Appalachain Trail: Neel's Gap to Max Patch

iv.

The rains blew back in that night, but never reached the deluge proportions of the previous night. By morning, my things had begun to dry out a little. I started out quite sure that I would be running into Tortoise again later on in the day. I wondered how he had fared walking in the dark. It was something that I wouldn’t even consider, for fear that I’d walk off the trail without realizing it and end up lost in the woods.

About mid-day, I passed a sign for a settlers’ cemetery about 0.5 miles off the Trail. I decided to go over and check it out. In the bright afternoon light, much of the loneliness had been scrubbed out. No one visited the place to see the people buried there, but it’d become an attraction for its antiquity. Some kind of boy scout troupe was there, unwrapping sandwiches under a pavilion. I stood there for a moment, trying to concentrate on the crooked gravestones and imagine what life had been like for the bodies lying under the soil. There was too much mirth from the scouts; I could only listen to their conversations and after all the silence of the woods that morning, all their voices were overwhelming.

I caught up with Tortoise in the late afternoon, not too far before the Blue Mountain Shelter. I had been planning on stopping there for the night. It was an 18-mile walk from where I’d started that morning, but as I drew up to the shelter, it felt too early to stop. There was another campsite marked about 4 miles down the trail. The hike didn’t look too bad and Tortoise, as usual, was planning on walking into the night anyway. I decided to keep going.

The impulse to keep going just a little further was my greatest obstacle to overcome while on the Trail. Unless I arrived just before dark, I always wanted to keep walking just a little farther. When I kept going, I almost always ended up feeling rushed, like I had to hurry up and reach my destination before dark and usually without any dinner, this feeling was exaggerated to the point of anxiety. Every time I made the mistake of pushing on, I’d wake up in the morning declaring that I wouldn’t do it again, yet, like any tendency, it was a mistake I was to repeat over and over until I got to Maine.

The difficulty with the Appalachian Trail is that you are going somewhere. Most walks in the woods have no such concrete destination. The purpose is to amble a little, to contemplate, to see, to wonder and then to exit. On the AT, one is walking toward a place that is more than 2,000 miles away. It’s hard not to feel like there’s a quota of miles that needs to be met if one expects to ever reach the end. At the beginning, it feels like the quota needs to be met because one is still so far away; it’s like there’s something to catch up to. Further down the trail, the quota is important because you’re nearing the end and don’t want to stop or slow down too much.

I wasn’t sure how everyone else walked the trail, but I felt like I was passing a lot of people. I didn’t walk particularly fast, but I didn’t stop much and walked from dawn to dusk. When Tortoise and I passed the Blue Mountain Shelter, a guy was standing just off the trail; he’d just finished setting up his tent.

“Where’re you guys headed?” He asked.

“I think we’re going to push to the next campsite. It’s about four miles from here.” I said, looking around at the crowded shelter area, thinking I was glad to not be camping here where I’d be so close to so many other tents.

Our interlocutor asked us where we’d come from that day and when I told him I’d camped just on the other side of Neel’s Gap, he stammered out an incredulous. “No! Already!?” Slightly startled by his incredulousness, I just shrugged my shoulders. He continued. “You can’t do so many miles at the beginning! You’re never going to make it. You’ll wear yourself out.” I told him I felt fine; if anything, I had too much energy at the end of the day. I was finding difficult to relax; it was easier to just keep walking. He continued his rant, saying he’d already hurt a knee pushing for too many miles and that he was now taking it easy until it felt better. For our edification, he also outlined a cautionary tale of a hiker who’d tried to do too many miles at the beginning and ended up in a ditch with a torn ACL or something.

We kept walking, but I felt unnerved; the guy’s warning was hanging over me like some kind of spell. Was I pushing myself too hard? I felt fine, but maybe I wasn’t as in tune with my body as I thought. As we came down the mountain, into a gap, I pulled ahead of Tortoise. It was starting to get dark. The familiar anxious feeling descended with the twilight, only now it was twined with the notion that I might be straining my body beyond the limits of endurance. As I began the climb out of the gap, in the deepening twilight, I started to feel exhausted, but I couldn’t tell if it was psychosomatic, brought on by Mr. Worry up there on Blue Mountain.

I was cheered to find my first article of trail magic, a plastic bag of granola bars with a note from a 2014 thru-hiker named Crush. Buoyed up by the kindness of another, I continued up the hill into the camping area, glad that I’d gone the extra miles. I felt tired and hungry, but fulfilled.

As I approached the camping area, I began to hear a rhythmic banging, like two logs being knocked together. A dog began to bark. I felt like I was walking into someone’s backyard rather than a camping area. I rounded a bend in the trail, the banging sound grew louder and changed into a clearer chopping. Between the trees, I noticed a man. He looked naked. He looked furious, chopping away at something I hoped was a log. With no other option, I kept walking toward him. The sound of barking dogs grew louder.

Just before I reached the man, a white pitbull lunged out from a stand of pine trees. The man dropped his axe and caught the dog. It was a fearsome tableau, still glistening from his exertions, the guy was wearing nothing more than a skimpy pair of athletic shorts. His legs, arms and torso were swollen with juiced-looking muscles. The pitbull strained barking at his leash. The axe, so recently used, was gleaming in the last rays of the sun from where it was buried in a tree. From the west, a storm seemed to be approaching.

I greeted the body builder, half expecting him to growl in reply. He tied up the dog and returned to his labor, chopping at the tree like he owed it some fearsome vendetta. Woodchips sprayed up with each *thwack* like gouts of blood.

I walked into the campsite and saw a huge fire ring, a tarp covering a large pile of wood and several other tarps covering sleeping pads and bags. There were a few other pitbulls tied up, at their bark, several men emerged. None of them wore shirts. They were all top-heavy with muscle, a few of them had mohawks hacked out of their hair. The scene would’ve been terrifying had it not been so confusing.

I tried to feign total indifference, like I saw sweaty hulks out in the woods all the time. “You guys mind if I camp here?” I tried to act like a dad who’s just come home from work and is in no mood for extraneous talk, it was the only defense I could think of.

The barbarians told me they didn’t mind if I camped. I set up at the edge of their encampment, wondering what it’d be like when they came for me in the middle of the night: the sound of the tent ripping, the meaty hands grabbing tufts of my sleeping bag, the ritual fire burning low in the glazed, murderous eyes of the men, the baying of the dogs. I ate quickly and hung my bag. Just before I got into my tent, Tortoise came into the clearing. It was now almost completely dark and the low rumble of a coming storm could be heard in the distance. I waved Tortoise over. He seemed unfazed by the sweaty hulks and their dogs. I tried to get him to stay, thinking we might be safer as a duo, but he was intent on continuing and after he had a cup of tea he was on his way. Leaving me with the macho men who were then opening a bottle of whiskey. I hid in my tent.

The rain came almost as soon as Tortoise left. The hulks stayed out by the fire, passing the whiskey, but they talked in low voices and didn’t seem to be getting too rowdy. I drifted off listening to the popping of the pine boughs in their bonfire and the patter of the rain.

In the morning, I awoke grateful to have slept soundly through the night and still be alive. I packed up quickly and was about to hit the trail when the hulks began to emerge from their tarp lairs. I stopped to wish them a good day, figuring it couldn’t hurt, since I was leaving anyway. They all heartily returned the wish and it was then, I realized they, like everyone else I’d met on the trail, had been good people, despite their terrifying appearances.

Over four months, I never met anyone on or near the trail who wasn’t friendly. The rednecks of Tennessee, the neo-liberals of Vermont, the day-hikers, the trail angels, the maintenance crews, the park rangers and trail runners were all happy just to be out in the woods. They all loved the section of the trail that passed through their communities and they were helpful to the people who hiked it. Even in the communities that were overrun with hikers, such as Damascus, VA or Unionville, NY, the locals didn’t show any signs of the usual locals vs. tourists-style antagonism. This was the most incredible thing about the trail, the aspect I wish everyone could experience, viz. the kindness of strangers. It was only when I had to go into larger towns farther from the Trail that I had to experience the anonymous chaos that we normally live under. The supermarkets and highways terrified me. I noticed that the more people were around, the less eye-contact, the more of a hurry everyone seemed to be in, the more people seemed to be glued to their phones. The people distrusted each other. There was palpable tension between us and them. On and around the Trail, this feeling was thankfully absent. It was beautiful.

