Abandoned Roads, Part IX

After the shower, I dress in the hospital scrubs——maroon pants and a blue shirt.  When I hand the basket of my dirty clothes to a staff member, I am finally able to smell the stench I accumulated in a week.  Since all of my socks are being cleaned, I have no choice but to walk around barefoot and wait until my laundry is finished. 

I sit on a rocking chair on the front porch and call my mother and my aunt to tell them I am leaving the trail.  My mother is relieved that she will no longer have to worry about me in the wild, and my aunt is surprised at my decision.  I do not want this moment to be emotional.  

I explain that I merely went for a walk and got bored.  If I went for a walk in my neighborhood and walked two miles before turning around, I would not be disappointed in myself.  I would only be disappointed if I had planned on a walk but never left the house.  

I went for a walk in the woods and hiked nearly a hundred miles and decided I had enough.  Many other hikers will go much farther, but there is no benefit in measuring myself against strangers.  I could’ve gone much farther, too, but nothing useful will come from this type of thinking.

“I realized I am just a man in the wilderness,” I say to my aunt.  “Surrounded by trees.”

My family is supportive, and then they ask me questions like:  What are you going to do now?  And I say, I have no idea, but I will figure something out.  I conclude my phone calls and sit still and savor the fact that I am not moving.  This agenda-less, destination-less existence is blissful rather than frightening.  Every moment seems like an opportunity ripening.  I am not bound by the path in front of me. I can go anywhere. 

A skinny female hiker sits in the rocking chair next to me and cradles a cup of coffee.  She is from New Hampshire and hopes to reach her home state.  She is out her to challenge herself and see how far she can go.  I do not tell her that I abandoned my dreams of hiking to Maine because I do not want to discourage her.  I ask her what she thinks about when she is hiking by herself in the woods. 

“Mostly about why I am out here,” she says.

She asks me the same thing, and I tell her that I mostly think about my girlfriend, my family, my favorite movies, and what I am doing on this trail of dirt.  Over the past few days I have had so much time to confront my thoughts and I finally realized something.

“We all have this image of ourselves summiting Katahdin, whether it’s on the trail or it’s in real life,” I say.  “We all have these dreams that we strive for, and we do all we can to get to the places we want to be.”

I imagine my future and base my success on how closely my reality aligns with the fantasies I’ve created.  More often than not this strategy leaves me frustrated.  I become so attached to the results I have in mind that I have difficulty accepting an alternative outcome.

“But the destination does not matter.  When you reach Katahdin, then what do you do?”

She laughs and says she has not thought of this.

“You will find another destination to cling to.”

I am content with having goals, and I can only temporarily shake the habit of consuming my progress until the future becomes the present.  For now, I see myself as I am:  sitting on a rocking chair wearing hospital scrubs that do not belong to me.  When my high school guidance counselor asked me where I would like to see myself in five years, I never imagined myself in such a ridiculous scenario, but I am happy and at peace. 

“How far are you hiking?” she asks me.

“I think I’ve hiked as far as I need to,” I say.

“Now what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to visit a friend.”

She tells me there is free coffee in the kitchen, and I get up and pour myself a cup, drink it, and then wash the mug.  The female hiker sits on a couch in the living room next to the French teacher who has just arrived.  Before I leave the main building, I notice the French teacher is rubbing the female hiker’s feet.  These people are generous and full of love, and I would have enjoyed basking in their company and hearing their stories, but I don’t want to miss my ride.

When my clothes are ready, I dress into my hiking outfit and take the shuttle into town where I meet a taxi driver who drives me twenty miles to the nearest rental car company.  I climb into the driver’s seat of a compact car and ignite the engine.  I open up GoogleMaps on my phone and type in my destination.  There are three routes available, and I choose the fastest one.  The GPS tells me I will arrive in eight hours, so I step on the gas. 

I get stuck in traffic in Atlanta, but I try to be patient even though there is someone waiting for me and I would like to see her sooner rather than later.  My progress is out of my control.  I am motionless on an eight-lane highway surrounded by frustrated commuters honking their horns.  A semi blocks my view of the signs overhead.  The cars in front of me inch forward, and I change lanes several times because I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be.  The highway is about to split into two.  All I can do is pick a road and hope I’m heading the right way.   

Abandoned Roads, Part VIII

I emerge from the woods and alight upon a highway.  Across the road there is a picnic table where a hippy-looking fella with long hair sits and eats a Boars Head sandwich and a plastic container of berries.  He calls out to me.

“Yo, man, you want some strawberries?”

I have been dreaming of berries, and the universe has provided.  I sit next to the hiker and notice the dog sitting quietly near him.  The dog looks friendly but disheveled like his owner.  The hiker’s light brown beard is a thin and patchy cloak, and he wears one of those sweaters I associate with llama herders.  His laidback tone suggests there is little in this world that makes him angry.  He slides the container of berries toward me.

 

“You can have them all,” the hiker says.

The container is nearly filled with an assortment of strawberries and blueberries.  I have trouble suppressing my urge to dig into this feast, but I am unaccustomed to such unabashed generosity from strangers, so I hesitate.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“I’ve got this sandwich,” he says while munching.  “I’ve got enough.”

I thank him and devour his gift. 

“Do you know if there’s a shuttle from here to Hiawassee?” I ask.

He points to a van on the side of the road that says Top of Georgia Hostel. 

“I can give you a ride.”

