail has become commercialized by these sorts of services, and that the proper way is to hitch hike. But mostly, it has imperiled the already tight budgets of most hikers who, unlike me, do not have essentially carte blanche to take what the trail throws at us. High shuttle costs make logistical planning harder, but nothing hits so hard as rising food costs. I don’t drive, but I do cook, and my barometer of how screwy things are relies on ground beef prices. I check every supermarket I can, and I can tell you that even in a tiny, charming but ragged town like Duncannon, things are rough. Hikers can sidestep lots of economic damage, but rising food prices are brutal. The food price/weight/nutrition balance is turned upside down.

Ultimately, however, what hurts the hikers may help the locals. Most Hikers ultimately can’t refuse to pay higher food prices, and most will grimly accept higher hostel costs. Bunk costs have risen 10-20 dollars this year almost across the board, and, being strategically located, are hard to refuse at any price. Trail towns and businesses may owe their ability to endure recent hardship to the steady flow of people coming from the AT, who out of laziness or stability will pay whatever is asked. Still, There are many hikers who go to industry standard lodgings in response to price hikes, which has hurt many of the smaller more humble hostels, normally run by retired folks. In a word, the Appalachian Trail economy is strained, and hikers are not thrilled.

As mentioned, I finally escaped Virginia, and I am now trampling through the home state of PA. It is a relatively flat state, like Maryland and New Jersey and New York, so my hope is to speed through it in good time. The concerns of winter have been replaced with the concerns of summer. My return has coincided with the rise of the swarm—the mosquitoes have at last emerged and have launched a full scale assault against humanity. Ticks, too, have finally found their way to my shorts. I have only had to remove one so far, and it was funnier than I expected. They don’t cling to you with their legs. They just bury their head in your skin and the rest hangs loose. I check every night, but I’m pleased to say they have yet to get a taste for my blood. My tent once again proves it was the best purchase of my life, having an impenetrable mosquito net that makes every night a care free one. The bugs and the heat are oppressive, but I think they are less psychologically lethal than the paralyzing cold. When I’m hot, I can rest in the shade. I can sit and enjoy my surroundings without getting chased off nice views by the cold wind. And soon enough, I will be back at 4000ft+ elevation, where the heat isn’t so severe.

If my current schedule holds, I should still be able to finish the trail before the end of the first week of August. But again… I’m trying not to think of that too much. Day to day is the way to think out here, and I seem to be one of the few who has trouble getting to that state. Part of it is the harsh reality that I don’t really enjoy the hiking in and of itself. If I’ve learned nothing else out here, it is that I don’t like hiking for hiking’s sake. I cannot see myself making this sort of thing a regular part of my life—as I see many do around here. Dayhikers throng the trail on weekends, and there are always pods of people taking shorter section hikes. Hiking, for me, is a special event, to be done on vacations and for challenge purposes. I don’t want to quit and I am enjoying the holistic thru-hike experience, but I regularly fantasize about being done. I’m not married to this attitude, but I can’t see myself ever doing this again or anything like it (PCT, CDT, etc). But that may certainly change when I reach New Hampshire and Maine, which, I am constantly told, are breathtakingly beautiful and a far cry from the rest of the trail—which can (and does) feel like a slog. Up north, you don’t have to constantly remind yourself why you’re out here. You can see why every day. I will save my thoughts on the natural splendor of the trail until then.

I’ve been unsure how to broach this next topic because I haven’t yet determined where the truth ends and my own personal flaws begin. I will probably touch on this theme many times before the end. To put it as simply as I can, being among my fellow hikers has made me realize that I’m rather lonely—not merely on trail, but in life.

That needs qualifiers. I am blessed with an extraordinarily large and loving family and an equally large group of friends I’ve known for fourteen years or more. I am filled with love for all of the people in my life. I am spoiled for company and conversation and hospitality. I am eternally grateful for what I’ve been given, which so many people—maybe most—never have in their lives. This is a particular loneliness I feel among people around my age. With those significantly older, I feel normal. Among those significantly younger, I feel at ease. But in my generation, I’ve hit a snag—and I do ultimately think it is a me problem. I think somewhere along the way in grade school, I missed out on some important social benchmark. Ever since I was very young, I felt a distance—and the feeling has only intensified with time. I can’t even fully articulate the sensation. They’re alien to me. It doesn’t affect my socializing much on the surface. I’ve always found making friends easy. Social etiquette comes easy to me. But I am painfully aware all the whole that I am missing something.

To a large degree, it makes sense on a very material level—as the most obvious example, the drug culture on trail is overwhelming. Ever since the younger folk have caught up to me (I started in the older folks bubble), I have not been able to breathe clean air. At shelters and hostels, the stink of weed is intense. Everyone is getting high in some form or another, and at least half of what they talk about has some connection to it. Weed, acid, and shrooms are everywhere, and everyone is involved. Somehow, I was born with naturally Mormon tastes—I can’t stand booze, drugs, or coffee. As I write this, my peers in this basement are talking about how high they were in the grocery store we went to tonight. They talk in their strained, droning voices, peering around with their hooded, empty eyes, laughing their unbearable, cartoonish laughs, speaking about crude, stupid things. All the while I can smell the weed on them because they didn’t have the decency to not smoke it around here, where the pastor put up signs begging people not to smoke on the property. They can’t help it. I know it’s me, that I’m being uncharitable. I’ll be judged for that. But I am filled again and again with hate for these people, which I deny my intellectual assent but consumes me still. I hate them. I hate what they talk about and what they think and what they do. The boozers and the potheads who have never done me wrong directly, ever, who have only been generous and to whom I have only been the same—I still can’t stand them. I can only bond with them on a superficial clinical level.

But even beyond the drug divide, the gulf remains. There are differences that make me feel selfish for noticing—I have yet to meet any young people in person who share my opinions on political or social things, for example. I have never personally met another young person who feels close to their Catholic faith. I know they exist, but I’ve managed to avoid them all my life somehow. Out on trail, I’ve had the time to talk and listen to them more than ever. The things they think are important, or are simply worth talking about, are alien to me. Their lifestyles and values exhaust me. It is a real struggle to make a mutual connection beyond our shared struggle on trail—which, to be fair, is an enormous reservoir of bonding material.

This is all just a more intense reflection of my normal life, though. I just haven’t met anyone “like me,” and even writing that makes me gag. It’s a selfish feeling, and I refuse to indulge it, but I can’t ignore it. Out here, I’ve had the time to think about it, and I’ve come to the realization that a big part of my life is that loneliness. I need to make new friends. I need to find people who have some directional agreement with me on what’s important, on what’s fun to talk about—and they aren’t just being polite or indulging me because they love me unconditionally. That’s become a major priority for my return. I need new friends, I need people in my life who are actively interested in the things I’m interested in for their own merits. I’ve isolated myself enough, and I’m exhausted.

Exhausted or not, I head back into the trail tomorrow for what may be two 25 mile days in a row. In Port Clinton, PA, I pick up my third pair of shoes. From there, I march to the Delaware Water Gap and into New Jersey. From New Jersey, into New York, and from New York into Massachusetts and Vermont. And then, in New Hampshire, I tackle the roughest and most perilous part of the trail. Until then, I coast the trail and ponder ever more novel ways that my life is not what it should be.

The Eighty-Second Day

To cap off a dark period of the trail, this is the second time I am writing this. My first multi-hour attempt was erased by my app crashing, which nearly convinced me to never record a single word for the rest of my life in any format. But the show must go on. So you will have to accept a lesser confession, with my apologies. I have tried to include everything and more from the first attempt.

