Introduction |

Hiking the Appalachian Trail – 2001

Thursday, January 11, 2001
The Resolution

I had some friends over one night, and mentioned the possibility of hiking the Appalachian Trail. The conversation went a bit like this…

SENSIBLE BUDDY: So, did you decide when you’re going back to school yet?

ME: Well you know guys, I just can’t get this Appalachian Trail idea out my head.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: Indeed Jamie, a man’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.

ME: Yeah, but, it seems crazy, you know? I don’t have a great deal of experience backpacking. Walking up and down mountains with forty pounds on your back for six months isn’t exactly easy, and what if I can’t take the rain, the cold, get attacked by a bear, get bitten by a poisonous snake, get Lyme Disease, get homesick, or just quit, or… Have you ever seen the movie Deliverance? Maybe hitting the books would be the most sensible thing to do after all.

WALT WHITMAN: A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

MARK TWAIN: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

ME: Now that you phrase it like that…

FERRIS BUELLER: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

MOONLIGHT GRAHAM: At the time you don’t think much of it. You know, we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives as they’re happening to us. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that was the only day.

SENSIBLE BUDDY: But still, why exactly would anybody want to do this? I could just drive from Georgia to Maine in a few days, and look at the mountains along the highway from my car window!

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…

ME: Yes! Exactly!

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

JOHN MUIR: Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.

FRENCH DUDE: You don’t frighten us, English pig dog! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so called Arthur king, you and all your silly English kiniggits!

ME: Um, okay French dude. Anyway, the trail is over two thousand miles long. That sure is a long way to walk…

YODA: Judge me by my size, do you, mmmmmm? Size matters not!

FRENCH DUDE: I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal, food trough wiper! I fart in you general direction. Your mother was a hamster, and you father smelt of elderberries!

ARTHUR: If you’re French, then what are doing in England?

FRENCH DUDE: Mind your own business!

ME: Okay, okay, that does it! I don’t want to be taunted a second time. I’m going down to Georgia to try and hike the whole trail, beginning on April 3rd.

YODA: Try? Hmph! Do or do not, there is no try.

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Tuesday, January 16, 2001
The Basis

“I don’t know what I’m gonna find, maybe nothin’ at all, maybe a world I can call mine.”
-Bruce Springsteen, from “Frankie”

“There is something out there Ray, and if I have the courage to go through with this… what a story it will make.”
-James Earl Jones, from Field of Dreams

“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”
-Tim Robbins, from The Shawshank Redemption

That’s enough quotes. This is me. It’s 2001. I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Have you ever been out driving during the evening, and on the horizon you see a sunset so spectacular that it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road? Usually you’re so preoccupied that you won’t even notice. If you only gave yourself the freedom to pull over, turn off the engine, get out, sit your butt on the hood, and take a moment to stop and enjoy it for once, then maybe life would be just a little bit better. The same goes for all those beautiful starry nights that we pass up because of all our priorities. Open the window and take a look when you can. Take a walk in the moonlight. Get some fresh air. But wait, no, there’s always things to do, work to be completed, errands to run. The moment passes. Things go on like this forever, and that sacred point in time when all of your work is done and you’re absolutely free never comes.

I plan to live every moment in the upcoming months free of such trouble.

I guess I always liked to explore a bit, and see what was over the next hill. Since we were in grade school, my friend Eric and I liked to roam around the woods near where we grew up. We used to draw detailed maps of all the trails in them and everything, always looking for different trails that we had overlooked before. We liked to ride our bikes too, like every kid. By the time we got to middle school and ditched the Huffy’s for real bikes, there was no stopping us. We rode everywhere we could, every weekend. There was always something especially exciting about riding up the local South Mountain. It had always been the border of the world that I had known, and it was thrilling to climb it under my own power and see what there was on the other side. Once I remember riding up it one Saturday morning, and when we stopped to take a break, I could see the whole valley spread out below me; what a feeling. In eighth grade, I used to sit in social studies class early in the morning gazing out the window at the mountain, wondering where fifth street (The road we’d ride) went over it. The hobby faded and I haven’t been bicycling much since Andy, one of my best friends that loved to bike, moved away to Wisconsin in ninth grade.

My buddies and I soon afterward found ourselves in the driver’s seats of big, loud cars. That ruined everything, in a sense. A one hour bicycle adventure was now a comfortable fifteen minute drive in a car. The mountains and woods became background scenery to a much busier and more “important” way of life, and the world suddenly became much smaller and started moving terribly fast. My friends that lived less than a block away would now use their cars to come over, but we still explored. We would drive on the highways listening to music sometimes deep into the night, as long as we dared to, just to see where and how far they went. There was even talk of a road trip to Wisconsin. It never became a reality, as such ideas so often don’t.

Well, the summer after junior year, my friend Brendan and I drove to the beach. We got terribly sunburned, but that’s another story. Anyway, when we got home, burned and tired, he forgot a Pennsylvania road map in my car. I kept it. I love maps. It was useful for travelling to see high school sporting events, concerts, and all sorts of things.