For twenty-something dollars I can stay at a hostel a half mile up the road, and he will be shuttling people into town every hour from one to four o’clock.  I inspect the van, and it is clean and professional-looking.  It is not the kind of van you would use to abduct somebody in the woods.  Then I inspect the driver who is scratching his dogs’ ears.  He seems harmless, so I accept his offer.

“That was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” I say. 

I had anticipated taking a five-dollar shuttle to a hostel in the town of Hiawassee, but I had no cash on me and was wondering how that situation would play out.  But now there is nothing to worry about because I have free berries and a free ride.

 

The hiker and his dog and I walk toward the van.  He opens the trunk and I plop my pack down and go to the passenger door but it is locked.  I pull a few times and then open the backdoor instead.  When I climb inside, the driver tells me that shotgun is reserved for his dog.  He pets his dog and speaks to him the way people do when talking to infants and to those who do not understand English.  Before there is time for polite conversation, we pull into a driveway in front of the hostel.  I thank the driver and head toward the front door, where I am greeted by a Southern grandmother nicknamed Buttercup.  She is radiant with a natural warmth that comes from living in a place that you love.

“Welcome,” she says.  “Before you go inside, leave your pack and your boots outside on the porch.” 

I follow the rules and head inside to take a seat at a long table.  Buttercup briefly massages my shoulders and offers me a soda.

 

“The first one is free,” she says, and I order a Coke. 

The can is cold because faraway power plant engines combusted and produced electricity that controlled the temperature in a big metal box called a refrigerator.  I guzzle down the soda and sign a piece of paper agreeing to pay twenty-some dollars for a bed and a shower.  I feel funny to be so dirty and smelly inside a house.  

On the dining room wall there is a painting of the Appalachian Trail, a black squiggly line that meanders through fourteen states whose shapes are imperfectly illustrated.  Beside the trail are many popular features found along the way.  There are lakes, waterfalls, flowers, and the eyes of animals at night.

On the opposite wall is a list of tips to successfully thru-hike the Appalachian Trail:  Be mentally prepared.  Be physically fit.  Know your equipment. Save up enough money. Secure your relationships at home.

Years ago, I had planned this hike as a single man with no intention on forming attachments.  Things did not go according to plan because I found somebody I didn’t expect to find.  When I read that sign on the wall I knew that the timing of this journey was not right.  It was time yet again to scratch this plan and design a new future.  This trail through the wilderness will always be there if I need it.  Love cannot be a back-up plan.

Buttercup tells me there is so much to see on the trail ahead of me, and I nod my head in agreement, but we are not talking about the same trail.  She explains that laundry is five dollars extra, and the staff will wash the clothes for me and give me hospital scrubs so that I don’t have to be naked while my only two outfits are soaking in detergent.

“If you want to go into town while your clothes are in the wash, you can,” Buttercup says, “The townspeople are used to seeing hikers in scrubs.  Just don’t answer any medical questions.”

She hands me a towel and the scrubs and shows me to my bunk in a detached housing unit.  The mattress is surprisingly hard but softer than the wooden platforms I have been sleeping on.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Buttercup says and returns to the main building.

I step into the bathroom and inspect myself in the mirror.  I have lost over fifteen pounds and notice the disappearance of extra flesh that usually sits on my cheeks and the base of my neck.  My hair is wild and unkempt; my beard is patchy but thicker than I have ever worn it.  I wanted to grow my hair and my beard out for months to embrace my primitive side.  I wanted to alter my appearance so that I wouldn’t recognize myself any longer because maybe if I did this I could witness my own transformation.  I wanted to experiment with a new lifestyle to stave off boredom and have a story worth telling.  But now I want to cut my hair and shave my beard and scrub away the dirt that is caked into my skin.

Abandoned Roads, Part VII

The mosquitos are biting my skin and filling themselves with my blood as I fill my Platypus reservoir with water from a pipe.  We are all drinking, but I smack them and kill them to eliminate the pain because I have been taught to avoid discomfort.  A swarm of mosquitos lingers around the stream like bored office workers huddling around the watercooler.  I am outnumbered and they are not going anywhere.

 

There is a concrete block above the pipe that somehow found its way inside the remote woods of Georgia.  I am sitting on this and watching water drip into my reservoir when a gray-haired man descends the hill behind me.  Even far-flung animals meet at the watering hole.

“This is what it’s all about,” the man says.

“What is?” I say.

“Being out here.”

“It’s something all right.”

“I try to get out here as often as I can.”

“What do you do?” I ask.

“I work at an office.  It’s as exciting as it sounds.”

I do not press him for details about how he spends forty hours of his life each week, so instead I ask him about the trail.  He is a section hiker.  He has hiked the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the most challenging portion of the trail.  He has hiked in Maine and in Pennsylvania and in Virginia.  Each year he takes three weeks’ vacation from his job and tries to hike as far as he can during his time off.  This time his goal is to reach the Tennessee border.  I try to imagine him in a shirt and tie, and I wonder what he is running from.

“Are you a thru-hiker?” he asks me.

“Yes.”

“You can always tell.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re young.  You’ll be able to tell the difference between section-hikers and thru-hikers just by looking at them.  And by their smell.”

I smell like sweaty gym socks and garlic and wet dog, and this is the only appropriate time and place to harbor such an offensive odor.  He starts telling me about what to expect on the trail ahead of me.  Hikers get their legs in Virginia and start busting out twenty mile days.  I am already doing this, so I imagine myself hiking thirty miles with legs that relearned their purpose and now know nothing else.  The countryside in New England is beautiful, but first you have to traverse Pennsylvania, the place where boots go to die. 