Waynesboro has been my favorite trail town to date, and it is no competition. It is for sure, as advertised, the friendliest trail town. I learned as much from Glen, one of twelve citizens who shuttle hikers for free around town, and who coordinate with the local businesses to cater to the needs of said hikers through discounts, special services, and advice. Glen wasn’t born here, but he did retire here.he originally spent 25 years as a prison warden (“the hospitality business”) in Alaska after marrying an Eskimo woman and living the traditional Eskimo way of life. Sadly, his Eskimo wife ran away with her boss, but Glen, not one to mope, eventually reunited with his high school sweetheart and retired with her to Waynesboro. Many such cases

It has been almost a month since my last update, and there is one reason for that—Good Friday 2022 was the beginning of a long rough patch out here. I just could not find the time and/or Will and/or enough notable events to justify a large update. But today is the beginning of what I believe will be some of the best times on trail. This update will serve to draw a line under the dark times and where my appetite for the rambles of spring to come.

I left Weary Feet Hostel the morning of April 20th. It was snowing. It didn’t stick, luckily, but the eternal 2022 chill continued to throttle the trail from dawn to dusk. Spring would end up being a month behind the average thaw, I would learn. This was a very cold year to hike. Just a few days ago, I slept through a 34 degree night. It was summer before it was spring, frankly, with a full week of 85+ temp days before consistently 60+ days in Virginia. I was used to this phenomena, but, as I mentioned at length, I was suffering from a soft spoken ache in my guts that did nothing but slightly dampen every facet of my daily life. My condition would eventually come to a head, but days later. For now, I simply continued on. You will hear that over and over again, as you already have—you have no practical choice but to press on, so you do.

My plan was to hike two days to Pearisburg, VA, where I would only spend the night at another hostel before heading out to face the Virginia Triple Crown. The first adjustment to the itinerary came 20 minutes after I left, when I ran into an attractive ~40 year old Puerto Rican woman named Billy Goat who *insisted* that I stay at Woods Hole Hostel, demanded even. Best on the trail, she said, and it was perfectly situated between me and Pearisburg. An efficient two days. So I said I would, and I made my reservation. It was an easy hike—except that the problem within, which made itself known for the first time. But we will get there.

Woods Hole Hostel is situated in the middle of the wilderness, tucked away in a spacious, heavily wooded estate in the mouth of a deep, dark hollow. It is a compound of old wooden barns and cottages surrounding a modernized log cabin and a bunkhouse. Woods Hole is in fact one of the oldest hostels on trail, it’s original owners having repurposed their homestead in the early 20th century. The current owner, Neville, is their grand daughter, a small, delicate woman in her 40s, recently divorced from her allegedly aggressive and temperamental husband who, despite his temper, was instrumental in maintaining and running the hostel infrastructure for years. Now, it is only Neville and the nomads who give months of their lives to help her keep the business running. It was relatively early in the season when I arrived, so the compound was eerily quiet and even abandoned looking. Far from the truth. The cold had driven the bunkers indoors—most has retreated into the main cabin, where Neville was preparing a homemade dinner, but some were waiting in the drafty, virtually unheated bunkhouse.

My experience in Woods Hole was very brief, but I very quickly saw how people could easily rank it as one of the best hostels on trail. The breakfasts and dinners they provide are substantial and nutritious but still relatively simple (all vegetarian, with home baked bread and homemade condiments). The grounds themselves are hauntingly rustic and even romantic. And, first and foremost, Neville is a striking host. She is either Buddhist or Nee Age inclined, and this is evident from the home decor to her manner of speaking. Soft spoken as she is, Neville speaks with a tender confidence, not ashamed to speak sincerely and even reverently about the mysteries of life. It would be so easy to underestimate Neville, because she is such a small and timid-seeming woman, with none of the Southern matriarchal edge I’ve come to expect from proprietors down here. But Neville is in fact a force to be reckoned with—she is hellbent on rising to the difficult occasion left in the wake of her former husband’s absence, and she is determined to do it with that same mysterious Appalachian charity that seems to permeate every part of the trail ecosystem. Donors contribute to a fund that she uses to pay for the expense of those who could otherwise not stay at the hostel. If you are on a budget, she will do everything in her power to make it possible for you to enjoy every part of Woods Hole hospitality, gourmet meals and all. Neville, in fact, prefers to sleep with an electric blanket on her front porch, leaving her entire modern cabin to lodgers.

But as impressive as Woods Hole is, I could not help but feel I’ll at ease my whole time there. It wasn’t from any sense of malice or sinister feeling. For one, the grounds, while lovely and romantic, are in total isolation in the shadow of the hollow, perpetually besieged on all sides by the forest. When not in the cabin alongside other lodgers, I was unnerved—in part by the bunkhouse, which was drafty and unheated except for a pellet heater, which provided negligible warmth, but the entire estate felt haunted. Perhaps it was merely my being fed up with the cold, but the chill had a certain edge in Woods Hole. Mostly, however, I think my uneasiness came from Neville—by no fault of her own. I never got to speak at length of anything substantial with her, but I, then and later, would learn through bits and pieces of her difficult marriage and the pressures of being the heiress of an Appalachian Trail institution, all experienced by someone of Neville’s melancholic temperament. Even without knowing, I was immediately struck by the intense aura of quiet desperation that she exudes. Every smile seemed strained. Every word out of her mouth, kind or businesslike, was touched by a certain gloom. And her general attitude, while never anything by hospitable and genuinely compassionate, was almost overwhelmingly mournful. Before each meal (dinner and breakfast), she would have every lodger stand around the dinner table in a large circle (some ~15-20 people) and say what we were thankful for. Most of us were inevitably taken off guard by this, and most of us would give a light hearted, even irreverent answer. Her two answers for what she was thankful for? The power of forgiveness and the edifying utility of suffering. She gave her answers with sincerity and humility, no drama whatsoever. I can’t think of too many other people I’ve met who I felt so compelled to pray for, knowing as little as I do.

On the other side of the experience, there were not only hikers at the hostel, but a gang of novice motorcyclists, friends from Annapolis who for the first time were setting off for a motorcycle trip together. They could have been the Six Stooges. Two Brits, a Bulgarian, and two New Englanders, all fast friends with the same hobby. They knew absolutely nothing about the Appalachian Trail, and they asked us questions all through dinner, baffled, but all the whole riffing off one another with professional wit. They bunked with me in the bunkhouse, and we shivered together.

The next morning, I was lucky enough to be offered a free slackpack opportunity by the owner of the Pearisburg hostel I would eventually use that night. They had driven over on business and offered anyone staying with them a free slackpack. Slackpacking is when you leave the bulk of your gear at a hostel and hike a section of the trail almost entirely unencumbered. It is extremely popular, especially among the elderly. There is a pair of cousins who are Slackpacking the entire way north with two vans. Hot Tamale, who owns the Angel’s Rest Hiker Haven in Pearisburg, VA, offered that service to me for free, and I, normally psychologically incapable of even considering corrupting my journey with that kind of luxury, gladly accepted. It took me only 5 hours to hike 16 miles into Pearisburg and into Angel’s Rest Hostel, which as of now is perhaps my favorite hostel on trail. Beautiful green grounds behind a supermarket, with spacious and affordable accommodations, run by kind and laid back folks who know the pitfalls of hiking. I was lucky that disaster would strike here.

After taking a zero in Pearisburg, I set out from the little town ready to tackle the Virginia Triple Crown—Dragon’s Tooth, McAfee Knob, and Tinker’s Cliffs, three of Virginia’s most difficult hikes.