Now as chance would have it, nearly a year later, I noticed this map featured a small dotted line that wound through the state, labelled “Appalachian Trail.” Huh? Appalachian Trail? Was this THE Appalachian Trail? Of course it was. I had no idea that it was so close to home. I also happened to discover that the trail passes through Bake Oven Knob, a local birdwatching site that I had been to on a field trip in sixth grade. I made some casual inquiries. “So, uh, how do you get to Bake Oven Knob?” I drove up there one day like a shot, ditched the car, and started walking. This was simply amazing. From here I could go one way, all the way to Georgia, and the other way, to a far off lonely peak in Maine… all on a wild, beautiful footpath through the mountains and woods! And the view from the knob, oh, the view! That was the summer of ’99 after I graduated from high school. The notion of the dream was born.

Nine out of ten people with high hopes that set off from Springer Mountain each year, intending to hike the full trail, don’t make it to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. That is a staggering figure. The trail is much more than the romantic notion of living a dream and a collection of inspiring quotes. The people that leave the trail are just like me and the rest of us, making the plans, ditching a job, spending the money, telling everybody they know, and after a few weeks, they’ve had enough; or injure a knee, or something. I guess nobody can really tell me enough about the rain and cold and bugs and dirt and continuous climbs. I often wonder how this adventure will end for me.

There’s only one way to find out.

See you out there.

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Saturday, March 31, 2001
Farewell

So it’s finally time for me to go. I thought it would never come. It’s odd not to have any planning to do anymore. My bag is packed. My maildrops are prepared and sent. My hair is buzzed down to almost nothing. I payed off all of my bills. I had my wisdom teeth removed. Hiking gear, Coke cans, and CD’s are no longer strewn everywhere about my room. I got the go-ahead from the doctor after only a tetanus shot. My taxes are filed. My car is at my dad’s. I got a calling card and medical insurance. My rain gear has been tested, my boots broken in. Everything has come together so far. Now all I have to do is hike.

A number of big thank-yous are in order: to Mathew Olsen and Rick Ashley for all the work that goes into providing this site; my mom and family for tolerating my total absorbtion in this and my apparent disregard for my future; my hip, saxophone-wielding brother Steve for driving me all the way to Georgia; my sister for being goofy; her boyfriend for helping me with scanning my photos; my step dad Greg for transcribing my journal entries, handling my mail, and everything in between; my dad for taking care of my car; and surely to everybody in the hiking community I’ve been in touch with through the forums and e-mail for being essential to my planning; and those who have already sent me encouraging e-mails and signed the guestbook.

The wallpaper on my computer screen for the past months has been a photograph of Katahdin. It was shot by a thru-hiker from Abol Bridge. He had walked over two thousand miles and experienced everything under the sun in order to see that mountain. It’s now time for me to turn away from the image on my computer, unplug it, strap on my pack, and venture north to see Katahdin for myself.

I’ll leave you (or rather, welcome you!) with some verse from J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS, called “The Old Walking Song”.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, If I can
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet
And whither then? I cannot say.

a final look in my bedroom

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Monday, April 02, 2001
Dahlonega, Georgia

ROAD TRIP! What a perfect day for a road trip it was. Did I mention that I’m writing from Georgia?! My brother Steve and I were on our way from Allentown at 6:30 a.m. this morning. Have you ever seen, in the Indiana Jones movies, how they show a map and plot a dotted line on it to show where he’s travelling? Well, you can just draw a big old line from PA to GA. We’re staying at a Days Inn tonight, fifteen miles from the trailhead. We got here at about nine p.m. It looks like they’re calling for rain all week and possible thunderstorms…

The route we drove followed the AT amazingly close. It was such an exciting thing to see highway exits for all the trail towns: Port Clinton, Duncannon, Harper’s Ferry, Front Royal, Waynesborough, Pearisburg, Troutville, and now finally here. We were on I-81 for a long time. The weather was beautiful, the countryside was beautiful, the music was good… I couldn’t ask for more.

Maybe things were going almost too well. I was driving through Virginia so my brother could rest a bit. Checking out the livestock in the fields, catching glimpses of the Shenandoahs, kickin’ Bruce’s “Born to Run” album, watching the miles fly by, and all of a sudden I come around a bend … COP!!!

“License and registration, please.”
“Right here, sir.”
“You watchin’ your speed?”
“A little too fast…”
“Eighty-five miles per hour. You just sit tight now, I’ll be right back.”

Welcome to Virginia. My brother was saying to the trooper, like, “But you see sir, he’s going to hike the Appalachian Trail!” Needless to say, this guy didn’t care. I got my ticket (a 65 zone) and went on our merry way. My brother was driving just as fast as me the whole way down, too. Just my dumb luck.

The change in climate throughout the day was amazing. We went from cold and raining in Allentown, to sunny and nearly seventy degrees here. Spring was more and more evident as we continued south, through the greener and budding trees, and the Southern accent just kept getting thicker. I could barely decipher what the kid in the Kentucky Fried Chicken here in Dahlonega was saying. I was afraid maybe he wanted to duel with his banjo! Haha.

I’m just so terribly psyched about the starting tomorrow morning. When I finally saw the Georgia mountains on the horizon in the setting sun, well, I could hardly contain myself. It’s a good thing we had a long day today, or else I’d probably have a lot of trouble sleeping tonight.

Off to Springer Mountain!

The Appalachian Trail___________Georgia