“When you get to Pennsylvania, it’ll be a hundred degrees, and you’ll run out of water,” the man says.  “The rocks will cut up your shoes.  It’ll take you an hour to cover a mile.” 

The future is looking brighter and brighter.  I will slog through this endless barrage of trees only to dehydrate and damage my feet and get an office job that I hate so that I can run back to the woods to experience real pain.  I top off my reservoir and climb the hill to cook my breakfast.  Steaming hot chocolate scalds my throat, but the warmth is inviting.  I shove spoonfuls of blueberry oatmeal into my mouth.  I have my cookware, food, and my book spread over half the table.  The gray-haired man sits down next to me and fires up his JetBoil stove.

Despite his ominous warnings, I am comforted by his presence.  He shows me a UV wand he uses to kill parasites in a liter of water, and he tells me I’m carrying too much olive oil.  I need to divvy these sixteen ounces into smaller bottles.  He asks me what I am going to do after the trail, and I tell him I want to get my Masters in journalism and that one day I would like to become an English professor.  He tells me he has children in college now, and they have jobs lined up at Google and NASA.  He seems very proud of them.  I want to ask him:  If your children have such successful jobs, what are you doing in the woods?

 

No matter how long you walk in the woods, your problems will be waiting for you when you return home.  There is money to fret over, boredom to kill, gas tanks to be filled, traffic to sit through, and labor to produce.  There is no medicine in the forest.  There are only hardships that alter your perception about your hardships at home.  

In many ways, the trail mimics life.  When the trail climbs higher, you must climb with it.  When the trail sinks into the valleys, you too must follow.  You cannot get angry when you see another mountain to climb because anger will not make the mountain go away.

The mountains do not go away, so I climb them as I bake under a fierce sun.  My lips are dry and I am covered in sweat and running low on water when I see the chubby old man again.  I cannot remember if he is wearing a new outfit or the same one as yesterday.  Is this the same man?  Am I hallucinating?  Is this how nonbelievers find God?  He approaches me, and we greet each other.

“I have crossed paths with you the last few days,” the old man says.  “You are off to a great start.”

He has been going on day hikes in the opposite direction as me, and he must know the area well because he can judge the ground I’ve covered and the speed at which I am traveling.

 

“Keep up the good work,” the old man says and vanishes somewhere south of me.

All I know is that there is land behind me and much more in front of me.  I forget the names of places I visited yesterday and I put one foot in front of the other until I know that my heart is not in this quest.

Abandoned Roads, Part VI

During the summer before my junior year of college, another teacher gave me the same advice.  I was spending a week with my friend Erik at his family’s lake house in Ontario.  My girlfriend of three years had just broken up with me, and this caught me by surprise and left me devastated.  I asked for an explanation several times, but she provided no specific reasons.  This was my first lesson about the impermanence of love, and this vacation in Canada was just what I needed to get rid of the blues and start anew.  When I told Erik’s mother about my recent breakup, she said, “Take baby steps and get back out there.”

I needed to break out of my shell again, so I started trying things I’d never done before and ended up hurting myself several times.  When I stepped into a canoe with Erik, I lost my balance and fell overboard and cut my hand against sharp rocks.  When the bleeding stopped, I wrapped my hands with bandages to cover the large gashes.  I decided to go fishing with one hand, and I caught a small perch that flopped on the dock and hooked me in the leg.  I went jet-skiing on the St. Lawrence River and ended up in the river after the SeaDoo nearly capsized.

After all those mishaps, there was still one task I was determined to complete, unscathed, by the end of the week.  There is an island in the middle of the lake nearly a mile offshore.  I wanted to swim there and back, but I was afraid of open water.  I hate the thought of slimy, scaly, monstrous-looking creatures brushing against my skin that disappear before I can identify my foe.  In the water, I am a vulnerable visitor.  I am out of my natural element.  But I needed to lean into that fear and discomfort so that I could learn to accept their inevitable presence in my life. 

On the last day of the vacation, I jumped off the dock and swam beside Erik, who was paddling in a kayak beside me to prevent outcomes such as drowning or getting run over by a speedboat.  I was going to wear goggles, but at the last minute I decided I did not want to see the fish lurking beneath the surface.  A few times I thought I felt something bump against my leg, but I chose not to dwell on the possibilities.  I just kept swimming.  I changed strokes to avoid exhausting one set of muscles and relied on my legs to propel me through the water.  When I reached the island, I picked up a rock on the shore as a souvenir. 

Erik stowed the rock in his kayak, and I swam beside him as we headed toward the dock near his family’s lake house.  I climbed up the ladder, and the water from my shorts splashed onto the wood.  Erik handed me the rock and then tied up the kayak.  I walked inside the lake house to dry off and change clothes.  I put the rock in my bag so that I wouldn’t forget it. 

Now the rock sits in my bedroom, and every time I look at it I remember what it feels like to make progress and become unstuck from the past.  I needed to embrace the unfamiliar and the unnatural qualities of this new chapter.  Swimming across the lake was a step I wanted to take to overcome this pain so that I could reemerge a stronger man.