I made it four miles out of Pearisburg before the lingering shadow of discomfort revealed itself with “explosive” force. Pardon the euphemisms, but I was trampled over by a “Southbound” digestive issue, the worst I’ve ever experienced. Paired with the heat and exertion, it was hellish. I was staggered, and, head spinning, I desperately texted the good folks of Angel’s Rest to come rescue me, which they quickly did.

I spent the next four nights at that hostel walking from my tent to the bathroom and back again. They were kind enough to rope off one of the three bathrooms just for me, in case I had something catchy. I still don’t know exactly what it was. All I know is that I spent hours covered in sweat, sipping electrolyte water, pathetically weak, and incapable of finding a comfortable place to sit or lie down—because the Southbound stomach problem had triggered a much more painful problem I thought I had conquered long ago, which needs no description other than unrelenting, searing pain. For two full days, in a heatwave, I, for the first time in my entire life, verbally asked God to have mercy on me. It was humiliating how something so mundane and quotidian could bring me so low. Modern life is either a blessing or curse, that this comparatively benign experience of mine was so miserable. How delicate it all is.

At length, however, I recovered. On the third day, the Imodium had kicked in and allowed for repairs. By the fourth day, I was eating normally again. The next morning, I resumed my trek north.

The physical misery was a substantial part of this experience, but the psychological damage, to use a dramatic phrase, was no less intense—I had made no progress in almost a week. This slow down aggravated an anxiety I have had from the beginning, an anxiety I have only recently managed to accept as real. The fact is that I don’t want to take my time on trail. I don’t want it to take 6 months. I want it to be over—not because I hate it, but because woven into my enjoyment of the trail is the expectation that I can do this difficult thing more efficiently than most. I was emotionally invested in the achievement of spending less money, taking less time, and embracing the standard challenges than the median hiker—if only because I had told myself I could.

The reality is that I have rarely if ever in my life met the expectations that I (and others) have set for myself. I’ve only just realized how my hiking this trail is primarily a way for me to fulfill a substantial promise to myself, to do something I said I would in it’s entirety. I can’t think of a time in my life when I’ve been the person God made me to be. Pearisburg was just the latest wound to my imagined integrity of this journey. In total, I have had almost three weeks of zeros, almost all of them involuntary. Out of my control? Yes and no. It hurts no less. Whatever narcissistic neurosis leads me to think I was born to do certain things expects results, not excuses, and is perpetually disappointed.

But, to my credit, once on trail, I really began to chug out miles and assert my dominance over Virginia. The triple crown was completed in two days, and I was soon ambling into Daleville, the halfway point through the enormous, endless gauntlet of Virginia. From Daleville, I marched over Apple Orchard Mountain and into Glasgow, VA, where I spent the night at the town shelter, which is maintained by the locals. Glasgow has very little going for it, but everything it does have, it offers to its guests with both hands. From Glasgow, I hiked across the last four major climbs of the trail until Nee Hampshire—Bluff Mountain, Bald Knob, The Priest, and Three Ridges. I took them all in three days, and soon found myself where I am now, in Waynesboro, VA, the friendliest hiker town on the entire trail.

I meant to stay here for only a zero before storming the Shenandoah National Park. But after a twenty mile day in pouring rain, I had a breaking point. I have never been angrier on trail. I had checked and double checked the weather for days. Rather than sporadic showers, It turns out I was facing four full days of rain and thunderstorms, timed perfectly to start just as I entered what many call one of the most beautiful sections of the trail. If you recall, my Smoky Mountain experience was an absolute nightmare. I refused to go through that again. I was sick and tired of having these singular experiences completely nullified by uncooperative weather. I realized I was miserable. Everything I had was soaked through. I had 80 miles to go, all through a storm in which I would have no views or comfort. I couldn’t even take breaks for fear of the chill. I was done.

So I surrendered to my weakness. I abandoned my aspirations of being above average in execution for once in my life. I called up the hostel in Waynesboro and had them pick me up and take me back. And I’ve been waiting out the rain for two days now. My plan is to go back out tomorrow morning, hoping that this time, the few hours of scattered showers are just a few hours of scattered showers. I intend to push a LOT of miles now, per day, because I just can’t shake the compulsion to try and recover my hopes for this trail. 20+ mile days as I’ve been doing for the past week of hiking. Finishing the 100 mile Shenandoah section in 4 full days of hiking. Refusing zeros until New Hampshire. BlaZing my way from Maryland to Vermont, exploiting the relatively level terrain and infrequent climbs.

April was a miserable month. It began with an infuriating snowstorm and ruined shoes, and it ended with a painful illness and humiliating shuffling of standards. But it’s the past. What am I supposed to do? Quit? Unthinkable. As I have said again and again—on the trail, you go forward, ever forward. You leave everything in the dust, 20 miles behind you. You reset every resupply. You forget the outrages of last week and look forward to the beauties of the next. For all of my disappointment and self recrimination, I know full well that the game isn’t over yet. I am at mile ~880. In a week, I will be at the halfway point. Three months to do the first half. It is absolutely possible to do the second half in 2-2.5 months. I’m a very strong hiker now, and I only get stronger. The terrain is easier, and I am more vengeful. As Harry put it so poetically, it is time to “take it out on the Earth with each marching step.”

The Fifty-Eighth Day

Julia Sloop is the proprietor and owner of the aptly named Weary Feet Hostel, which lies, alone, among the endless Virginia highlands a few hours drive from Pearisburg, VA. When I arrived, I was met with the sight of two archetypally perfect eight year old children sprinting around an enormous green lawn before having a hanging contest on the porch-stair railing. They hung upside on that thing by their hands and feet for at least ten minute without getting tired, but Julia, exasperated, came out and ordered them to go skip stones by the creek just down the hill, to which the boy roared in glee. I didn’t see them again.

Weary Feet Hostel is an interesting one because it uses a slightly less common method of making money: rather than most hostels that sell you a package deal (50 dollars for a bunk, laundry, meals, shuttles, etc), they allow you to essentially build your bill yourself. Everything is cheaper than their competitors, but the quality and charm is such that they more often than not convince hikers to build a substantial (but still affordable) bill. It’s hard to feel as if you’re not getting bang for your buck when your sleeping in an old world Virginia manor surrounded by mountains, creeks, and meadows. Especially when it has decent internet.

Like most of my hostel stays, Weary Feet came at the end of a long and painful stretch. I am learning not to be bitter about that. You hear stories of Virginia as being a reprieve from the abuse you received in Georgia and North Carolina, but that’s only half true. Mountains in and of themselves are nothing. Virginia is an almost 600 mile ordeal, infamous for triggering what is known as the “Virginia Blues.” You may not be climbing the highest peaks, but you are still trudging down the trail in otherwise very similar conditions. Now, you are starved of rewarding views and tangible benchmarks of progress. These experiences, I’ve gathered, are called PUDs: Pointless ups and downs. Not as steep or as long as the start, but two mile climbs are more than enough to tax the body, even a body that has gained its “hiker legs.”

That’s another anticlimactic revelation you get in Virginia—for a month you’ve been comforted with assurances of getting your hiker’s legs in Virginia, that you’ll be conditioned to take on the trail more efficiently and easily. In a court of law, this would hold up. I definitely move faster, endure climbs longer, and recover quicker. But in the eternal present of the trail, none of that is at all self evident. It is only in trembling self-reflection that you can recognize your progress. Your numbers may be better, but you still wheeze your life out on the slopes. However, to be fair, I am sitting on mile 610, more than 25% through. The next 75% will go quicker—this is always the pace of the thruhiker, who starts off for weeks at half the average pace they will eventually have—but I’ve come a long way. My feet are swollen with callouses and painless bunions that have cushioned every focal point of pressure. I have lost close to 40 pounds in just under two months (one part exercise, one part malnutrition). It’s impossible to know what parts of me are tanned or just filthy. As will be the central recurring theme of my story here, the trail is defined first and foremost by its transmuting discomfort.