V.

That afternoon, I said goodbye to Tortoise. He went into Haiawasee from Dick’s Creek Gap and I continued down the trail. I long nursed the hope that we’d meet up again somewhere down the trail, but it wasn’t to be. Tortoise had to get off the trail in Virginia and go home to British Columbia. For the rest of my walk, apart from a few days when my pace would match with someone else’s, I walked alone. Even after I knew Tortoise had left the trail, I often thought of him and my first few days in the woods.

That night, I camped at the elegantly named Plum Orchard Gap. The following morning, I crossed into North Carolina. The first state line. I wrote this in my notebook:

The joy of life is loving other people

I woke up cold my first morning in North Carolina. I had taken the warmth of Georgia for granted and, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the air was a little thinner, the sky had a washed out and watery look. Around the 100 mile mark, I passed an old fire tower. I climbed to the top and a skein of snow began to trouble the view like ripples across a clear pond. In every direction, I saw nothing but green rolling hills. I spoke with another hiker, a few words about the snow and continued down the Trail feeling lonely. The coldness in the air brought my melancholy feelings to the surface. I thought about my family and friends and despaired my situation. My mind tuned into another station, one with less distraction, a clear signal of autumn memories, of cider and donuts and Hallowe’en hayrides.

The snow continued to fall, but it didn’t stick to the ground, just swirled idly in the rhododendron and mountain laurel. All the yellow and red caterpillars I had been seeing all week disappeared back under ground. I walked with my hands buried in my pockets, feeling insulated, secure.

In the late afternoon, the snow slackened and melted out of the sky under the growing strength of the sun, by the time I came down into the gap for Franklin, NC in the late afternoon, it was hard to imagine it had ever been snowing. I was low on food and needed to resupply in town, but it was already late in the day when I reached the road. I found a beautiful campsite, just off the trail, next to a gentle stream in a little green hollow. I didn’t take it because I didn’t like the idea of camping so close to the road and adjoining parking lot. I still wasn’t too sure I trusted people enough to sleep so close to civilization. I kept thinking of a car pulling up at night and a bunch of drunks spilling out, in search of campers to harass. Now I know that such things don’t happen, but back at the beginning of the trail, I had different expectations.

I hiked almost two miles up the other side of the road, knowing I’d have to turn around and walk back in the morning to go into town, but, at least, I reasoned, I’d be far away from the road and any mischievous drunks.

After I got my tent set up, it began to rain softly. I sat in the rain and ate my ramen noodles, looking out into the forest, thinking nothing. I got into my tent as soon as I finished eating; it had begun to get cold again.

I woke with the first rays of the sun piercing the damp and cold forest. Spotlights shone on the leafy carpet, illuminating floating moats of rain, pollen and dust. I walked back down to the road, not bothering to make coffee, figuring I’d be able to get some in town.

It was downhill all the way to the road, and I reached it quickly. It was still early in the morning and I wasn’t sure if this would help or hinder the possibility of a ride. I stood at the edge of the parking area and stuck my thumb out. Trucks passed; each driver looked at me and sped on. I began to feel ridiculous, standing ten miles from town with my backpack at my feet and my red bandanna around my neck. I probably wouldn’t have picked myself up. While I’d been having my unsuccessful fling with hitchhiking, a couple had been packing up their car in the parking lot. The women must’ve felt sorry for me. She asked if I was headed into town. “C’mon,” she said waving. “We’ll give you a ride.” I climbed into the backseat of the crowded car, my massive pack on my lap.

I got dropped off at a laundromat on the edge of town. It was odd to be inside a building after a week in the woods. The lights felt over-bright, the tile under my feet was unnaturally hard, like it pushed back against the soles of my shoes. The radio playing a top-40 station was unbearably loud. I changed into my only clean clothes, Adidas shorts and a thermal shirt—if I didn’t look like a bum before, I certainly did now.

After I finished the laundry, I walked into town. The noise, the color and smells made me feel giddy. I was back in a familiar world, but one I’d grown unaccustomed to. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or unnerved to be back.

I stopped by Indian Mound, tossed my bag down on the grass and called my girlfriend Gina. Back in California, it was three hours earlier—6 AM. She answered groggily after a few rings and I began to pour my loneliness into her ear along with plans to meet in DC, two months down the Trail.

I felt better after the phone call and went to the supermarket to resupply my food and bought way too much, a mistake I would make repeatedly on the Trail. Luckily, I realized the folly of buying canned goods before I got back to the woods and ate my cans of beans while I waited on a ride back.

After another unsuccessful attempt at hitchhiking, I caught a shuttle back to the trailhead for a few bucks and learned that the hardest part of long-distance hiking is coming out of town.

1. It’s depressing—for some reason, leaving the hustle and bustle of even small towns behind almost left me feeling sorrowful as I ducked back into the woods. Even when I felt glad to get away from the all the chaos.
2. It’s always a climb—all the roads into towns are in gaps. Obviously, they put the roads at the lowest elevation. You walk down to them and climb out of them. Imagine that every town in a mountainous area sits in a bowl. Often the sides of those bowls are very steep.
3. The weight—after resupplying, my bag was always twice as heavy. Food made up the bulk of the weight I carried. Because I usually had very little provision left coming into town, my bag was always feather-light, leaving town, I felt like I had a steamer trunk on my back.

In the late afternoon, coming out of Franklin, I only met one person on the trail. The jogger told me he frequently took his daughter into town for gymnastics and, while she practiced, he went out to run on the trail. As we talked, I found myself envying this man and his casual relationship to the Trail. Coming out here, for an hour at a time, I thought, he probably saw it clearer than I did. After all, spending every waking minute in the woods, it was hard to be continually attentive to what was going on around you. I knew that I probably missed a lot, crowded as my mind was with daydreams, especially in the early afternoon, when the whole forest seemed to sleep, the birds went quiet, the chipmunks ceased their skittering and no sound disturbed the stillness.

I climbed into the evening and it started to get cold again, just before dusk, I came to a campsite. A man and his boys had built a fire; I went over and introduced myself before setting up at a nearby spot further down the Trail.

The crisp air and the redolence of smoke in the air, prompted me to build my own fire. The leaves and twigs were damp with the snow and rain that had been falling the last few days, but I was determined to get something going.

I squandered the rest of the daylight trying to turn my smoking pile of damp leaves into a comforting fire. I never got very far and I ended up eating dinner in the dark, with the smell, but without the light and warmth of a campfire.

VI.

They say the first few weeks on the AT are the hardest and, for me, the days without challenges, without strenuous climbs or rain or cold were the longest and most difficult when my mind was free to ramble over the sense of solitude surrounding it.

I woke in the morning to the sound of a gun being fired in the distance. I found myself walking to the irregular cadence of the blasts through the long morning.

I exchanged no more than empty pleasantries with the few other hikers I saw. By the later afternoon, the hike seemed to have become a slog. I walked like a zombie, scarcely noticing the beautiful green world beyond the heavily trod ribbon of the trail.

I planned to stop at a shelter, situated just before another gap, as I came down from the mountain, the air grew warmer and the light seemed clearer. I began to feel cheerful at the thought of other hikers at the shelter. I started to anticipate a nice conversation and a warm meal. My step quickened, I realized I felt hungry and I began to feel a little less sad.

My heart sank again when I saw the shelter down in a gloomy hallow. There was no one there and an early darkness already swirled in the depression. It looked like a miserable place to spend the night, like a ditch or a closet.

The trail began to snake down into the depression and I hoped that I had been mistaken and that the shelter was some other structure, something long-abandoned and deserving of its lonely mien.