That was five years ago and those wounds have healed.  Now I am taking baby steps on a new journey, but this time I cannot see the destination and I will not be carrying any rocks for they are extra weight.  I need my lessons to be instilled into me until they become habits until they blossom into a lifestyle.  I am out here to collect qualities to bring home with me.  I am learning to live slowly and to wait patiently for the things I want.  I always remain optimistic about whatever lies ahead, but then I met a man who tells me the future is not worth rushing to get to. 

Abandoned Roads, Part V

The coyotes howl throughout the night.  Before exhaustion forces me to sleep, I hear animals scurrying through high grasses, and I tell myself they are rabbits.  I wake before dawn as the blackness recedes and an unseen sun illuminates my surroundings.

I unspool the rope that suspends my food from a high tree branch.  I gorge on a breakfast of honey buns and cherry Poptarts.  I would never eat this at home because processed food is revolting, but I need heaping doses of sugar and fat.  The sweetness burns my teeth, so I brush them.  Then I find a dense copse of trees to use the bathroom, and I smother the evidence with a flat rock so that I don’t feel like a dog who has squatted in the yard.

 

I change out of my dry nighttime outfit and into my polyester hoody, running shorts, and compression shorts that serve as my underwear.  A morning breeze chills me, but my body will warm itself when I start walking.  I rub balm on the soles of my feet and stick bunion cushions on my scabbing heels and a blister on the side of my right foot.  I squeeze into my toesocks and step into my hiking shoes.  My calves are stiff because they are accustomed to constant motion.  I break down camp and stuff every piece of equipment into its compression bag.  I stuff the bags into my pack and carry my wardrobe, my bedroom, and my kitchen down the mountain and into a gulch near a deserted highway.

  

A narrow stream tunnels through a concrete pipe and falls into a muddy ravine by the trail.  I take out my filtration kit and fill my pouch and screw on the filter and squeeze potable water into my three liter reservoir.  The squeeze system is painstakingly slow, but it is lightweight and reliable.  As I bend down to fill my pouch for the fourth time, I hear a Southern voice say, “Is there water down there?”

Two older ladies with lean packs hike toward me.  I tell them there is a small creek, and we take turns filling our water pouches.  Their short hair and tranquil composure leads me to believe they are comfortably approaching their sixties.

The tall lady with brown hair uses the same filtration system as me, and I ask her what she thinks of it.  Talking about equipment is boring, but there is more knowledge to be gained by conversations with seasoned hikers rather than salesmen.  When the lady speaks her accent is strong.  She must be from the South, but her friend does not sound the same.  Although we are in the middle of the woods, there exists a gossip network.  Hikers spread word about other hikers in front of and behind them.  Through this grapevine, I overheard there is a French teacher on the trail, and I have a feeling I am meeting her now.

“I don’t even use a filter on most of these water sources,” the French teacher says.  “If the water is coming out of a rock on the mountain, that’s clean.”

Even if there was a dead animal upstream, the water would filter naturally through the earth.  She does not seem to worry about giardia or cryptosporidium, parasites that will give you diarrhea and leave you bedridden for a week.

Two younger ladies emerge from the woods opposite the highway and soon there is a congregation.  They are from southern Florida near Miami, so they are unaccustomed to the cool mountain air.  Both ladies have blonde hair and tattoos and backpacks that are way too heavy.  They seem to bond instantly with the older women.  I wonder if I should move forward or stick around for the company.  I have miles to make, but it has been a day since I’ve heard another human voice so I stay.

The women chat for a while about trail names, destinations, and a shirt they saw at Neel Gap that says What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, Except Bears, Because Bears Will Kill You. The French teacher says she is not afraid of bears, and her friend says she is terrified of grizzlies and is weary to hike west of the Mississippi.  When you see a bear in the woods, the French teacher explains, usually you see their tail as they run away from you because they are afraid of you.

I am listening to the conversation until thoughts of the Snickers bar in my pocket dominate my focus.  The women start talking about the unexpected beauty of Georgia when someone asks for my opinion, and I say, “Oh, yeah, I’m all about the flora and fauna,” which produces a big laugh and now the attention is on me.  The French teacher asks me where I’m coming from and where I’m going.  By my answers she deduces that I’m racking up big miles.  I tell her I’m discovering the benefits of stretching out the daily hike rather than racing to the next shelter. 

“You want to shorten your stride,” the French teacher tells me.  “Hike up hills so that you don’t overexert yourself.  You won’t sweat as much.  You won’t stop as often, and you can keep going and going.  That’s how we hike,” she points to her friend with the brown hair and Southern accent.  “We’re slow, but we don’t stop.”

We start hiking up the mountain, and I pay attention to my pace.  I take my normal step forward and then shorten my stride.  Even as I slow down, I am hiking faster than the other women, so I wish them a good afternoon and plow ahead with my new mantra:  hike longer, not faster.  Be patient.  Take baby steps.

Abandoned Roads, Part IV

I originally planned to hike fifteen miles to the next shelter, but I want to go farther.  After consulting my trail guide that tells me about distances, campsites, and creeks, I push onward and vouch to camp near a water source eight miles up the trail.  I had never camped on the trail by myself.  I prefer the shelters because the protection of the walls and the company of hikers assuage my worries so that I can sleep peacefully.  The idea of camping by myself is both exciting and frightening.  Without the shelter, I will be more vulnerable to the creatures of the night.  I read a sign on a tree that says black bears are particularly active in this area, and this knowledge does little to comfort me.