One of those discomforts will be the central point of today’s post, but before I can talk about that, I must talk about food on the trail.

In the real world, you, an American, will burn between 1500 and 3000 calories a day automatically, depending on your sex, size, age, and all sorts of other bull crap. And you think about that. You eat at leisure and (mostly) for pleasure. You eat what you “want” to eat, whatever that means. So far, that isn’t too different from how things are on trail. You eat for physical and mental/emotional well-being. So do I.

But there is another consideration that actually comes to supersede those other two factors (or is perhaps synonymous with both): food weight.

All food choices that are made out here (usually referred to as resupply) revolve around the cloying anxiety of pack weight. Is this food item worth carrying for 15+ miles a day, every day? Or, to put the quandary in more mature terms: what is the most weight efficient way of meeting my new nutritional needs? And yes, they are new. In the real world, I burned ~2200 calories per day. I can’t tell you how much I burn now, but I can tell you that thruhikers by and large are burning anywhere between 4000-7000 calories on their solid hiking days as they ravage their lower body for 6-12 hours. Those hikers, desperate for calories, will not have easy access to normal food and kitchens. Thus begins a vicious cycle: the more food you pack to meet your needs, the heavier your pack. The heavier your pack, the harder your body takes the miles. The harder your body takes the miles, the greater your needs—and throughout the cycle, how often are you forced off trail to resupply? Are you fast enough to reach efficient resupplies, or are you forced to spend money for shuttles? Heavy packs slow you down. Light packs don’t fully feed you.

And so was born the stereotypical “hiker diet.” Out here, people eat a steady diet of ramen, instant mashed potatoes, boxed/bagged rice or pasta, macaroni and cheese, chips, snickers, moon pies, peanutbutter, tortillas, tuna, and cookies. In a word, junk. Junk is the almost perfect combination of cheap, light weight, and calorie dense. By day, you eat Snickers and Cliff Bars by the dozen. By night, you eat whatever you can get your hands on. For my part, My dinners have usually been a box of Mac and cheese, half a stick of butter, a handful of crushed corn chips, and bacon bits. I would follow that up with two packages of Ramen. While these cooked, I’d munch on whatever was available—dual wielding a log of summer sausage and a block of cheese, a bag of chips, a tube of peanutbutter, trail mix. If you have the budget, you can enjoy the high life and eat mostly dehydrated meals. For ~10 bucks a meal, you can eat a cruel but acceptable mockery of real food, made all the better by the integrity of most dehydrated food companies, who have enough shame not to give any indication on the bag of what the final product should look like. It’s a bag with a hiker silhouette and a string of cryptic words: “Cheese Enchilada Ranchero.” Just add water and you’ll see what that is, probably. The problem, however, is that dehydrated food—because it is at least pantomiming real food—is not particularly calorie dense. You will be hard pressed to find more than 600 calories per meal, which is an abysmal bang for your buck out here. Most people, myself included, mix and match, but no one is under any illusion that we are eating enough to maintain our bodies. We know that every day carves pieces of us off that we can’t replace until after we are done. It’s a slow defeat all the way down.

Physically, it is often a losing battle that one hopes to draw out as long as possible. Emotionally, it is a constant project. I have said before that the thruhike is ultimately a psychological challenge rather than a physical one. Last update, I spoke at length of the ways of putting off the Dread Question, and I said that eating properly was an excellent method to curing what ails you. A hearty meal at the end of the hiking day is a tremendous comfort, and a good snack break at the top of a long climb is the champagne of victory. A belly full of spring water, blood full of electrolytes—this is way to go on. One of the reasons hiker junk is valuable is because it is such a mindless indulgence, especially for those of us who don’t have much of it back in the real world. I was a Mac and cheese fiend for weeks, and I hadn’t eaten that in the real world for years. It was a real pleasure. You are initially liberated by the promise made at the start of the trail: if you thru-hike, you may have to climb over and through mountains every single day, but you can literally eat whatever you want and not feel guilty. You will burn it all away. That is the one promise that has been kept. As mentioned, despite my appalling diet, I have lost around 35 pounds.

You’re bright folks, so I’m sure you may have already picked up on the past tense and what may be the caveat to “you can eat whatever you want guilt free.” Let’s catch up to where I am now.

When I last reported to you, I was in Damascus, VA. Lovely town. I left on the morning of the 7th after a night of rain, refreshed and ready for a long stretch of wilderness—except that nowhere in Damascus could you find a 9 wide shoe. Or any wide shoe. I was stuck with my original pair, which were disintegrating and split on the outsides. I decided I would have my second pair mailed in when I got closer to the next hostel. That was a mistake.

Your next landmark after Damascus is the famous state park, the Grayson Highlands, known by hikers for their roaming herds of feral ponies. In the hotter seasons, I’m told, the ponies, who have absolutely no fear of humans, will run up to you and lick the sweat off your skin. They love the salt. The rangers have tried for years to stop people from feeding the ponies, but they have been largely unsuccessful—the ponies are too friendly and the hikers are too stupid. Perhaps it was the weather, which was cold and wet, or perhaps it was me, who was wheezy and covered up, but the feral ponies who grazed not inches from the trail completely and utterly ignored me. They would stand with their heads to the grass, and not even so much as reposition when I walked by. They might as well have been rocks. Speaking of which, the Grayson Highlands are filled with those, which led to a moment of pure fury when I stepped on a slanted stone in such a way as to literally slide out of the side of my shoe. My left shoe was very torn up, but my right shoe was now completely split in half—and the rain was turning to snow.

People affirm again and again that the trail stays with you long after you’re done, and I do think I will remember the next two days forever. I was consumed with a futile, impotent rage. I had no choice but to keep going, and I did, repeatedly steeping through the side of my shoe—each time making the hole wider and wider. The snow wouldn’t stick until much later in the day, but all that meant was the trail once again began to turn into a running creek of icy mud that completely saturated my socks and soaked my pant legs. By the time I reached the .5 mile trail that takes you to the summit of Mt. Rogers (the highest point in Virginia), the snow had begun to accumulate on the ground. At the peak, I was later told, the 50 mph winds were driving temperatures into the negatives. I pressed on, furious, stopping only to be interrogated by the immensely kind rednecks who gave me the last of their duct tape to bind my shoe. The binding lasted 20 minutes, but I was touched, and my mood was improved for the rest of the miserable day.

Eventually, I reached my intended shelter, and immediately realized, along with three other haggard, hapless hikers, that we were not prepared for what was coming that night. Sub freezing temperatures and mighty winds. Quaking in cold, we ate our dinner, and set about reinforcing the shelter by weaving our tent rain flies together, creating a wall to block the worst of the snow and wind. It worked. But the next morning, warm as I was, I awoke to the sight of my sweaty socks and soggy pants having frozen solid. On the morning of the 9th, It became clear to most of us, that we could not endure another night like that—which we learned, by a stroke of dumb luck, was coming (we hadn’t had internet for days, so we had no warning of this cold snap. One of us got reception just in time to get the forecast).

One of us, the 60 year old Bob from Vermont, pressed on. The remaining three—early twenties Aaron, 60 year old Lazarus, and myself—made the psychologically torturous decision to do what I had swore I would never do. I went backwards. I hiked three miles back the way I came to reach an exit gap, where I and Lazarus fled to the Grayson Highland General Store and Inn, graced by the charitable free ride of a young woman who was waiting for her boyfriend to return from a day hike. Soaked and freezing, we asked for rooms. The owner was booked. In miserable shock, we debated with each other on where to go from here. The owner must have overheard our desperate rambling, because he returned to ask if we were thruhikers. We said that we were, whereupon he immediately said that he had a room for us—a room reserved exclusively for thruhikers. It was little more than a laundry room with two cots, but to us, it may as well have been Downtown Abbey.