After walking awhile, I was relieved to find that I no longer seemed to be heading toward the phantom shelter. The trail rose back into the sunlight and I stopped and talked with a south-bound hiker named Breezy. Her positivity rubbed off on me and when I finally came down to the real shelter, I wasn’t dismayed to find it also empty. I was shortly joined by a middle-aged woman named ‘Frog’ or ‘Frogger.’ After listening to how she’d already after to leave the trail for two weeks due to illness, I felt stupid for even feeling sad; so far, the Trail had been relatively easy for me.

vii.

I went into another gap the next morning where the Natahala Outdoor Center or NOC was. It was Mother’s Day, so I called my mom while drinking the terrible coffee I’d bought in the restaurant (after weeks of making my own, the weak diner stuff they had tasted like rusty water). I called Gina after I talked to my mom and by the time I got back on the trail I was feeling wonderful. The climb coming out of the gap had been exaggerated so much by the people I’d spoken with, that I hardly noticed it.

Not too far into the climb, I met Lefty and his dog Lucy. Lefty was missing an arm and had a pack rigged up to not slip down from his shoulder. We talked for a while and he laughed at how much I’d packed into the outside pockets of my pack. I didn’t tell him that I’d meant to buy the 58-liter size and accidentally ordered the 48. When the thing came in the mail, I’d thought, ‘well, I’ll manage somehow; at least this way I won’t be able to take too much unnecessary stuff.’

Late that afternoon, I began to notice the snakes. Little guys with yellow bands around their throats were constantly gliding out from under my feet. I slowed my pace a little, afraid of stepping on one of them. Until this day, I hadn’t seen a single snake and now I was seeing dozens of them. I came down into another gap on what looked like a very fresh trail. When I hit the road, I found a trail crew packing up their stuff; I guessed that their efforts may have been enough to rouse the snakes: the banging of the rock hammers and all the commotion on an otherwise undisturbed section of woods.

I stopped and talked with the trail crew for a minute. They gave me some leftover fruit they’d brought for their day’s exertions. One guy in particular seemed really interested in talking about the trail with me. We had an amiable chat during which he kept avowing “you’ll make it,” like he was absolutely convinced. It was reassuring.

It was around this time that I began to think about walking the entire trail. No job offers had come and I had begun to think none were forthcoming either. Previously, I hadn’t been very excited about staying in the US. Since 2008, I’d been in my home country about 15 months all together. I had gotten accustomed to living abroad. The idea of staying in the US had a lot of resignation tied up in it for me, it was like making a dull but pragmatic career choice and as long as I still had the option of living abroad, I was going to choose it. But the last stint abroad, in Paraguay, had been a little exhausting and though I signed up to go back ‘out,’ I wasn’t as excited about it as I’d been in the past.

The more time I spent on the trail, seeing a particular aspect of America, the more interested I began to feel in staying. The people around me no longer seemed anonymous and complacent and, on the trail, I felt like I was in something akin to a foreign country, but one I was able to navigate pretty well as long as I stayed within certain parameters—like staying on the trail.

After the NOC, I began to seriously think about staying in the country, about settling down. It started to sound not only possible, but like something I wanted to do. I was still in the running for a job overseas, but I thought when I arrived in the next town, I’d send an e-mail and tell the employer I wasn’t interested.

viii.

On the trail down to the Fontana Dam, I found a prescription bottle filled with weed on the trail. I looked up and saw that someone was about 200 feet ahead of me; I decided to yell out the name on the bottle and see if the kid turned around. He did and when I caught up to him, he was baffled as to how I’d learned his name until I handed him his bottle. Incredulously, his hand shot back to a side pocket on his pack. Fear, then a look of intense relief flooded his features. He thanked me profusely and offered me some of the bottle’s contents. I told him I was ok, but thanked him. We walked together a few hundred yards and caught up with his friend. He told his friend what I’d done as though he were explaining how someone saved his life.

I’m not surprised that people smoke on the Trail, but the sheer amount of it is impressive. I probably encountered someone smoking on average of once a day. Being around all the weed was a temptation. Every day, I felt compelled to walk as far as I could. I enjoyed the trail I saw along the way and I genuinely felt like I was interacting with it, rather than rushing along it. The great thing about hiking is that walking is what you’re supposed to do. It gave me something to be doing when I was feeling sluggish. The weed was a temptation because I knew it would slow me down, make me more observant. I wondered if even just one time would be enough to disrupt my routine, but I knew I probably wouldn’t like it. When it wore off, I knew I’d probably feel more lonely than ever and I didn’t want to start smoking every day, I wanted to confront the solitude and to try to understand it. I’d come out to the woods to spend time alone, smoking alone would be sorta’ like splitting myself in two to have someone to talk to; it seemed like cheating.

I got to the Fontana Dam Shelter around 1 pm. A group of hip-looking hikers from New York were seated around a picnic table drinking beers. They’d been hanging out since the night before at the famously accommodating shelter. They’d ordered a pizza and gone swimming. There was a little town one could take a shuttle to, and they’d gone down there for the beers. I felt like a total curmudgeon, but hanging out, drinking beers and swimming had no appeal for me; I wanted to keep walking, it was already all I wanted to do. The swimming and the beer, those were things I knew, walking over 2,000 miles, I didn’t know what that was like so I was more interested in it than anything else.

I stopped at the Fontana Welcome Center to take a free shower. The shower area totally exposed to the unlockable door. Imagine a highway rest stop with shower heads in the middle of the room, by the sinks, and you have an idea of how exposed this place was. Anyone who opened the door, was going to get a full view of what was going on but I guess the prospect of a warm shower was too great and I stripped everything off and got in.

While there is a good deal of solitude to be found in the woods, the hiker is also, in a way, constantly in public. In the woods, there’s no way to go into a house and shut the door. You’re in constant peril of interruption. Going to the bathroom, changing your clothes, farting, you have to get used to doing all these things in front of people. You lose your modesty and when you go into a town, you find yourself struggling not to belch in front of people and just pee wherever you want. It might seem like being in a tent could substitute for a house, or at least a private room, but it won’t. In a tent, you can hear the smallest noise of the person camped 100 feet from you; you hear them snore, you hear them turn over, you hear the zipper of their tent when they get up to pee, you hear the pee. Most of the day you’re alone and it’s not too hard to find a small spot to camp alone at night, but another hiker could always be just around the corner. You learn to accept the possibility that someone else is constantly around and when you find a place to take a shower, it could be in the middle of a busy street, but you’ll soon find yourself stripping in front of a crowd if it means washing your grimy body.

On the other side of the Fontana Dam, I entered the Smokies and started the climb that led to Clingman’s Dome, the highest point on the trail. The first thing I noticed upon entering the National Park was that there seemed to be a lot less water around. When I found some, I had to settle for a tiny muddy rill; dirt and leaves were suspended in my water bottle, but I had a filter and it was better than nothing.

There was another old fire tower at the top of my climb, about 0.5 miles off the trail. I tossed my pack down and climbed off the trail, up to the tower.

I enjoyed some of the most beautiful views of the trail from the tower. I looked south to see where I’d been earlier that day. I looked down to the dam and the body of water it contained. I thought about the hipsters from New York drinking beers and the kid who dropped his weed. I was glad to be up in the mountains, alone and above everything. This view and feeling were the reasons I’d come out to the Trail.

Returning to the Trail, I came across a couple who were coming back from the camping area to which I was enroute. “There’s a bear just down the trail,” they warned me. “She’s pretty big and she didn’t seem at all perturbed by our presence; just wanted to let you know. She looked to be waking up, kinda’ groggy.” I thanked the couple for letting me know and continued down the Trail cautiously, keeping my hand close to my mace, which, I would later learn, was completely useless against a bear intent on food. On the Trail, were huge piles of bear scat, big pulpy piles that, thankfully, looked like they contained nothing but chewed blackberries. Still their very size was enough to be intimidating.

When I didn’t encounter any bear after about 20 minutes of walking, I figured I must’ve passed it. Despite my fear, I still wanted to see a bear, and I was disappointed that I’d missed my first opportunity, although I was sure there would be others; I’d heard multiple times that there were lots of bears in the Smokies.