I walk nonstop for six hours.  I eat two Snickers bars, two granola bars, dried pineapples, dried mangos, slivers of dried coconut, salted cashews, and fig newtons.  I drink three liters of water, but this is not enough.  I pee while walking, and my pee is dark yellow, so I drink more.  I come to a stream and wash my face and hair with my soaked bandana.  

A pudgy old man with a thick white beard approaches me from the opposite direction, and we greet each other.  This man looks familiar.  I know this man from somewhere, but I cannot place him, so I stop thinking about him.  The answer will come. 

I consume miles like they are the white dots in front of Pacman.  I am just like Pacman.  I am obsessed with progress, and I want to eat fresh fruit.  All the books I read to prepare myself for this hike mention food dreams.  I crave raspberries.  I want to stuff a handful into my mouth and suck on them and let the juices drip down my throat.  Most of my food is dehydrated and preserved, so my insides feel salty and dry.  Raspberries would satisfy my needs, but I do not have raspberries so I must learn to live without them for now.  When I get to the nearest grocery store I will probably buy more than I need.

By seven o’clock I have not found the creek, so I decide to stop on the mountaintop.  I camp behind a large rock that looks like a skateboard ramp.  There is a fire pit and a spectacular view of the blood-orange sun which will disappear in one hour.  The mountain is steep, so I doubt I will have trouble with bears here.  Nonetheless, I build a small fence around my campsite with fallen branches.  A fire, too, will protect me.    

I brush off a flat patch of ground near the fire pit and the ramp-rock, and I clear away the stones and twigs.  I assemble my miniscule tent and gather kindling.  I fortify the pit with heavy chunks of stone so the fire doesn’t spread to the surrounding forest.  I throw my empty rice packets and candy bar wrappers onto a pile of wood and douse the trash with alcohol and ignite the mixture.  I fill my cooking pot with water, and I set the pot on a flat log near licking flames.  I eat spoonfuls of peanut butter while waiting for the water to boil.

When the water is bubbling, I dump in the instant rice and stir with my Spork.  Camping equipment rarely produces satisfying meals, and tonight is no different.  The rice is cooked unevenly, but I am too tired to care.  I am sitting on the ramp-rock and crunching the uncooked morsels while the rest of the slimy concoction slides down my gullet. 

When I am at home I often eat dinner in front of the TV, but that is not an option here.  I have my book with me, but I don’t feel like reading so I take in my surroundings instead.  I can see the hills in the distance through a clearing between trees. 

The mountains are tinged with a blue haze, and the sky is a fading crimson emanating from a burning orb.  I feel tears course down my cheeks.  The release is uncontrollable.  Like a fever breaking, my body is repairing itself so that it can be whole again.  This view should be enough for me, but there is something missing.  I have walked on Hawaiian beaches and along the Champs-Élysées and through a jungle in Africa, and all the while I have been searching.

 

There is no one here with me on the mountain.  Devoid of all attachments amidst this solitude, certain truths become evident.  I am not concerned how far I will hike.  I do not think of success or failure.  I will go wherever I want to go.

I think of what makes me feel at peace like a mountaintop sunset does.  I know the answer, and she is as beautiful as this moment.

Abandoned Roads, Part III

I am climbing Blood Mountain when I see three older men taking a breather on a rock.  I am wearing a thin polyester hoody with the hood up to protect my neck against the rays of the sun.

“Your lady friend is almost to the top,” one of the men says.

“I’m not hiking with anyone,” I say. “I am chasing a woman, however, but she’s a lot farther away than Blood Mountain.”

The three men laugh at this, but I am not joking.  Erin is frequently on my mind.  I mentally create a scene I am likely to inhabit in my future.  She meets me in Baxter State Park in Maine.  When I first see her, I sprint toward her, undeterred by the weight on my back.  I wrap my arms around her and smother her in kisses even though I am covered in sweat and have not showered in two weeks.  I am fizzing with joy, and my energy is boundless.  There is so much pleasure released in my brain I want to howl like an animal.  For so long I have deprived myself of her touch, her warmth, her company, and now she is here, but we are new people.  She is clean and professional and goal-oriented.  And I am dirty and broke and directionless. 

Then that anxiety creeps up on me, and I snap out of this reverie.  I am a man in the woods surrounded by trees.  Erin is searching for jobs in cities like Boston and Chicago, and I am sleeping with mice, staring at dirt, tripping over rocks, and hauling my only possessions up a mountain.  I am overwhelmed with an urge to call her and ask her something really important.  What do you hope will happen with us when you move?  I turn on my phone and discover I have no service.  I am cut off from the world.  I can’t get the answers I want.  My future is a frustrating mystery.

I take another step forward and console myself:  You’re one step closer.  I flood my mind with memories and forward projections.  I am either living in the past or dreaming of the future.  I am thinking of the day when I am reunited with Erin and I tell her about today.  I will say something like:  “I’m glad that’s over with, and I’m here now.”  But first I have to get through today.

On the trail, I catch up to the woman the old men were talking about.  She’s wearing a baseball cap, and she’s nearly out of breath.

“We’re almost to the top,” she says.  “I’d say we got about ten percent left.”

“This will all be over soon,” I say.

I pass her and ascend the final peak.  I lower my bag onto a flat rock and free myself from its gravitational pull.  

On the top of Blood Mountain lies a cabin made of stone.  Two women greet me from the front porch steps.  We start talking about the trail, and an extremely relevant question arises:  why are we doing this?

“I like to think of this as retrospective fun,” I say.  “This hike is a lot more fun when you can look back on it from a more comfortable place in the future.”