Lazarus pressed on the next day, but I would spend three nights at the Inn, waiting for my new shoes from home. The internet was absolutely abysmal, and the inn was, without exaggeration, not much more than a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the mountain slopes. So I spent most of my time reading Flannery O Connor’s entire body of work (except for Wise Blood) and Par Langkervist’s Barabbas. It was pleasant, and I was enormously grateful to the owner and to providence… but the whole ordeal cost me close to 400 dollars.

This is important, because it immediately stained the future of the trail. I am lucky that I don’t have a hard budget limit, but, like making moles, I am the kind of person relentlessly plagued by thoughts of inefficiency. I want to move steadily and I want to be reasonably frugal. As I set out from the Inn, I was all the more consumed by the desire to really make progress and save money while doing so. I planned out the next week it would take to get to the hostel I am at now, planning big miles—namely, a 25 mile day. My previous record was 20, and that had been a miserable day.

The days leading up to that 25 miler should have been a sign. They were 17 and 18 mile days—on the higher end of standard, but I’d done them many times before. But whether it was my mind or my body, I took those days harder than usual. The night before the big day, I stayed at the fire warden cabin turned shelter at the summit of Chestnut Knob. I absolutely love the cabin shelters, and this was no exception. I almost had it all to myself, much like High Roan Knob, but I was soon joined by a young German woman. She was charming, but it wasn’t the same.

The first hint that something may have been off was that night. I had my usual dinner of macaroni and cheese. But it was harder to eat. I had to force myself to finish it. My appetite wasn’t what it usually was. I thought nothing of it. I went to bed and slept.

The next morning, I strapped up and marched out at 7:30 AM. I was ready for the big day. Two miles in, I felt the same way I did at the end of a hiking day. The usual morning energy rush was completely absent. I munched on two crappy European “all natural ingredient” energy bars and trudged on. So began what would end up being more than twelve hours of hiking. It is by far the most agonizing experiences of my life—no stabbing pains, no sharp pains, no concentrated moments of pain. But for twelve hours, I felt my body drain of every shred of energy I had available to me, and in the vacuum, something else trickled in. By mid day, I felt something was definitely off. As usual, my legs and feet felt about the same. But my stomach was unsettled. No nausea, no cramps, and no puking, but a ceaseless, cloying, unignorable feeling of discomfort. Slight enough not to stop me, but present enough to poison every gulp of water. I eventually did make it to the shelter, but I was so stricken with fatigue and the nameless esophageal angst that I didn’t eat. The thought of eating wasn’t nauseating so much as strictly unthinkable. I simply crawled into my tent and slept.

I felt the same the next day, and all throughout the day. I felt the same that afternoon when I arrived at Weary Feet hostel. I felt the same when I had a full substantial dinner. I felt the same the following morning, and the same after breakfast, and I feel the same right now, after a second dinner. I don’t know for certain why is going on. A complete collapse of appetite and this strange feeling that my guts are only 80% good to go. For most of the ordeal, I was worried I had Giardia, a bacteria hikers often get from tainted water or surfaces, but giardia, I’m told by hikers who have had it, comes on much stronger.

My theory is the caveat to the utopian view of eating on trail. Yes, you’ll burn everything you eat. But, as you probably picked up on, what you eat still matters a great deal. Calories are good, but it is exceptionally easy to become malnourished out here—and that is exactly what I think happened to me. Weeks of ramen and Mac and cheese. Very little real food. Strong cravings for fruits that never materialized. You can see it on the faces of every hiker—the growing disgust with junk. There is no freedom in eating all the candy you want. There isn’t anything glorious in gorging on chips and cookies. Grade school stuff. My body, crumbling from without and within, is crying out for nutrition. I need an entirely new menu, at least for the foreseeable future. If I have giardia, it will eventually go away, especially if the symptoms are this mild. Regardless, I have been food insecure ever since I started this trek. I suspect now that some of my weight loss has been from malnutrition rather than simple calorie burn. And I also know that I cannot and will not do a 20+ mile day without strict assurances. If I maintain a 16 mile a day average from now on, I am done by the very beginning of august or earlier.

I have no uplifting story to leave with you. These are darker times on the trail. But it is not lost on me that this, the most ignoble and serious and self inflicted of my struggles so far, began on Good Friday.

The Forty-Sixth Day

Last night I spoke of the trail. I will no doubt speak more of it in the future, but for now, it is sufficient to remind you that while on trail, certain unfortunate events beg The Question: “Why the hell am I doing this?” There are naturally many answers, but you never want to have to articulate an answer. So long as the answers remain self evident, you are in good shape. Once you feel the need to recall the answer, to offer evidence, to justify yourself, that is when the Trail begins to chip away at your resolve. That’s where the real challenge of the Appalachian Trail lies—the struggle to acclimate. Like being in a dream, once you become too aware, it all begins to fall apart. One’s emotional well-being is the first and last line of defense.

Last night, I offered several ways in which the trail tries to chip away at the foundation of the self induced dream one enters upon beginning: the endless march, the bathroom situation, the weather, the terrain, the need for water. Today, I will speak of how one fortifies the dream and maintains the quasi self-hypnosis that is often necessary to endure.

Primarily, that begins at camp.

When you’ve reached your limit flog hiking for the day, you usually have options as to how you’ll hunker down for the night. Although it is nominally forbidden, stealth camping is the most flexible choice. To stealth camp is to find a suitable patch of ground out in the woods for your tent (or two suitable trees for your hammock) and simply set up camp. You won’t have any pre-established infrastructure to rely on, but you’ll have total freedom (and privacy) to camp as you see fit. Nature often provides a little patch of heaven by a creek or on a mountain vista. So long as you’re prepared to actually stay the night there, you’re home free. This also gives you to freedom to hike more. Many of those hikers who are bound by budget or schedule resort to stealth camping so they can wrong every last hour of hiking from the day. Those who night hike often have no choice but to stealth camp, unless they plan ahead. The downside, other than the lack of infrastructure, is the gamble. Stealth camp sites could be everywhere—or nowhere. And suddenly at 9pm you feel very foolish for passing by that shelter four miles ago. Also, while 80% of the trail operates under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (stealth camping is prohibited, but everyone turns a blind eye), there are ecologically vulnerable areas (eg, The Smokies and the Whites) where you can be genuinely punished by the ridge runners and rangers for not staying at shelters.

The second choice is the campground, official or otherwise. The trail is essentially a necessary evil to the wilderness. The trail bulldozes through woodlands and meadows, and you will be reminded at every opportunity to Leave no Trace (often shortened to LNT). Stealth camping is stealthy, ideally, and given that so few people do it, it tends to be less egregious. But come March (the most popular time to start the trail), the infamous Bubble of hikers forms at Springer Mountain, and it slowly batters it’s way through the trail, leaving real devastation in it’s wake. Within the Bubble is the Party Bubble—those looking to have a good time in trail. The Party Bubble likes it’s campgrounds. Campgrounds are formed in clearings of any kind, a patchwork of even ground, logs, and strategically fallen trees that create a natural space for a group to set up tents and hammocks. These campgrounds are sometimes official (recognized and maintained by the local authorities) or unofficial (simply the result of decades of hikers breaking the rules). Sometimes the campgrounds have access to water, and sometimes they don’t. You need a tent to use them, naturally, but their relatively isolated and communal character makes them easy choices for groups of hikers who like to live it up. All too often, they become pigsties. I started quite early, and so the Party Bubble is far behind me, but even now it is not unusual for me to find a fire ring in the woods surrounded by crushed beer cans or empty wrappers or other kinds of junk. I think where I am, the local dayhikers are the culprits, but they will soon be joined the mob forming three weeks behind me.

