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.