AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

by David Miller

The path they follow is called the Appalachian Trail, commonly referred to as the AT. It starts on the summit of Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends on top of Mount Katahdin in Maine.

The AT doesn’t skirt the mountaintops. Instead it takes a punitive path over every peak it can find.

The trail passes through fourteen states.

The ten miles of trail in West Virginia are notable for passing through the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference in Harpers Ferry.1 This is the emotional halfway point.

The White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire is one of the most scenic and hazardous sections of the trail.

A thru-hike is an extended nomadic camping trip. Follow the path through the woods all day. Stop, set up camp, eat, and sleep. Get up, pack your things, and start walking again.

The typical thru-hike takes six months with an average of twelve miles walked per day.

While hiking, you experience hardship, deprivation, drudgery, and pain, and the cooking stinks. The similarities to marriage don’t end there. Some people love it, and many are committed to seeing it through.

I’m headed for Maine.

“If you need to have a midlife crisis, couldn’t you just buy a Corvette?”

I pass my first white blaze.

I should’ve done more to prepare myself.

My girls are beautiful. Every night I go to their rooms to look at them sleeping. I walk away from them now with plans for them to visit me only once on the trail. It will be the longest I’ve been separated from them, and it is incredibly difficult. I feel a knot forming in my throat, and tears drop on the trail.

This melted me.

I take pictures of everything.

I hike on.

my solution was always to keep walking.

I am on my way—really doing it—hiking the Appalachian Trail.

The air is crisp and clear, branches are barren, and the forest is budding with the newness of spring. All is in harmony.

“If you can get to it, then have at it. Otherwise, don’t chew through anything that doesn’t have food in it, stay off my face, and don’t shit on my gear.”

I know the Smokies will be a challenge.

people have told me Virginia is a cakewalk.

Ideally, the blazes are spaced such that the next white blaze is visible from the current one.

The superb Web site www.TrailJournals.com hosts Internet journals for hikers of all major trails.

The trail and my hopes play tricks on me.

There is contention over what it means to be a “thru-hiker.” A “purist” is a backpacker who believes a thru-hike is traveling every inch of the AT in one direction, carrying your pack every step of the way.

I’ve also learned that tucking my knees higher while on my side takes pressure off my hip bone.

10 A “zero” is a day in which a thru-hiker does not hike. Hikers will use it as a noun or verb: “Yesterday was a zero” or “I’ll zero tomorrow.” I used the term “nero” for a day in which I walked only a few miles.

There are nine peaks over six thousand feet, including Clingmans Dome (6,643 feet), the highest point on the AT.

Thru-hiking is more demanding than I had imagined. In spite of the difficulties, this is where I want to be.

“Hell yeah, let’s go!”

“Trail magic” is a broadly used term covering any form of serendipity encountered on the trail. Hikers believe that good karma exists in the hiking community, which manifests itself in the form of assistance when the hiker is in need: a hitch from the middle of nowhere, lost equipment turning up, and, most coveted of all, hot food or cold drinks offered at road crossings.

When you encounter tourists unfamiliar with the needs of thru-hikers, you have to wheedle your way into their coolers. This fine art of giving karma a little push is called Yogi-ing.14 Sometimes the trick is to look pathetic without looking scary.

Thru-hikers are easy to spot; they shop wearing rain suits while laundering their trail clothes; they wear sandals exposing feet papier-mached with moleskin and duct tape. Most men make the trip without shaving.

In my observation, hikers who broke the continuity of their hike were much more likely to go off the trail altogether. I am reinforced in my belief that walking a continuous path and sticking with the white blazes is the best way for me to hike.

In playing a game, dieting, or hiking the AT, you benefit most when you commit yourself to it, embrace it.

“Vitamin I” is a trail term for ibuprofen.

So I got the pepper spray, but not the peace of mind.

The thought of my family having breakfast together at home recurs throughout the day.

He demonstrates the positions: sitting with your back leaning on a tree, squatting facing and holding onto a tree, unsupported full squat, and my personal favorite, the half squat.

the AT itself—is a luxury afforded us in the wild.

Now I see an unexpected benefit of thru-hiking. It is an escape from me. It is a forced simplification of my life; being on the trail limits the opportunities for me to pull myself in multiple directions.

white-blazer.

This shelter, like many others so far, has the message “SMOKE WEED” scratched on the ceiling in big, bold, charcoal letters. I can’t imagine that nonsmokers are converted by this commandment, or that those who do bring pot are waiting to be told.

Thoughts are the most effective weapon in the human arsenal. On the upside, it is powerful to realize that goals are reached primarily by establishing the proper state of mind. But if allowed the perspective that our endeavors are propped upon nothing but a notion, we falter.

McAfee Knob is one of the most photographed locations on the Appalachian Trail.

“Congratulations!” they say in greeting. “You are at the seven-hundred-mile mark, about one-third of the way to Katahdin.”

I haven’t had any day that has been entirely bad, and I’ve yet to have a day when I wished I was back at my job.

The Appalachian Trail in Virginia is 535 miles long, roughly one quarter of the overall trail length,

Friends think I am free-spirited to have gone on this hike, but in that regard I don’t compare with Andy and others, whom I observe to have much greater skill at the art of smelling the roses.

Anything that we consider to be an accomplishment takes effort to achieve. If it were easy, it would not be nearly as gratifying. What is hardship at the moment will add to our sense of achievement in the end.