The women laugh at this and validate the truth to my statement.  I hoist myself on top of a rocky slab and stare at the world below me.  I am four thousand feet above sea level, and I can see the sky.  This means I have service, so I call Erin and tell her I’m considering a change of plans.

“If I only make it to Pennsylvania, I’ll be okay with that,” I say.

 

“You’re saying this already?” she asks.  “Don’t you think you should give this more time?”

I want to say, “You don’t understand.” It is easy to have confidence when you are inside your house.  Your perspective changes when you are drinking, eating, sleeping, living in the woods, and you still have two thousand miles to go.  But I don’t want to alienate her; I want her to understand my mindset. 

“I have to be willing to accept whatever progress I make,” I say.

“I’ll support you no matter what,” she says.  “But I don’t want you to regret your choice later in life.”

I promise her that I will be free of guilt and that I will not succumb to fantasizing about the life I never had.  Her phone call invigorates me, and I am flooded with euphoria as I start walking with a sense of urgency.  I conjure up anything positive to maintain this energy boost.  I think of all the support my family has given me.  My mother bought me my shoes, my fleece, my gloves.  Because of her I am comfortable.  My aunt graciously allowed me to live in her home for free.  Because of her I can afford to hike the trail.  I think of the next time we will all sit down and have a meal together.  My separation from them makes me want to appreciate them even more when we are reunited. 

These thoughts fuel me, but eventually I run out of gas and my motivation wanes.  The pain in my knees flares up and boredom sets in.  I’m back in the trees again.  Aside from the occasional cardinal or monarch butterfly, there is little to see.  I wish I had my iPod, but before I left my house I vowed not to rely on technology to distract my wandering mind.  I wanted to attain peace of mind, but now I want to listen to familiar songs or listen to my Portuguese lessons.

 

A few years ago, I wanted to teach English in Brazil, but I went to Europe instead and never used a lick of that language.  Now it would be useful to occupy my mind and connect me to the outside world. As a last resort, I sing choruses of songs that I know and make movie references out loud to entertain myself.  I am hungry and lonely and tired of these endless hills. The hike begins to feel like punishment.   

   

Then I start thinking:  What if I chose to end the hike in Pennsylvania instead of Maine?  The end would be more fitting since Pennsylvania is my home state, and the trail intersects a town right by my aunt and uncle’s house.  I could be there by the Fourth of July.  My family will be there, and we can celebrate my return to civilization.  Fireworks will explode in the sky and signal the end of an era.  I can make it there in forty-five days.  There will be thirst, hunger, frustration, impatience, sadness, and pain.  All of that will end, and undoubtedly there will also be beauty, serenity, freedom, and growth. I can endure for forty-five more days.

 

I will not walk to Maine, and I am incredibly relieved by this thought.  Pennsylvania is my new goal.  Right then my life splits in two.  I can create a world of what-could-have-been.  If I chose to finish the trail, my story might have a different ending, but that is no longer my story.  There are places I will never see and paths that I will never take. 

My mind craves completeness.  I become attached to the results that I have perceived in my mind.  The judge in my subconscious holds me to high standards; anything less than perfection is unacceptable.  But I am here to alter those beliefs.  All those thoughts of summiting on Mount Katahdin are just bubbles that pop inside my brain.  The past is full of abandoned possibilities, and the future is malleable.  I must adjust accordingly.

Abandoned Roads, Part II

After the sun sinks below the mountains, I turn on my headlamp.  Sparse moonlight filters through the umbrage of trees and casts a greyness over the campsite.  I am writing in my journal when I hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet.  A shadow bounces behind me on the shelter wall.  I turn around and there is a mouse staring at me with black eyes.  He approaches me, but when I pretend to charge, he scurries away.

Without the heat of the sun, the temperature drops significantly. I am shivering in my leggings and fleece.  I return to my writing as Cavin and Brian enter the camp.  (I would not learn their names until the next day.)  Cavin is slender and wears a thick red jacket.  Brian is stocky and is clad in shorts and a thermal long-sleeved shirt.  They are celebrating their birthdays and getting their feet wet for an eventual thru-hike.  All they have to do is save up the money.  Brian tells me his strategy.  I can tell by his tone that he likes being in charge but he also possesses a genuine fondness for his friend.

While Brian hangs the food bags and filters water, Cavin collects an ample supply of twigs and branches.  He sets the kindling ablaze by sparking dryer lint.  Cavin and I sit on separate logs as we huddle around the flames.  The radiant warmth of the fire provides a tremendous comfort to my body and an even bigger psychological boost.  At this point I do not even know this man’s name, but we form an immediate connection based on an instinctual need for protection and comfort. 

“How far are you hiking?” Cavin asks. 

“As far as I need to,” I say. 

The northern terminus of the trail lies at the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine.  Although Maine has always been my goal since I first discovered the trail, I don’t want to mention Maine in the beginning.  I don’t want to become fixated on the destination, but this is easier said than done.  Already I feel the urge to rush forward to get this over with and reach the next stage of my life.

   

“What made you want to hike the trail?” he asks.

“I want to simplify my life,” I say.  “But I also want to appreciate what I have at home.  I’m not out here to shun modern technology because I love my cell phone and Netflix and cars that can drive faster than I can walk.”