When I got into the camping area, I found a group excitedly discussing the marauding bear in the area. The rumors were flying:

“I guess they’ve closed down a bunch of camping areas and shelters.”

“Tore someone’s bag apart!”

“They tried to tranquilize it but it got away!”

“The ones in the Smokies are huge and not afraid of people!”

We had a really great time joking about bear attacks. Every time there was a rustle in the forest, we’d all shout “The Bear!”

In truth, everyone was a little nervous. Since I’d gotten on the trail, I hadn’t seen any warnings about bear activity, but there was a large sign posted at the camping area, warning hikers to hang not only their food bags but their packs as well. Residual food smells, the warning claimed, could be enough to draw the bear. The other hikers and I had a good time joking around the campfire, but I think we were all a little nervous about going back to our tents, alone, imagining the sniffing and growling that we might hear just outside our tents in the middle of the night.

The fear had the positive effect of bringing the group together. Everyone told stories, laughed and joked about the bear together. It was one of my most social nights on the Trail. Although I had a few other nights were I talked to people, it was never again so spontaneous and so well matched, everyone seemed to bring something to the conversation. I felt a little disappointed when everyone started going off to bed, but it had been a long day and I was tired. Despite the talk of the bear, I slept through the night.

ix.

In the morning, I passed a shelter that had been closed due to bear activity. I stopped and looked around, listening for bears, but there didn’t seem to be any around. I tried to make a little more noise than usual, as I hiked, but it’s hard to keep clapping your hands and singing out loud and after a while, I lapsed into silence.

In many places the ground had been torn up, like an animal had been routing around looking for food. The areas that looked picked over were very broad, sometimes lasting for 100s of feet. I assumed this meant bear, but when I talked to someone later in the afternoon, they told me, more likely, it was a wild boar. They say these can be as violent as bear and, after seeing what they were capable of doing to dead trees and the ground, I wasn’t anxious to meet one.

Despite all the warnings, the forest was peaceful. The day was mild—as I climbed in altitude, the temperature lowered. There was more humidity; a light fog was present even in heat of the afternoon. Perhaps it was this solemnity that made the situation at the shelter so disagreeable to me.

I walked nearly all day to reach Derrick Knob shelter, but when I arrived around 4, I was disappointed to find the place overtaken by boisterous young men. When I entered the area and said ‘hey,’ only one guy turned and greeted me, the rest ignored me. They were all practically yelling over each other to be heard. After all the silence of the day (I’d seen almost no one the entire walk) the scene was like a very ugly intrusion. I pulled out my food and started to make my ramen, but, I could hardly stand the braying of these post-adolescents and after a few minutes, I decided to pack it in and head to the next shelter.

As soon as I got back on the trail, I felt better. It rained on and off and, as I continued to climb, I came to a large swath of long, wet grass, blowing in the wind. I stopped to admire the movements of the grass, like seaweed drifting underwater. Up the Trail, I saw a turkey, standing there regarding me before walking calmly back into the woods.

I reached the Siler’s Bald Shelter around dusk. The crowd was older and a doe was grazing near the shelter, totally oblivious to the people there, talking and watching it. I pitched my tent in the tall grass alongside the shelter and was asleep before it was entirely dark.

Just before 5 am, I heard my neighbor’s tent’s zipper open followed by a low rumble of thunder. A storm was coming and since I was already awake, I decided to try to strike camp before the rains started.

I hurriedly dressed in the dark and put everything away before starting on the tent. The rain was already starting to fall through the darkness, it only shone in the pale spotlight of my headlamp, grey streaks on a grey tableau. Just as the rain started to fall hard, I threw everything under the awning of the shelter where I finished putting it all away in relative dryness. I made coffee and sat and listened to the rain fall in the darkness. There was no sunrise, just a gradual lightening of the sky.

The Trail heading up Clingman’s Dome (the highest point on the AT, although it doesn’t feel like it) was like a pine forest in Oregon. Moss swarmed up the red bark of the trees, the trail seethed a teak-colored water through the mud and umbrella-sized ferns sprouted from tangles of dead branches. In this familiar scene, I relaxed to the point of somnambulism. It was like I didn’t have to exert myself to move. I willed it and it happened. Mainly, I just watched the grey and green tangles drip with old rain water just beyond the clearing of the Trail.

Clingman’s Dome was topped with a futurist viewing platform that looked like some dead structure one would find in Kazakhstan or Omsk, a concrete wave terminating in a ufo-shaped dome. I didn’t bother to climb it. The fog was too thick to see more than a few feet. I took a few pictures of the grey summit when two hippies emerged from the fog, eating bags of gummy candies. They told me they were tripping and offered me some of their gummy candy before disappearing back into the fog like giggling ghosts. Back on the trail, the brief emergence into civilization, seemed like a dream. The Trail narrowed, the mist turned to a light rain and dripped from the spiderwebs and lichen-plagued branches.

Gatlinburg was about 9 miles out and in the afternoon, I crossed a parking area for day-hikers coming from this area. I couldn’t believe all the cars and people. It felt like coming out of the jungle into Manaus. I hadn’t seen so many people since I’d left Franklin.

I sat on a low concrete wall at the edge of the parking area and ate a dry pack of ramen since I was getting low on all other food (I still had 14 packs of ramen, though, enough to get me to Hot Springs, I hoped.) I talked to another thru-hiker who, like so many others, I never saw again. I’d been walking for 13 days, the longest I’d ever hiked in my life. It felt like an accomplishment already. I’d crossed a state line and had gone over 100 miles so it came as a terrible blow when I saw the sign upon leaving the parking area saying something truly insidious like 1,972.0 miles to Mt. Katahdin. Almost two weeks in and I’d barely made a dent in the total mileage.

Luckily, the disheartening sign was followed by one of the greatest parts of the trail. I skipped the next shelter in favor of one still 7 miles down. It was later in the afternoon, but I wanted to keep walking. No one else had decided to start this stretch so late in the day and I was alone on a beautiful ridge, the sun setting on my right, the pinnacles of the pines beneath my feet. When the trees opened up, I could see for miles. One side opened up, I walked precariously along the ledge, just above the forest, then that side would close and the other would open up, like the curtain falling on one act to open on another, the scenery the same, but all changed around: another room, another world.

A rockslide had torn away part of the trail and it had been rebuilt, allowing one to look down into the abyss where it had fallen. The trees were gone from this area too and I stood on the ledge looking out over the rolling mountains where the sun set into a magenta cloud. Immediately the temperature fell and it seemed as if the shadows had risen from the forest floor into the sky.

Just before the shelter, I passed a girl going in the opposite direction, she seemed stressed and hurried. I tried to stop her. “I just came from that way, there’s no place to camp for seven miles,” I said. She didn’t stop, but yelled over her shoulder, “That’s ok.” I felt bad knowing that she was going to walk through such a beautiful section of trail in the dark.

I woke up before dawn again to the low rumble of thunder. I tried to ignore it, but it was insistent. A bolt of lightning popped in the sky like a lightbulb flaring before going out. The thunder chewed on the mountains and I decided to get up.

This time, I got everything packed up before any rain fell. I made coffee under the awning of the shelter and watched the lightening flare up in the sky revealing the pine-serrated horizon before fading into darkness. It was before five. I drank my coffee slowly, trying to make it last until dawn. The rain never came.

I set out at first light and hiked through the last section of the Smokies. In the late afternoon, I met a ridgerunner named Chloe. I was impressed that her name tag had an umlaut over the ‘E’ in her name. She told me to be careful. There was a bear just down the trail a ways. I told her I’d like to see him, but from a distance; I had just missed seeing another bear when I came into the Smokies a few days ago. I told her about the bear at the campground. “Yeah,” she responded. “We had to shoot that bear. She pulled a guy out of his tent.” For the rest of the time I was on the trail, this story would resurface with new information attached to it.

--the guy had food in his tent

--the guy had slathered himself in coconut butter before getting in his tent

--the bear that had been shot wasn’t the bear that bit the guy

Etc.