The third and by far most common choice is the shelter. As mentioned last night, the shelter is a three walled shack of varying sizes with 1 to 3 decks suitable for laying down one’s sleeping bag. Shelters are where most hikers, myself included, end their days. As mentioned, they often have easy access to water, privies, and anti-Bear tools. But more than all those things, the value of the shelter is it’s function as a social node. Before I started my thruhike, my plan was to avoid shelters. I thought I would stealth camp my way through. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to deal with the partying types. But immediately upon actually starting, it became clear to me that not only was I far ahead of the Party Bubble, but I actually didn’t want to be THAT alone. The social value of the shelter has become to me a critical part of the AT experience, and I have committed to staying at shelters as often as possible. I like to meet new people, but, even more so, I like to have my fingers on the pulse of the trail, to know who is where, and what’s gone on between shelters. People bond immediately upon dropping their backpack, rolling their shoulders, and plopping down on the deck (or picnic table if we are lucky enough), ready to answer the eternal questions: where are you coming from? What’s your trail name? How was your day? Was it steep enough for you? It’s no my surprising that in the tapestry of discomfort, we’re all sewn together out here, and we cling to the common threads readily for the best form of psychological and emotional medicine. (ALMOST) Nothing beats back the need to answer The Question like good company—even (and sometimes especially) quiet and subdued company.

On the average day, I now hike about 16 miles. I start around 7-8am, and reach camp between 3-4am. Terrain can speed or slow this down considerably, but let’s assume it’s relatively mountainous. An eight hour day of going ~2.25 miles an hour, plus breaks and lunch, puts you in camp by late afternoon. Regardless of how much I’ve eaten or how recent my Zero or Nearo, I will come in with sore feet and stiff legs. Sometimes I’m the first person there—and, in fact, during this unusually lonesome week, I have been—and sometimes I’m greeted by folks going at my daily pace. Sometimes I know them, and sometimes they’re new. I plop my backpack on the ground, massage the precise acne ones that have opened along the skin where my backpack straps rest, and stretch my toes. It’s important to let your feet breathe as much as possible. I have avoided all blisters completely, but one’s toes still become swollen and tender. The air provides relief from the constructed sweaty darkness of shoes and socks. Often, weather permitting, I’ll switch to my sandles.

After a few minutes of chatting or chilling, I’ll muster up the willpower to get water—assuming the water source is a reasonable distance away. I check religiously on the accessibility of water at each shelter, and, if I see it is a pain to reach (say, .3 miles downhill), I’ll fill up on water ahead of time and force myself to drink less. Let’s assume that, like most shelters, the water is within reasonable reach. You can tell a hiker by their two gaits—with and without pick. With the pick, we walk steadily and confidently. Without, we hobble like 90 year olds, arms slightly out from our sides, tottering gingerly from foot to foot, taking steps one at a time, cradling our water bottles tenderly. Once the water is in hand, I return to the shelter and decide how I’ll be sleeping.

90% of the time, I set up my tent, as mentioned. Recently, I have had so few shelter mates that I’ve been staying in the shelters instead. There are a few rules in the shelters, all unspoken. First rule: you do everything in your power to make room for one more. Oftentimes, those night hikes and mile pushers (or just late starters) will come in around 9pm, which is close to Hiker’s Midnight (sundown). If they want space, you make space. If I so much as smell the possibility of this many people in a shelter, I tent. Second rule: you don’t complain about snoring until you leave the shelter the next day. The fact is that many hikers snore. I always thought it was a question of the person’s weight, but that is not true out here. No one is safe, but if you take space in the shelter, you take on all the associated risks. To accuse someone openly of being a snorer or to openly complain of snoring while at the relevant shelter is tantamount to blasphemy and will hurt your rep far more than theirs. They have a responsibility to quarantine themselves if they’re true offenders, but, failing that, to stay at the shelter is to accept the associated risks—people who rise early and pack up early, people who arrive late, those who snore, those who have crinkly sleeping pads, those with deflating pads, tossers and turners, etc. Earplugs are common. Third Rule: You don’t eat in the sleeping area. It’s common to sit on the deck and cook and eat if there is no picnic table, but you should do everything in your power to keep the sleeping deck as clean as possible. Many people worry about bears, but it is really the mice that pose the biggest threat to food security. I’ve heard many stories of shelter mice launching full on expeditions for the crumbs and wrappers strewn about people as they sleep, and not a few folks have woken up to cuddle buddies in and around their bags. It’s also best to sleep with your head facing the open air. Better that the mice crawl around your feet than your face.

Like in the real world, sleep is the unspoken hero of health. You almost never get a full night of unbroken rest out here, but since you start sleeping so much earlier in the day, you give yourself an enormous window of time in which to grab 7-8 hours. Nothing grinds you down like multiple nights of poor sleep, and few things beg the dread Question more insistently than being trapped in the damp and cold of the woodland night within your insufficient sleeping bag, shivering helplessly as you check the time with a desperate, agonized, delusional hope—11pm. 7 hours until even a taste of light. To sleep well is to draw a line under the previous day.

Once that’s decided, it is probably dinner time. I may have to save a blog post to exhaustively talk about the food situation, because it becomes complex. For now, let’s assume you have the standard load out: snacks for day eating like the much beloved Snickers, the aristocratic Cliff Bars, the indulgent Summer Sausage and Cheese, the proletarian trail mix, etc; dinner options like the kingly dehydrated meals, the standard issue Ramen, the patrician Mac & Cheese, the controversial Knorr rice or pasta sides, the wild card tortilla wraps, etc; and the utility options like electrolyte powders, vitamin pills, hydration gummies, protein powders, condiments, etc. You boil water on your portable stove and chat while it percolates. Or, when alone, you stare wearily into the distance and listen to the birds. You put together your Frankenstein dinner—my recent choice being Mac and cheese with crumble corn chips, half a stick of butter, and bacon bits—and eat. If you’re like me, who doesn’t eat enough during the day, you may double up on dinner. Boiling Ramen cleans out the pot of butter and pseudo-cheese, you know. Be prepared to watch and be watched as you eat—hikers are always looking for the next best meal to take on trail. And they’re always looking to offer their own food. I do that quite a lot. I bring a pound of butter with me wherever I go, in no small part because I enjoy handing tablespoons out to those who could use a dollop. It enhances almost every meal, and that is no small thing.

This is the primary method of main thing the dream of thruhiking—eating well. No reward is as visceral and immediate; and no sensation is as enhanced by the drudgery of the trail. Everything I eat or drink out here is the best thing I have ever tasted—orange juice, a blueberry donut, a cold slice of meatball pizza, cheap buffalo wings, to name just a few. Better than any steak I can remember. Food distracts like nothing else. I will speak more of this come the food mega-post.