He also agrees that refrigerators are a better option than carrying your food and that basically modern man cannot easily regress to caveman standards.  I ask him his own question. He works at Wells Fargo, but his job isn’t quite as exhilarating as the time he spent living on the north shore of Oahu.  He wants to reclaim that sense of excitement. 

“Exploration and adventure is what life is all about,” he says.

Brian returns from his nightly chores and quickly steals the spotlight.  I welcome his loquaciousness, for I am eager to discover what brings hikers like Cavin and Brian to collide with me.  Brian is a former military veteran who was deployed in Iraq.  He never planned on driving a truck, but he was assigned this role to replace drivers who were killed by IEDs.  I ask him if he was afraid to take the job. 

“Of course,” he says.  “Every single day I knew I could die any minute.” 

He then recounts a story that illustrates his proximity to death.  A senior officer had asked him to drive out to an Iraqi’s house, but he was not briefed on the nature of the mission.  Nonetheless, he followed his orders and drove the officer to the location, where he was told to wait in the car.  He waited, not knowing how long this would take.  Ten minutes pass.  A half an hour.  Forty five minutes.  Brian starts worrying that something is wrong.  He’s afraid to go inside, but staying in the car isn’t much of a comfort either. 

He decides to enter the Iraqi’s house, and the host offers him a cup of tea.  He had been raised to be respectful to his elders, so he accepted their hospitality.  Nothing sketchy seemed to be going on; everyone was just talking.  Brian sips the tea.  The officer tells him it’s time to go, and they drive to the base.

 

After returning safely, Brian starts to feel queasy, so he lies down to sleep off the pain but can’t.  He becomes violently ill and reports to medical, who tell him they are too busy to help him.  There is nothing he can do but be sick and wait for the pain to pass.  Brian suspects the cup of tea is the root of the problem.  He thinks he was poisoned.

Back in the Georgia woods, I listen to Brian’s story intently.  I am fascinated by war stories, but I am reluctant to ask him questions in fear I may bring up the wrong memory.  Instead, I tell him that hiking the trail will be a cakewalk compared to what he endured in Iraq. 

We sit in silence for a while as the fire flickers weakly.  The stars sprinkle the night sky like pixie dust.  I bid my new friends good night and climb up to the loft.  In my very own private suite, I wiggle into my sleeping bag and drift off to sleep thinking I could be resting in worse places.

Abandoned Roads, Part I

For the last five years of my life, I considered myself a loner.  I usually stay away from group activities, and I rarely attend parties.  I’ve had several internal debates as to whether I should continue reading my book or socialize.  Usually the book would win.  However, when I got a job in Hawaii onboard a cruise ship packed with 900 crew members and 2,000 guests, I became rather attached to people——or to one in particular, I should say.  Before I made my first step on the Appalachian Trail, I questioned the direction I was heading:  was now really the time to live a Jeremiah Johnson-like existence?

I try not to think of this question, but it haunts me.  Nonetheless, I am determined to hike as far and as fast as I can.  My mind is occupied with pleasant memories.  I feast on happy thoughts to quiet my inner protests.  For this same reason, parents buy their children sugary cereal so they shut up on the ride home from the grocery store.  This trick can only last so long, and this is going to be a long ride. 

Fortunately I don’t need to come up with an alternative means of diversion right away because I am too busy watching my step.  The trail is surprisingly narrow and is sporadically studded with rocks and tree roots.  I cannot believe this tiny corridor in the wilderness stretches across the east coast of the United States.

When I reach the first shelter 0.2 miles beyond the summit of Springer Mountain, I approach the privy uncertain what I will find.  Shitting in the woods is not a topic that is covered by many authors in great detail.  The exception is Cheryl Strayed. In her book Wild, an account of her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, Strayed describes digging a small hole for her number twos.  Prior to living without running water in West Africa, I was hesitant to use public restrooms.  Nearly three years of traveling has forced me to live comfortably outside my comfort zone.

From the outside, the privy resembles a cross between a tree house and a stall that George Costanza would disapprove.  The structure is partially enclosed by four walls that don’t reach the floor.  There is no door, but you can tell if the privy is occupied if you see somebody’s feet.  After determining the space is vacant, I walk up the stairs and turn left past a half-wall.  Beyond this is a toilet without a tank and flusher.  I lift the lid to discover a horde of flies buzzing around a pile of feces and a smattering of toilet paper.  I never expected a proper sewage system this far away from civilization, so I show no signs of disgust.

This party is BYOTP, but the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club is nice enough to provide reading material.  In case you were curious, the Trail Club illuminates the decomposition process occurring beneath your buttocks.  Worms and various insects are nature’s plumbers.  The club even includes a list of instructions regarding how you can facilitate this process.  Rule number one is that you cannot go number one in the privy because components in urine disrupt the decomposition.  After years of mastering potty training, you must condition yourself to pee in the woods before sitting on the throne.  When you’ve performed the ablutions, you toss in a handful of wood chips to further aid the organic breakdown.

 

With that conundrum debunked, I decide to crack the mystery of the bear cables.  Black bears are particularly active in northern Georgia, so the Trail Club provides these cables so that the bears don’t eat you or your food.  I see two steel cables at the base of a thick tree.  They run upward at a forty-five degree angle toward a horizontal steel line.  This line is suspended about fifteen feet off the ground and fixed between two trees.  Food bags already dangle from hooks above me, but how the blazes did these people manage to reach them?  