It had started to rain. The storm had come back and the afternoon sky grumbled with thunder. Chloe wanted to be on her way. We parted and walked our different directions into the storm. It didn’t pour, but the rain came down steadily for the rest of the afternoon. The Trail became a trough of mud that I slogged through. The rain made me feel lethargic and I walked without much energy down into the Davenport Gap. I never saw the bear Chloe mentioned.

The Davenport Gap Shelter was down in a hollow just before the end of the Smoky Mountains National Park. It was still raining when I got there around 4. Everything around the shelter was mud. Due to bear activity, the shelter was wrapped up in a cyclone fence, like a terrestrial shark cage. I decided, for the first time on the Trail, not to pitch my tent. Reluctantly, I climbed onto the wooden shelf of the shelter, squeezing in between two older hikers, and resigned myself to the gloom of the afternoon. I closed my eyes.

The rain fell all night. I tried to wait it out a little in the morning, but I got impatient with the shelter and all the muddy packs and bodies knocking around. I took my thermos of coffee and started out into the rain, out of the Smokies. Within seconds, my feet were soaked.

I squelched down out of the mountains, into my second instance of trail magic, a cache of cokes by the road. I drank one despite the fact that it was 8 am and I was still drinking my coffee. It was amazing. Coming out of the gap, I found evidence that the storm had been more severe further down the mountain. Many branches had fallen and some trees had been uprooted and lay across the trail. The rain had stopped, but I had to walk through the wet branches to blaze a path around the recently downed trees.

I didn’t see anyone all morning, but in the afternoon, I suddenly came across a group of about 10 men, many of them dressed in camouflage. I said ‘hi’ and ‘enjoy your hike,’ but they only responded in low grumbles. I passed them, but within a few seconds, I heard a ‘hey!’ like a rifle’s report behind me. I knew they were addressing me. I turned to see a man wearing a purple and yellow ‘East Carolina’ hat approaching me. “Hey, did you see anybody in the direction you came?” he asked me. I told him that apart from two older ladies I saw just a few minutes before, I’d seen no one all day. “Well, hey, do me a favor, huh? If you see anybody up the way you’re going named Mike, tell him we’re looking for him, ok? We got separated somehow coming down from Max Patch.” I told the guy I keep an eye out for his ‘Mike’ and continued on.

I’d heard that Max Patch was a good place to see the sunset, but, apart from that I knew nothing about it. As such, it was amazing climbing to the top of the domed field and seeing the clearest views I’d seen so far on the trail. A parking area wasn’t too far away and there were many day hikers milling around. An elderly couple with a sweet little dog approached me on the trail that was no more than a worn place in the grass. I said ‘hello’ to the happily jumping dog and they asked me if I was out camping in the area. I told them I was hiking the Appalachian Trail and that I’d come from Georgia. The couple seemed both nonplussed and overjoyed to hear this. They’d heard of the AT, but they didn’t know this was part of it. Was I hiking the whole thing? I told them I was and they lit up. It was obvious it was something they were very interested in, although they had no plans to try it themselves. We talked about the trail for a while and, before parting, they asked if they could do anything for me. I was asked this question so often on the trail and it never ceased to be as touching as the first time I heard it. Back in the US, one of the things I had despaired of returning to was the self-absorbed nature of American culture. Everyone with their phones out, never even meeting anyone else’s glance for fear that something may be asked of them, the callous urban character, walking down the street as if surrounded by a forcefield. The people I met on the Trail were nothing like this. They stopped to talk, they asked if they could help, they smiled. It was like being in another country, but one where everyone still spoke my language.

The sun came out and I came down from Max Patch in the late afternoon after letting the wind and the sun pull the dampness of the Smokies out of my clothes.

The shelter was quiet when I arrived and after I set up my tent, I took a place at the picnic table nearby to write for a while. I was a few words in when a thru-hiker named Rabbit showed up. I was happy to put my writing away and talk to her until it started to get dark. When I woke up in the morning, she was gone. Like so many other people I met on the trail, I never saw her again.

Appalachian Trail: Amicalola to Neel's Gap

I passed a cork tree today and looked up in its boughs. In the branches I imagined my food bag suspended—the one I had to hang every night while on the Appalachian Trail to keep the bears out of my food. I had this vision in Davis, California after talking with a friend, telling him about the rattlesnake I almost stepped on in Connecticut. Looking into the branches of this tree, I realized that my life in the woods for a summer is already receding into distant memory. From late April to early September of 2016, I woke up every morning and walked all day. I seldom saw streets, garbage cans, people or cars. I got used to the trees and the sounds of distant woodpeckers in the morning. The roaring highways, the pop music, the elections and the mass-shootings became the property of another world. I thought after a season away from everything, I would not be so easily seduced by worldly things when I returned, but my reabsorption has been speedy. I drink too many coffees out of paper cups, travel from place to place in cars, sit in front of computers for hours on end as if I never left these things behind. The only thing that remains is the memory of another life in which my consumption did not rage unchecked. I remember that it is possible to live another way, but I would be baffled trying to find my way back to this life from behind my computer screen, coffee in hand, garbage can nearby ready to receive the excess of my gluttony. Satiated and exhausted, I look up into the branches of the cork tree and remember.

i.

April 29^th

I never had a doubt. I didn’t really even think much about my plan. I came back from Paraguay with the idea that I would walk the Appalachian Trail for a month or two while I waited to hear news about my next job. The Paraguay gig ended with the possibility for renewal in another country. Rather than find a home in the States, Gina and I decided to take another job overseas. I had expected to hear where we would be sent in April, May at the latest. In the meantime, I’d start the trail and see where it led, a suitable means of reintroducing myself to my country before leaving again.

The morning of April 29^th I watched the sun rise alongside the analogous bronzed plates of the World’s Fair’s Sun Sphere from my hotel room in Knoxville, Tennessee. I tried to eat a big breakfast, expecting to be on the trail by noon, but I found it hard to concentrate on the food. I compensated by drinking copious amounts of weak hotel coffee which made me so anxious that I found myself running back and forth to the car, hoping that by emptying the hotel room of our possessions to I could also evict my slow-moving parents. In the car, I insisted on driving to Georgia; I couldn’t stand the idea of just sitting there for four or five hours.

At the state line, my dad took over. We left the highway and started down the back roads, winding through the foothills and little towns of southern Appalachia. The last town we passed through—a little resort looking place called Elijay—I called Gina. I didn’t know when I was going to have a signal again. I tried to pour my conflicting emotions into the phone call, but found it difficult to talk freely in the enclosed space next to my parents. Gina is also famously successful at blocking my dramatics. Her dispassion was infectious and when I hung up, going into the woods for a month or two no longer seemed like a big deal, but I’d had too much cheap coffee to relax completely and when I tried to eat again at the Taco Bell, I found I was scarcely able to eat two burritos where normally I would’ve eaten ten.

The Trail’s southern terminus is Springer Mountain, Georgia, but Springer Mountain is hard to reach by car, besides, the nearest fire road requires that one walk south to the Mountain before turning around and beginning the journey north. To avoid rough roads and repeating sections of the Trail, I decided to walk the approach trail from Amicalola Falls which starts about 8 miles south of the AT.

In the parking lot, I changed into my hiking pants and put a bandanna around my neck, thinking I might need it for something. My old man insisted I have a beer with him before starting. I wasn’t much in the mood for a beer either so I gulped down the tall-boy can of PBR he handed me with little ceremony and started looking around for the Trail.

My folks took a few pictures of me at the AT sign with my pack and everything on. We said goodbye, but it wasn’t too big of a deal; I guess I may have been the only one in a position to see the next few months spreading out into eternity. For my folks, it was just a few months, a span of time which usually passes by quickly even under adverse circumstances. For me, in the woods, walking all day, I knew I would feel every moment, at least initially.