As the day winds down, you may chat some more or you’ll tend to camp chores: washing out your pots and pans; brushing your teeth; finding a good spot to hang your food bag; massaging your feet or stretching your legs; if you’re tenting, you need to set up the tent and put out your sleeping pad and bag; or perhaps like every older gentleman out here you desperately look for a phone signal so you can call your wife (the marital bonds out here are pretty moving). Soon enough, you run out of things to do (unless you’re me, and we will get to that). Conveniently, that’s when the fatigue begins to set in. As blood collects in your guts to help digestion, you get tired and sluggish. It’s bed time by 7pm these days. You tuck into your bag, plug in your phone to charge, and you do your best to nod off. The inevitable ordeal is the nightly bathroom run. At least one. You drink an absurd amount of water out here, and your body is constantly flushing out the junk you eat, by sweat or other means. Lots of people have a special bottle so they don’t have to leave their tent—or the shelter. It pays to be a heavy sleeper. If you do have to go out, you bring your headlamp, which should come with a handy red light—much less irritating to fellow hikers than the blazing white lamp.

In the morning, one by one, you’ll all wake up and decide if it’s warm enough to emerge. The cold can be paralyzing. But emerge you must, eventually, because the only thing more certain than a nightly bathroom run is a daybreak bathroom run. Then you pack up, eat breakfast if you’re not a freak like me, and go back to doing what you came to do: walk and walk and walk. If you camp right, you can recover all the damage of the previous day and never have to answer the dread Question.

You may have noticed that of the things I’ve mentioned that stave off the answering of the Question—company, sleep, and food—I did not mention the beauty of nature. There’s a reason for that. That, too, will need its own mega-post. The truth is that yes, it absolutely can. The views and the spirit of Creation can impart grace in ways none of the mundane ways above can, but it is a much more complicated process. We will get into that.

For now, I will end with a personal example of how (almost) all of the above can save the day.

The day that I submitted the Roan Highlands was a difficult one. The area was recovering from an icy cold snap that had turned much of the trail to mush. My shoes were split open on either side, and the terrain essentially ends in an unending four mile climb with wet trail and brutal exposure to the sun. It was only a 16 mile day, but it was a slow slog. I must have been taking poor care of myself, because halfway through I had to take a true emergency break. I was breathless, dizzy, and my heartbeat shook my entire frame. I crawled into the shade, drank gatorade, and forced myself to eat the last of my sausage and cheese. It helped, but I had 6 miles more to go. I was miserable, and my misery became complete when I ran out of water half way up the final 4 mile climb. I remember taking a break every half hour after, swaying in exhaustion. I brooded on the Question quite a bit, but I had swore to myself that I would stay in Roan High Knob Shelter, the highest shelter on trail. So I pressed on, and by 5pm, I was staring incredulous at the shelter—a cabin nestled in a dense fir tree grove at the very top of the mountain. Nobody else was there. And nobody else would come. My only company was myself. But there I stayed, in my own little cabin in the middle of nowhere, where I filled my water bottle and ate pepperoni, Mac and cheese, and potato skin chips. I ate and I read/finished Brideshead Revisited by 9pm. And I went to sleep in the warm, dry cabin, while the rain and record wind battered and wailed outside. I wouldn’t have known even an hour before I arrived, but to be there, alone, on top of that little world, belly and mind full, lying on the old wooden floor of that shelter in a rainstorm—that was the answer to the Question. To be right there.

The Forty-Fifth Day

Lady Di must be in her mid 60s, but she finished her thruhike in 2019. Supposedly, she fell in love with Damascus, VA so deeply that she almost immediately moved there and founded her own Bed and Breakfast. And so Lady Di’s B&B was born, and I am very glad for it. I’ll be spending two nights here, in the presently quiet town of 600 people nestled between the Roan Highlands and Grayson Highlands. The trail runs right through the small town, and is perhaps one of the most famous trail towns on the entire AT alongside Harper’s Ferry and Hot Springs. But how did I get here, you ask? Last I left word, I was so lounging with Hippie Santa 200 miles south.

Truth be told, it’s been a mostly uneventful two weeks, which is why I’ve decided this would be a good time to give a picture of what the standard trail day is like out here. By now, my routine has settled in quite nicely.

I left Hot Springs, NC in high spirits. Ever since the start of the Smokies, I had suffered tremendously from swollen and tenderized feet. The soles of my shoes were not up to the task of withstanding the near constant abuse from the rocks and roots that cover the trail. In Hot Springs, I bought a pair of new insoles, thicker and more shock absorbent. The difference has been night and day. Sure, the general wear and tear of 16-18 mile days makes my feet sore, but they are no longer flinching at every footfall. Before, my legs would almost buckle when I stepped on a rock the wrong way. Now, I can endure. That’s a great reason to be in high spirits, and they lasted all of a few days until I realized to my absolute horror that my sleeping pad had sprung a leak.

That segues nicely into trail and camp life.

When people imagine hiking the Appalachian Trail, they inevitably miss the profound reality of what that entails. Most of the time, you go in with visions of beautiful nature trails, peace and quiet, and a dignified social scene at camp. All of that exists, but they constitute maybe 25% of your time out here. It’s funny to think about, but it’s true: most people don’t comprehend that the vast, VAST majority of your waking life on the trail will be you walking. You wake up between 6 and 8, downs however long packing up, and then you start walking. And walking. And walking, and walking, and walking.

You will walk for two hours and suddenly realize “I have to walk for another 6 hours still to get to the next shelter.” And you start walking again. You’ll take a 30 minute to hour lunch, and then put your pack on and start walking again. You’ll finish a three hour 700ft grade climb, wheezing and sweating like a galley slave, and be faced with a breathtaking view of the mountain temples all around, wrapped in the blue haze of the horizon that sits over the alpine ocean… and then you’ll go back to walking. You will walk ok cloudy, chilly days when you can’t decide on what is worse: the icy air on your base layer, or the prickly, sweaty heat you’ll suffer from if you put on your puffy jacket. You’ll walk in the sun and be drenched in sweat regardless of your choice of clothing. You’ll spend a truly mind boggling amount of time walking in the rain, soaked from without by the seemingly endless downpour and from within by the sweat that seeps from your goretex throttled body. You will walk across stable leaf blanketed trail, and you will along precarious rock fields. You’ll walk for three miles uphill and two miles down. And then repeat. And then again. All in the same day.

You’ll walk 8-10 miles a day to start for the first week or two, and even that will take you six hours. For the first few days, your entire body will be in denial. The mysterious and spiritual divide between the mind and the body becomes immediately stark and disquieting. You know, quite deeply, what you’ve started, but neither your legs, your lungs, or your guts have any clue what is coming. At first, they rebel, thinking those early days a fluke. They whine sharply but briefly. Your stomach won’t accept food. Your feet or quads or knees will complain. Your lungs and heart will beat irritably against your chest, like the archetypal old man beating his displeasure on the ceiling of his downstairs apartment as the young folk revel above. They don’t know what’s coming. They just know what’s here, now.

Then they start to panic. After a week or two, it begins to dawn on your members that there is a New Situation. Unlike the real world, where you don’t move for most of the day, you are now in a state of near constant motion, and those moments that you don’t move are spent actively recovering from unprecedented attrition. Suddenly you’re walking 12 miles a day, regularly (the daily average needed to finish in 6 months). While your legs and lungs and heart and (especially) feet are in open rebellion, screaming and begging for mercy, your stomach can’t decide which side it’s on. Is it, too, in revolt? Will it reject even the thought of eating before spending eight hours in strenuous hiking? Or will it capitulate gracelessly, perpetually moaning for food? You never know. All you know is the pain, which is new and sharp and only silenced by the hypnotic rhythm of left right left right left right left… for, it is true, there are only two remedies for the pains of hiking—to rest or to keep walking. Your body wants to stop. It will do anything to stop. It will summon all powers of inertia to shut your mind down. And so the psychological war begins.