I briefly search for a long, sturdy pole, but I find none.  I deduce the answer lies in the twin steel cables, so I tug on them without success.  (When I later speak to my fellow newbie hikers, I learn this is a popular mistake).  The hooks aren’t coming any closer to me.  I retire to the shelter feeling like a stupid bear.

The shelters on the trail can vary in size and construction materials, but this particular one is a two-storied, three-sided wooden affair.  The floor is raised off the ground so that raccoons or bears can’t easily snuggle with you.  The structure is very basic:  there are pegs on the wall where you can hang your backpack, and there is ample floor space for you to sleep.  This shelter also has a ladder nailed onto the wall. 

I climb up the planks to the loft, which is smaller but entirely enclosed.  I blow up my air mattress and roll out my sleeping bag.  My pillow is a compression bag full of my clean clothes.  I decide to sleep upstairs because I have more protection against the wind and fewer mice to contend with.  The varmints are notorious for pitter-pattering around at night in the shelters.  They chew their way through backpacks to feed on crumbs, and sometimes they crawl across your face and into your sleeping bag.

With my bed made, I take a seat at the picnic table just outside the shelter and prepare my dinner.  I pour two cups of water into my tinker-tot, titanium pot and drip an ounce of denatured alcohol into my stove and ignite the flame with a candle lighter.  I fashion a windscreen out of aluminum foil, and I wrap this around my stove like a protective fence.  During a practice hike in central Florida, the first time I tested out my cookware in the wilderness I lit my stove and my hand on fire.  My culinary skills are still inferior to Bobby Flay, but at least I didn’t burn down the picnic table. 

Rice is on the menu tonight and will be on every night for the foreseeable future.  As I wait for my water to boil, I try not to think of my limited dinner choices, so I distract myself by reading American Sniper by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.  Before setting out for the trail, I strategically composed a reading list.  I want my mental journey to coincide with my physical journey.  I chose primarily American literature, both fiction and nonfiction, that deal with ambition.  I want to see the country through the eyes of a soldier, a news anchor, a stock broker, a drug addict, an outdoorsman who cuts his arm off to survive, the Great Gatsby, ordinary people, and a young boy named Huckleberry Finn.

The common thread between these stories is that they are all journeys of wild dreamers.  I am on a journey and have been since I graduated from college.  I decided to embark on a life of adventure rather than advance my career from a desk in an office.  This hike was designed to be my pilgrimage to my official adulthood, also known as the time to get serious.

 

I have this image in my mind of where I would like to be in the near future.  I imagine a happier me, the five-years-from-now version that guidance counselors often inquire about.  Then I look down at my feet to see where I stand now.  The destination is apparent, but the path is not clearly marked.  I’m reminded of a tactic my professor used to write his screenplays.  He wrote the first fifteen pages, and then he skipped to the end and finished the script.  The toughest job, in both writing and life, is filling in that gap.  Is my story heading in the right direction?  Or is this a rough draft I’ll have to rewrite?   

  

Before I can ruminate on questions for which I have no answers, a skinny fellow sits down next to me at the picnic table and introduces himself.  His trail name is Snickers.  Years ago, during his thru-hike, he earned his moniker by eating a lot of candy bars.  He is out for a weekend hike with his buddy, and tonight they will catch a shuttle at the nearest road crossing.

I am still feeling apprehensive about taking on such a mammoth project, but I am consoled to meet a real person who has finished the hike.  I fire off questions, but I start off small.  First I ask him how to properly use the bear cables.  Apparently there is a hook on the tree to unlatch.  Once I release the hook, the two steel cables transform into a simple pulley system that a child could understand.  He gives me advice about how much water I should carry at any given time, and he tells me to take care of my feet.

“What motivated you to hike the AT?” I ask him.

“When I was in the Boy Scouts, we’d go out for a weekend hike, and whenever we stopped I noticed that the trail kept going,” he says.  “I always wanted to see what was around the corner.”

“Did you feel different at all when you finished?”

He says whenever he was hiking he didn’t really notice a pronounced change, but when he returned home he experienced reverse culture shock.  He missed the simplicity of the routine on the trail and the quietness of nature.

“I wish I could have your sense of freedom,” he tells me.  “You have all the time in the world.”

While I was preparing my dinner, I overheard Snickers talking to his friend, a squat, thirtyish man with a burly beard.  Based on their conversation, I infer that Snickers is married and is anticipating a child.  Snickers mentions he is cutting his hike short because he has a family emergency——a positive occasion, he explains.  I choose not to dig into his personal life, but based on his demeanor I can tell he is quite pleased with how everything turned out.  He has a successful career and will soon start a family, yet he envies my lifestyle devoid of any major attachments.  Conversely, I yearn for his lifestyle one day.  The grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side theme would soon become prevalent during my conversations with other hikers.

Even the briefest encounter with another hiker can produce a meaningful bond.  When you strip yourself down to life’s basic necessities and battle the elements together, you cut right to the heart of the matter with your fellow hikers.  We are all out here for a reason, and that makes us scrutinize the paths in front of us:  What is important to me?  What am I searching for?

After finishing the chocolate pudding, a gift from Snickers, I brush my teeth and hang my food bag on the bear cables with ease.  The unknown quickly dissolves and assimilates into my routine.  One minute I am stumped by a problem, and the next I don’t even have to think.  My actions become automatic, and before I know it I have adapted to the rules of this new world.  Snickers’ advice provides a much-needed injection of confidence, but once he and his friend leave I realize how much I don’t want to be alone, especially at night.