I filled my water bottles, said another goodbye and started for the Trail’s head. I was still standing in front of the sign thinking how even the longest journeys start with a single step and all that crap when a girl and her little dog approached me. “You hiking the Trail?” The girl asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. “I mean, I guess.” I corrected, not wanting to sound over-confidant about something I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to complete. “I might have to get off and go to work.” I continued and explained my situation. The girl told me that she’d thru-hiked the trail the year before. Her trail name was Hollywood. “Best thing I’ve ever done.” She told me when I asked how it went. This made me feel a little more enthusiastic. “What did you like about it?” I asked. “Well,” she started and gestured to the trail, “let’s get started and I’ll tell you about it.”

For the next mile or so, I climbed the wooden stairs that dominate the approach trail rising up the Amicalola Falls, listening to Hollywood talk about the bears, the yellow-blazers and the magic of the Appalachian Trail. I asked her question after question and she answered each one with alacrity. As she was without a pack, she asked several times if I’d prefer to stop since we were climbing stairs and it was a warm day. I told her I was fine and she congratulated me on already seeming to be conditioned for the trail.

After about 45 minutes, Hollywood’s dog refused to walk any further. She tugged a little on his leash, but he was done. She scooped him up, said goodbye and turned back to the trail entrance. I was alone. For the first hour or so, I kept thinking about how I was really doing it, how I was walking down the Appalachian Trail. Then my thoughts started to flit all over the place. I ceased really thinking about one thing but sort of tuned into to a mental radio station playing portions of songs, memories and all kinds of vague ontological effluvia. Although sometimes I would break free with a clear thought or two, I stayed tuned into this station for most of the four months I was in the woods.

After I’d been walking about three hours, I came upon a man sitting in the middle of the trail. He had an exhausted look on his face, so I asked him if everything was ok. “Yeah,” he told me, fanning himself a little with his floppy hat, “I’ve just got a little sunstroke.” It wasn’t a hot day, but it wasn’t a day for a fleece either, especially not if you’re climbing up and down hills with a pack as huge as this guy’s was. I didn’t bother to tell him that it might be prudent to take off his sweater if he was so hot. It seemed so obvious, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I wished him luck and continued on.

About half a mile after the sweaty guy in the fleece, I found another early casualty of the trail, a three-pound pepperoni sausage, still in it’s wrapper, lying like a meaty turd in the middle of the trail. It looked like it’d fallen off someone’s pack, but I knew it’d been abandoned. From the way it was sitting there, it was obvious that the sausage had proved too much for someone and had been tossed or just dropped. As I crested the hill, I came upon a couple walking south and told them, if they were hungry, there was a sausage that looked like it was still good on the trail. “I know,” the guy told me. “We picked that thing up and carried it for a while when we came out here, but in the end, we decided it wasn’t worth it and dropped it back on the Trail.” As they walked away, I wondered how long this sausage had been making its way up and down the Trail. It may have been there for months, picked up by the odd curious hiker only to be dropped later somewhere else. That sausage may have come all the way from Maine for all I knew.

The sun was beginning to set through the trees and cast long shadows when I came up a rise on the Trail to a slight clearing. Another hiker was sitting down on a rock, eating and watching the setting sun through the trees. It looked like a good place for a break, so I decided to stop. I dropped my bag, said ‘hi’ and asked the kid if he knew where the approach trail ended and where the AT officially started. I had planned to camp two miles after the start of the Trail. “This is it,” the kid told me, pointing to a plaque stuck to the side of the rock. “This is Springer Mountain; the start of the AT.” The view between the trees suddenly seemed much more profound when I considered the fact that it was the end of a trail that stretched more than 2,000 miles. A trail that after walking all day, I had only just reached the beginning of. I ate the first of 100s of Cliff Bars before staring north down the trail, toward Maine, wondering what would be down there for me.

The kid’s voice broke me from my reverie. “What’s your name?” He asked. My pause must have been significant because he corrected himself. “What’s your trail name?”

“Uh, Mossman,” I said, feeling slightly awkward introducing myself as a toy I’d played with as a kid. “What’s yours?”

“Tortoise,” he told me. “You headed to that next shelter for the night?”

I told him I was and after he and I spoke with the other hikers who’d come up, we set off together to the shelter. After hiking alone all afternoon, it was nice to have someone to talk to through the lonely mix of twilight and the new place, after all, I wasn’t just visiting the Trail, in a way, I’d moved out to it and the first night in a new place is always kind of lonely. Tortoise and I talked through the hour-long hike to the shelter. We set our tents up next to each other and sat around a fire, talking about the trail to come, before turning in.

In my tent, I couldn’t get to sleep. The excitement of the morning still seemed to be with me and although I felt comfortable out in the woods, I still felt uncertain about what the experience would bring or even why I was doing it. I eventually drifted off listening to the unfamiliar night sounds of the Georgia woods.

ii.

I woke up in the morning to the bustle of Tortoise taking down his tent. It was warm enough with the sun coming through my tent to entice me outside into the cool morning air. I started making coffee right away. Tortoise expressed admiration that I’d bothered to bring anything to make coffee. “I hate instant,” I told him. “I’ll never drink that crap if I don’t have to.”

While I was still enjoying my coffee, Tortoise took off. He told me he’d hiked part of the trail before and that we’d probably see each other again. “I stop a lot,” he said. “So you’ll catch up to me.”

I sat and enjoyed my coffee for a while, listening to the forest and trying to understand the trail and length of time that stretched out before me. I gave up and listened to the birds before finishing my coffee, knocking down my tent and starting out for the first full day.

I came back into the walking with no problem. After a night of intermittent tent sleep, I found the return to walking agreeable. It stretched my muscles and gave me something to do with the caffeine-induced energy.

In the afternoon, the sky darkened a little. The accompanying threat of rain didn’t bother me. I felt apart from the scenery around me, so entangled I had become in my own thoughts. At this point, I had begun projecting myself into a future: A job overseas—maybe in Ethiopia, Gina would be there and we’d have a dog. The bright green foliage blurred into an arid landscape and Amharic characters seemed to twist themselves out of the branches.

Later, the wind picked up, making the approaching storm impossible to ignore. I was coming upon a shelter. I stopped at a river which was silvery with the approaching storm’s light. I drank some water and rested a while, not knowing that I was right across from the shelter where I’d been planning to stay for the night. When I climbed over the next rise in the trail and saw the outline of the shelter through the trees, I felt conflicted. It was only just after 4. It felt too early to already stop for the day. I didn’t feel tired and there seemed to already be a crowd hanging around the area. I didn’t feel like hanging around with a bunch of people all afternoon, so I continued on. The next sheltered area was ten miles up the trail, but I’d been seeing little spots to pitch a tent all up and down the trail and I was confident that I’d see another before too long.

As I walked further down the trail, away from the happy shouts of the hikers who’d stayed on at shelter, I began to feel anxious. I was walking further into the woods, away from shelter, away from the friendly society of others with the storm clouds piling up above me. But I didn’t feel as though I could stop. I wanted to walk until just before dark. It felt like a job I had to finish.

I walked on, unsure of whether or not to turn back, until the sky cleared its throat and brought up a clot of thunder. The rain came down all at once, as if from a bucket overturned. I raced down the trail, unsure of where I was going, only at that moment realizing I had no way to get out of the rain.

Everything I had thought waterproof turned out to be merely water-resistant. Within seconds, my socks were wet, the jacket I had pulled on was damp. My pack did nothing to keep the water out and my books and odd papers were turned into pulp.

Through the grey sheets of rain, I spotted an open area, big enough for my tent and darted over to it. I tossed my pack down and jerked out my tent, which was already damp. As I was setting the thing up, the rain slackened and I almost had second thoughts, but after the rain, the sky was darker; it looked closer to night and I figured, especially as I was all wet, it was time to stop for the day.

The night before, I’d slept with my food in my tent, but, in bear country, I knew this wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was resolved to hang my food. After I got my sodden tent up and tossed my pack inside. I made a quick meal, using the rest of my water to cook and clean and started looking for a suitable tree from which to hang my food.