We assume that the mind wins. When the body wins, you leave trail. That happens all the time. 30% of those who attempt a thruhike quit 30 miles in. 60% quit before Damascus. Most of the time, it’s due to an injury. A badass former marine named Moon Pie (he loves moon pies and would trade anything for them) almost made it to Erwin, TN before breaking his ankle on a big standard downhill. Just stepped the wrong way. He is done. But there is an unspoken threat of capitulation hanging in the air among hikers. Every miserable rainy day in which you have to sleep in a damp sleeping bag or in sun freezing temperatures begs the question that your body has been insistently asking for weeks: what the hell are you doing out here? Don’t you know where the rest of the world is? In their bed with a tummy full of real food, with washed hands and shampooed hair. That question haunts the dark corner of your mind, creeping out whenever you drop your trekking poles down the hill, or when you knock over the water boiling over your portable stove. Or when the shelter is filled with snoring ogres, or when you leave your snack pouch unzipped and lose it all in a bumpy climb over a windswept ridge. Every inconvenience reminds you of home. And the only winning move, every time, is to start walking again. And to keep walking. For hours.

Eventually, as I have said in almost every post, the body surrenders. It throws all its dwindling weight behind the titanic effort to which it is now tearfully resigned. The aches and pains fade away into white noise. The stomach accepts everything, but with a bitter patience. Only the feet continue to plead for clemency, but they have good reason. I split a seem on the bottom of my right pinky toe—a small, normally insignificant injury, that has now consumed my entire day. My feet are still slightly swollen, calloused and stained. Sheets of rock hard skin have built up on the bottoms and the sides. The nails have been pushed in, and the roots are permanently blackened. Every step on the trail grinds them down, but they are the body’s scapegoat. They pay the blood price and allow the other members to function as needed. My legs are painless. My lungs and heart, while often strained, don’t panic. My guts know that every day is a lottery. They are at peace. The price is paid by my feet and toes.

Eventually, however, the walking is done for the day. The Appalachian Trail is intermittently broken up by shelters, often called “lean-to’s” up north. They are simple structures—three walls and a roof surrounding a suspended deck (sometimes a double decker—sometimes a triple decker) on which people will set up their sleeping pad and bag. Many if not most people will sleep in a shelter to avoid having to set up their tent. I am the opposite. If at all convenient and possible, I set up my tent. I like my privacy and my miniature micro-climate. It is also for my fellow hikers’ sake. I have been known to snore, and recently, I’ve had to manually reinflate my sleeping pad multiple times a night. The tent protects us all. However, recent experience reassures me that my snoring has gotten much better (weight loss), so I’ve been more selective. Regardless that is the material function of the shelter—to provide shelter. No one wants to set up or break down a tent in the rain. Few things beg the dread questions so fervently as that. Shelters tend to be built in areas where there are many suitable or viable tent sites—but this is not guaranteed.

Most state shelters have other services. Most have a privy, either a pit privy (waste goes in and gets incrementally buried, like a landfill) or a moulder privy (solid waste goes in and dries up. Liquid waste goes in the woods, if you’re a man). You are encouraged to drop a handful of leaves down into the toilet between deposits. Privies are a phenomenal test of civilization and moral character. They are collective projects that you can safely abuse since you’re going one way. Much like the shopping cart test, you can tell a lot about a hiker by the way he treats a privy. Does he put leaves in between uses? Does he urinate in the moulder privy? Does he fetch new leaves for the leaf bucket when it’s empty? Does he throw trash down there? Tennessee is the one state that has no privies in its shelters. You spend weeks going back and forth over the NC/TN border, especially in the Smokies, and you can always tell where you are by checking if your shelter has a privy. Yes? NC. No? TN. Why? Because new laws were instated relatively recently saying that all privies must be handicap accessible, and TN cannot be bothered to deal with that. Frankly, I understand. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the people who would make it up to use these privies would actually need the accessibility, and it is agony enough for the painfully small TN AT clubs to maintain the shelters as they are.

This actually provides what I think is a very necessary lesson for the thruhiker—it forces them to learn the mysterious and perilous art of pooping in the woods. Let’s discuss.

When there are privies, most people can wait for them. They’ll hold as long as necessary. When there are no privies, the game begins. You will hear a great deal about the give and take of starting your thruhike early (enter) or late (spring). One of the downsides of starting early is that you are robbed of cover. Finding a dignified natural toilet becomes tricky. Most trees are dead and bare, but the lovely rhododendron is a loyal friend. Among the rhododendron, you can normally protect your dignity and the dignity of passers by. Once concealed,you’re faced with the geometry of your situation. Human beings have used the natural bathroom for millennia, and you can certainly pop a squat if need be, but the civilized hiker looks for a seat—a thick low hanging branch, maybe, or a sufficiently robust log, or a conveniently arranged tangle of deadwood. You must be extra careful selecting your seat. Just the other day, I was overconfident, and, having disrobed, I made to take my place on my chosen log only for it to collapse in rotten pieces, flinging me heels over head backward into a throng of nettles, pants down and knees up. I extricated myself, but my guts decided that we could wait for another time.

Needless to say, privies are quite convenient. Convenient, too, are the various anti-Bear measures that most southern shelters have. They come in two forms: Bear boxes, which are essentially just enormous iron chests that you chain and hook closed, and Bear cables, a series of pillows that let you suspend your food bags by iron cables. Many shelters don’t bother with these, forcing the hiker to make a choice—to hang the food themselves like cowards, or take their bags into their tents like real men. I honestly just could not be bothered with finding a tree tall enough to use as a bear hang. I have had no problems whatsoever. As the weather warms and the bears come out of hibernation, perhaps I’ll start, but I have no urgency. Mice are by far the more ubiquitous threat, and they are thwarted by mouse mobiles: ropes dangling from shelter ceilings, sewn through bottle halves or cans. The mice smell the food and the mice climb the rope down for the food, but when they try to climb over and under the can, they inevitably fall to the ground. I’ve had no mice problems at all, but I’m told that it is a disquieting thing to be awakened by the pitter patter of mice tumbling onto your sleeping bag.

The final and perhaps most coveted shelter utility is, naturally, a water source. Water is a profound logistic to grapple with in the trail. It is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Streams, pooling springs, piped springs, waterfalls, creeks—the trail runs through it all… just not always conveniently. You may walk across three cascading creeks in a few miles, and then have no water for ten miles other than by way of a .3 mile side trail that goes STRAIGHT down the cliff. That’s not dangerous. It incredibly annoying and begs the dreaded question. But thirst is thirst, and while hiker hunger is a dull, relentless ache, having a dry whistle while hiking is a special sort of hell. You very quickly become mindful of where water is and how much you’ll need. I have a bag bottle that can hold roughly two liters and change. That’s four pounds and change of water—a significant addition to pack weight. But I, being a big lad, need it all. Recently, in fact, even as I’ve shrunk, I have been eternally thirsty. Two liters may not be enough for these climbs. All the more reason to be conscientious about your water collection. Everyone comes with a filter with which to collect, and so did I. A water pump that I manually use to strain water through a very efficient filter. The problem was that I didn’t quite understand the threat posed by sediment. If you let the filter rest to close to the bottom of the pool, it collects too much silt, and suddenly it becomes quite tricky to pump the pump. It became so tiresome to pump the filter that, as of the Smokies, I have rarely if ever used the filter. I drink straight from the source. The danger is that I catch Giardia, a water born contagion, but I’ve heard from enough sources that water at higher elevations is almost certainly cleaner than your tap water. And the taste… I already know that the number one thing I will miss on trail is the water. Fresh mountain spring water is ambrosia. And I can have as much as I want. It helps when a shelter has a water source, and the vast majority do—but quite a few water sources are extremely irritating to approach, so I tend to fill up before arrival.

Tomorrow, on my day off, I will tell you of the shelter/camp experience.