All the boughs looked too high or too skinny to support my food bag. I tied my water bottle to the end of my paracord and commenced tossing the thing up into the leafy wet sky, continually sending down showers of rain that had been frozen in their progress to the earth by the broad maple and oak leaves. When I finally managed to get my paracord over a branch, it looked a little too skinny, but I was too tired to try to take it down. I tied my food bag to one end and commenced dragging the thing up the tree. As I pulled, the entire trunk of the tree leaned toward me. Rather than pulling my bag up to the top of the tree, I seemed to be bringing the top of the tree down to me. Soaking wet, with a bag of food at my feet, damp tent for my abode and with a tree bent all the way to the ground, looking like something I’d roped in a rodeo, I began to feel like I had no business out in the woods and I despaired of ever getting to North Carolina, much less Maine.

By the time I’d finally gotten my food in a tree, the rain had almost completely stopped. After a few months in the Appalachian Woods, I would’ve known that the first rainfall had only been a prelude to the real storm, but it was only my second day and I assumed that the rain had stopped for the night. I also would’ve known that camping in a random spot such as I’d found, guaranteed that there would be no water source nearby. After my camp was secured, more or less, I walked back down the trail to the shelter, where I remember seeing the last stream.

Reentering the shelter area, I found Tortoise filling up his water bottles. He said he’d stopped for dinner, but that he planned on continuing on as the rain had stopped. We chatted for a minute and I felt better just talking to someone. The human contact, after spending the day in my head, was refreshing and I walked back to my spot in the woods feeling revived.

As it was still a few hours before nightfall, I decided to try to start a fire back at my campsite. Everything was wet, but I rolled over a few logs and found enough dry leaves and twigs to get something going. I had amassed a little pile when the rain started to fall again, without the violence of the first time, but with more tenacity. It was clear that this time, the rain was here to stay. I was about to duck into my tent when I spotted Tortoise struggling up the trail.

“Hey, Tortoise,” I called out over the rain. “You can set up here if you want.” I gestured to a flat spot not far from my own tent. Tortoise stopped. I could tell that, like me, he didn’t like to stop this early in the day, but by now the rain had increased and the twilight was blurred. The whole sodden forest looked almost impossible to navigate.

Tortoise resigned himself to set up his tent and, for the second night in a row, we camped together. The rain, which fell through the night, kept us from being social. Each of us, in our tents, fought against watery onslaught. By the time I fell asleep, I had given up trying to towel the rising water on the floor of my tent. It was all I could do to keep my sleeping bag from getting wet.

iii.

The morning was clear and the rain had brought the temperature down. Tortoise had woken up just before dawn and taken off. I was surprised to find that my food bag was still in the tree. I had fully expected a clever bear to have pulled it down in the night and surfeited on its contents. But there were no gnawed Cliff Bar wrappers in evidence and although the bag was soaking wet, it was intact.

Owing to the extra weight brought on by the water, my pack seemed twice as heavy. I staggered a little under the burden, but in no time I hit my stride again and as soon as I began walking, my mind began throwing off disconnected thoughts. Some I mused on, others I let pass, paying them no more attention than I did the stones and leaves that passed under my feet.

In the afternoon, I caught up to Tortoise at the base of Blood Mountain. We climbed to the top of the grey giant together. After three days of bright green forest, the ashen stones and lack of trees at the summit came as a surprise. The mountain was also skirted by a mantle of fog which covered the forest beyond it. Everything had become grey. I climbed out on a precipice to take in the first real mountain view of the trail, little knowing how many more I would see like it over the course of the summer.

The fog was beautiful. It spread evenly from the base of the mountain and leveled all the hills and valleys until the forest below resembled a nacreous sea, at once grey and sparkling.

Neel’s Gap came as a surprise. The first real road crossing since I’d entered the woods, offered up the bounties of civilization in the form of an outfitting store. After nearly 72 hours in the woods, I found myself standing indoors, browsing bags of chips and candy bars. I bought a Cherry Coke, a bag of chips and a few postcards to send home. Everything was still kind of wet and, as I wrote, the ink of the postcards began to run and smear. I tried not to smudge the addressees so that the salutations, as blurred as they might be, would still reach their destinations.

The rain had begun to fall again and Tortoise and I found refuge next to a sheltered woodpile. There was a logbook for thru-hikers next to the woodpile and we each signed it. It was May 1^st. I wrote ‘Happy Mayday’ and tried to remember how to write it in Russian, but had to resign myself to writing dobre dien because it was all I could think of.

When the rain let up, we walked up a rise in the trail, out of the gap and seemed to walk into the clouds. The scenery, dripping, grey and gauzy began to resemble nothing so much as the Pacific Northwest. Under this realization, I began to feel slightly homesick, not in an anxious way, but in a way that felt satisfying. It was good to be out in the woods, but still feel like I had a place to be in the world when I should come off the trail.

The camping area looked haunted. A few brightly colored tents rose up through the fog and their tenants drifted around like ghosts. I set up, having learned from the previous night to stop before it got too late and at a place where there was a reliable water source.

Tortoise decided to keep walking. “You’ll catch up to me again tomorrow,” he told me before being swallowed up by the fog. I felt tired and soon after I ate and got my bag into a tree, I crawled into my tent and fell asleep, swaddled by the seaweed fog of the Pacific Northwest.

Nowhere on the Verge of Everywhere

I’d been complaining all week about never running into anyone I knew in my hometown, despite having been back for over three months. Every day, I had been crossing town on my bike, running unimportant errands, trying to keep myself occupied. Downtown, under the blossoming apple trees or on the north side, on West Ave. up by the mall, I kept expecting to run into someone, the way I had so often as a kid, when I couldn’t walk down the street for more than a few blocks without someone stopping, saying ‘hi’ or offering a ride. No one was forthcoming. In the cafés, kids I didn’t know had long conversations about relationships, conversations I had been a part of once and now sat on the periphery of. In the streets, the cars roared by anonymously. Some honked, but it was only to get me to move. The sun was continually falling back behind the clouds and every evening as I rode home, I cleared my throat after not using my voice all day other than to order a coffee or thank a checkout clerk.

It was clear that everyone had gone, even the people who had once remained. Everyone left was unfamiliar to me. They were kids of another generation. Maybe some of them had gone too; maybe some of them felt left. I wanted to assure them. I wanted to say: “don’t worry, eventually, you’ll all leave.”

I had to call the people who were still around. We had to arrange times to hang out. They had stayed because they’d found niches. I had no niche and was only floating, like I had been for so long. Sometimes on Friday, we’d get a beer and I’d tell them a few of my stories; they’d tell me some of theirs and we’d go back to a time when we hadn’t been so completely defined by experience.

There was nowhere to eat, so I ate at home, often alone—never making it back for dinnertime, sitting at the counter, reading a library book. I looked forward to dinner as a time when I could accomplish a simple goal with a very real result. Cooking and eating felt successful like nothing else.

I applied to a few jobs, but no employers ever wrote back. My follow-up e-mails all went unanswered. Only Montana State University wrote to inform me that their job posting for a pooled adjunct position (barely even a job) probably wouldn’t even be relevant until 2018, which begged the question, ‘why even post it?’ ‘To keep the pool open,’ they’d responded.

In the evenings, I tried to read, but something from the day made me so tired, something about being alone, watching other people communicating and feeling so apart from them wore me down. I couldn’t read for more than 15 minutes before I’d start to fall asleep.

I never slept less than 8 hours. There was no reason to rush through sleep. When I woke up, I’d lay there, stunned by my situation, like the feeling that sets in after a car crash where the mind struggles to catch up to everything that just happened and the attendant consequences. Downstairs, I’d have coffee and check my mail. My inbox never contained anything other than Capital One bills and ‘Account Statement is Now Ready’ notices from the bank.

All day, I’d think of the e-mail. Not checking it felt like more of an accomplishment as time went on. I’d leave the house just to avoid it, until I began to believe that I’d gotten something from a potential job. The feeling would be so strong, I’d stop whatever I was doing and hurry home. While Gmail opened, I’d actually feel a chest-tightening anxiety, like I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing another empty inbox and yet, in a flash, there it’d be. Empty. “I’ll get something tomorrow,” I’d tell myself with a sigh before going to cook some food I really wasn’t hungry for.

After about three months, I went to Ann Arbor with my mother. I had been taking a lot of these trips. Primarily because this is what we usually did when I visited. Because my visit had gone on so inordinately long, force of habit kept us doing the same thing.

There was a Moth Storytelling event, but because I had told a story the month before, I didn’t want to ruin the good feeling (one of the few of accomplishment I still clung to) by going back and doing it again. But at the last minute, I decided to go, with my mom. I thought maybe it’d make her happy to see her son doing something other than sitting on the couch, reading overdue library books.

We left early and while she shopped for upcoming birthdays, I asked her to drop me off at the skatepark. I was 33 years old, being dropped off at the skatepark by my mom.

The morning was grey and slightly rainy, like a weather pattern out of the Pacific Northwest. There was only one other skater at the park. He went to the back of the park and I went to the front. In our separate worlds, we kicked our boards against the ground and pushed off the smooth concrete with the balls of our feet, bending out legs to take the varied transitions of the ramps, going up, coming down, getting hung up and jumping off.

After 10 minutes, he skated over to me.

“Ha,” he said pointing, “Look there’s a gummy bear standing up.” I had noticed the gummy bear before, but hadn’t thought much about it. I still didn’t really think about it, but that voice, the way he pointed out the gummy bear apropos of nothing. I knew this kid. I looked at his face, much changed.

“Don?” I asked.

He looked into my face, much changed.

“Jon?”

And here, at last, was someone I knew.

It was almost too rainy to skate anyway. We sat on a concrete ledge together and talked about people we knew and the places they’d all gone. He had to leave to get back to work, but it had been good seeing him. It made me believe more in the unseen. I started to think of my e-mail, luckily, I had no way to check it.

The Moth was sold out, but there were only 13 storytellers. I got picked to go 4^th, just before the break. Being on stage and being applauded felt like accomplishing something. However briefly, I was entertaining this room full of people. I was performing a function other than riding around on a bike or making myself dinner. After I came down from the stage, a number of people thanked me for my story telling me they’d really enjoyed it. Some of the staff remembered my last story and told me they liked my style. A drunk girl told me I was ‘sexy.’ These things pulled me from anonymity, however briefly, but when I got home, I couldn’t resist checking my mail. There was nothing there. I sat at the counter and drank a beer, just staring off into space. Not really prepared to do anything else for the night.

In bed, I finished The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I guess it was after midnight. I didn’t sleep well and when I woke up the next day, I just lay there for a while, less sure of how to start than ever. Eventually, I went downtown to the café, finished another job application and wrote this.

…

The next morning was grey and rainy. No one else was awake when I went downstairs. I made the coffee and started to write about a dream I had where my high school had become part of an airport or an airport had become part of my high school. I looked for jobs half-heartedly for a while.

…

I went up north to see an old friend. I stopped for a minute at another skatepark and noticed that there were tent caterpillar worms all over the park. I was conflicted about skating because it was impossible not to run over the worms. I tried my best to avoid them, but I kept thinking about how they used to be a nuisance species in Michigan. People were always saying they killed trees; I never hear anything about them anymore, but here they were, in the skatepark, nowhere near any trees. Maybe they were trying to ruin the skatepark, having run out of trees to eat.

After the worms, I met with my friend in a little café. He was sitting in the back and rose quickly to meet me with the air of someone greeting a person they haven’t seen in a long time, expectant but also scanning for changes. He’d already drank his coffee and his empty cup stood before him. The last few times we’ve met he’d told me how much I had grown to resemble my dad, so he told me again. I’m sure it must be odd for him, watching the change over the years, from one person into another. He doesn’t look anything like his dad, but when he and I first met his dad already had a lot of silver hair, so I guess he’s got a way to go anyway. But in other ways, there’s a resemblance. He told me he goes home after work and likes to write. “All that time in front of the computer,” he said. “Just like my dad.” Which was true, the predominant memory I have of his dad is of someone sitting in front of a computer. I asked him if he knew what it was his dad had been doing all those years in front of the computer. He answered that he still didn’t know. “Maybe he’s been writing, too,” I offered. He admitted that this might have been true.

We spent the next few hours talking about what our lives had been like lately, a big change from the way we used to talk about the past exclusively. I guess the past has become so distant that the old stories don’t spring to mind as ready anecdotes the way they used to. I couldn’t help but to wonder how many of these memories might be in his writing now.

After we parted, I went over to my old house, where two friends of mine still live. After some coffee, we talked all night as we usually do. Around 4:30 they went upstairs to their rooms and I wrapped myself up in throw blankets on the couch and looked around the room in the soft golden color that pours through the windows from the street. Some houses are day houses and some are night houses, designed for optimal use at one time or the other. This house, my old house, is a night house. The daylight seems to make it cold; the street lights warm it up. At night, after the doors are closed, the cats are sleeping and the heat is blowing up from the ducts, the house, like no other I know, almost seethes in its personality. Even the house I grew up in has no such display of character. Phantasmal footsteps bound down the stairs, shreds of conversation fall like dry leaves through the living room. A static, a snowfall, pulses with old phone signals and voicemail recordings like a cloud pulsing with lightening.  In the groans of the door shifting in its frame are delayed reactions to years of different knocks. I haven’t lived here for ten years, but this house is pamplisest, written over into illegibility, but with occasional glimpses into the lives it has contained.

I lay there awake, listening to the conversations of the past swirl through the house. The night brought them out of the carpets and the coffee cups where they had lain preserved under a canopy of dust. I fell asleep listening to the sounds I had made packing up my room, years before.

In the morning, the sun flashed through the windows. I kicked my feet into my shoes and stumbled outside. I drove around the state the rest of the day trying to reconcile the changes with the visions the house had offered up. I felt ten years out of step, like someone who’s emerged groggily from a time machine, not initially sure it’s worked until they notice the cracks in the new paint and the wrinkles on the face with the same young eyes, but looking out on the world, as if from the past itself.

It felt like I’d never be able to catch up with the time that had passed. Everything seemed to have run off ahead into the distance, into age. I tried to skate at another park, but found I couldn’t, at least not very well. I stood back and watched the local kids skate over the tent caterpillar worms, like a stranger waiting for a ride.

…

There’s a building so large on the horizon it looks like a perpetual dawn, like a manila sun spreading beyond the highway, under the trees. If it wasn’t for the large white refrigerators on the roof, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I’ll be setting off toward that big-box store horizon in a few days. I’d hoped to leave carrying some kind of certainty to lighten the long walk into the future, but nothing has come; I’ll set out with no idea where I’ll be going. I’ll walk north for a while, just to go somewhere while I wait for something—an idea, a mission, a home—to pluck me from the woods, set me down someplace and say “Here. This is where you’re going to be now.” It could be anywhere. Last night, I applied to a job in New Jersey. I’ve got resumes on desks in Hawaii, Washington and Addis Ababa. They’re all supposed to start in the fall. I’m still signed up to take a hard-to-fill position with the fellowship. If, at the last minute, someone declines to go to Kigali, Urumqi or Tashkent, they might ask me.

So, for the next few months, I’ll be nowhere on the verge of everywhere, finally pushing myself out of this place, I will go to the woods, like so many other Americans before me to listen for something. I woke up last night and tried to imagine sleeping in a small forest clearing; I couldn’t, but that’s how these things work. You can’t really imagine the next place. From the woods, I probably won’t be able to imagine a Seattle apartment or even this place very well. It’s good; I guess it’s indicative of finding a place in the present, which is something I’ve never been able to do very well, but I’m getting better at.

Right now, in this café, I’m making another memory, packing it together like a snowball, something to hold onto when all this disappears. From the woods of Appalachia, it’ll be nice to remember the months I’ve spent here, the blooming cherry and apple trees, and when I come back years from now, it’ll mean even more than it does now. Everything already does.