Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Walker

  Walking through the streets of Damascus were bikers speaking many different languages.

  The coast-to-coast National Bike Trail runs through Damascus. It was hard not to notice how much less famished they looked than the hikers strolling around. After all, while they traveled considerably greater distances on their bicycles every day, they usually slept in motels and ate real food.

  Just three days before there had been upwards of ten thousand hikers and ex-hikers celebrating “Trail Days” in this tiny little town with a population of one thousand. Most had camped out in a field known as “Tent City.” Events ranged from a parade down the main street, to a best-ass contest among female hikers in a section known as “Assville,” to a speech by Warren Doyle.

  The Place is a well-known Methodist Church hostel, with the sole purpose of putting up hikers. The four-dollar-per-night suggested payment was on the honor system. I had run into a healthy-looking, brunette named Lizard on the main street on the way into town. Surprisingly, Lizard, who was in her late-twenties swung by The Place to see if I wanted to eat, which added to my sky-high morale. In disbelief Nurse Ratchet asked, “Did you ask her on a date?”

  “In fact I did,” I responded, “and she said that with extensive plastic surgery it’s not at all out of the question.”

  At dinner Lizard appeared to be in just the opposite spirits as me. “I’ve been with a great hiking group, but we all got separated and some quit. I’ve considered getting off the trail myself.”

  “My big problem is I’m hemorrhaging weight,” I said.

  “You want to know something funny,” she laughed. “Almost every guy out here has lost at least twenty pounds, but I don’t know a single girl who has lost over ten pounds. I’ve actually gained six pounds.”

  “Get outta’ here,” I said in disbelief. “We’re expending five-to-six thousand calories per day. You can’t carry that much food.”

  “Oh, but we’re different animals from you males; I’m telling you,” she said. This sounded amazing so I listened intently. “Even thin women have lots of fat reserves for child-bearing, breast-feeding and so forth,” she continued. “And when you do this much exercise those fat reserves turn into muscle, which weighs more than fat. So we get thinner out here, but we don’t lose as much weight and get stronger.”

  “Well I hear you and believe you,” I said taking in all this. “But short of a sex change I’ve got to figure out a survival strategy for the next seventeen hundred miles. At the rate I’m losing weight I won’t make it.”

  Chapter 9

  Of all the creatures on earth, humans are the only true walkers. Various creatures crawl, climb, swim, or even fly. Others hop and gallop. Many run very fast. Humans walk. Scientists have noted that the human bone structure is ideal for walking. We are embarrassingly slow runners compared to other mammals. For sitting we are especially poorly constructed, and not much better for standing. But the human bipedal mode of walking is unrivaled.

  One would reasonably think that a book on the seemingly mundane subject of walking would be quite tedious, to say the least. But Rebecca Solnit in her marvelously researched Wanderlust: A History of Walking, actually brings the topic to life.

  Various intellectuals have even been attracted to this subject. “Of all the exercises, walking is the best,” wrote President, architect, author, and walker, Thomas Jefferson. Jean Jacques Rousseau was the writer who wrote the most of walking. “Never have I realized my own existence so much, never have I been so much alive,” he wrote rhapsodically, “than when walking.”

  The champion walkers are the British. A greater cultural value is attached to walking there than anywhere else. On weekends eighteen million Brits head for the countryside and walk for recreation. Private property rights are much less absolute in Britain than in the U.S., and they readily tramp all over fields and pastures owned by others. “There are no barriers on the moors and you say hello to everyone and overcome our damn British reserve,” says British outdoor writer Roly Smith. “Walking is classless, one of the few sports that is classless.” And it presumably is no coincidence that the average British life is several years longer than the average American life, and the rates of obesity and other pathologies are sharply reduced from our levels.

  Dramatic historical events have often centered around walking. President Carter recounts in his memoirs how he broke the deadlock in the Camp David talks by shepherding the Israeli and Egyptian leaders away from their advisors for a walk around the wooded compound. President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev reported the same phenomenon at their first summit when they headed off along Lake Geneva with only one interpreter present. And Martin Luther King’s marches were pivotal in the civil rights movement. One Buddhist magazine even made the extravagant claim that all the world’s problems would be solved if only the leaders would walk!

  Unfortunately, the golden age of walking has passed. The 1970 U.S. Census showed, for the first time in the history of any nation, that the majority of Americans were suburbanites. This suburbanization has radically changed daily life, usually in ways averse to traveling on foot. Of course, suburban areas aren’t designed for walking at all, but for driving. A recent study contained the eye-opening statistic that more than 20 percent of Americans are now obese—not to be confused with merely overweight or fat. Do the math. The nation’s population just hit three hundred million which means we have sixty million obese people—equal to the entire population of Great Britain. This is a national tragedy. Of course, many of the greatest fortunes in history—Ford, Firestone, Rockefeller—have been reaped by those who made it easier to travel sitting on one’s bum. But the great irony is that speed has made travel not more interesting, but more boring. Just compare the palpably buoyant mood of someone who has completed a long day’s hike with the nauseous mood of a jet-lagged traveler.

  “I have two doctors—my left leg and my right,” wrote George Trevelyan. That is a simple, but profound, truth.

  The AT covers more miles in Virginia than any other state—more than five hundred from Damascus in the southwest corner all the way up until crossing into West Virginia at Harper’s Ferry, north of Washington D.C. All during the tough, jagged mountains of North Carolina I kept hearing, “Just wait for Virginia. It’s a flat speedway.” But Warren Doyle had said, “Watch out for Virginia. It may not be as difficult as Georgia and North Carolina, but it’s tough. A lot of people drop out here.” Thus was coined the term “Virginia Blues.”

  Two days out from Damascus I arrived at Mount Rogers, the highest point in Virginia. It was a bit of a surprise that the trail did not go over the summit because it’s often said the AT leaves no summits uncovered. The trail then enters Grayson Highlands State Park, a marquee point on the AT. Several miles are exposed, without tree cover in rocky meadows. Wild, feral ponies roam throughout the park. A frequently heard hiker complaint is that in the summer the trail becomes one long green canopy or tunnel so it was nice to get some broad, open vistas. But it also entailed straining to follow blazes painted on rocks for miles.

  At the Hurricane Mountain Shelter that night I ran into Lizard again. Her spirits seemed greatly lifted because she had been reunited with her hiking partner, Fork Man.

  “Dude, how tall are you?” Fork Man opened up our relationship. After I mumbled an unenthusiastic response he followed with my next least favorite question, “Do you play basketball?”

  “No,” I responded, “the money is much better in hiking than professional basketball.”

  “Wow, you must be the fastest hiker on the trail,” Fork Man exclaimed. This renewed the running debate I had been engaged in off and on since the very beginning about whether height is an advantage or disadvantage. I always took the latter position, and lost track of the number of times that much shorter hikers buzzed past me on the trail with the observation, “God, if only I had your height.” Once when I was panting up a mountain a little roadrunner named Stewy Boy shot past me and said, “No fair. Give me some of that h
eight.” I quickly yelled forward to him, “But, if I had your height I’d already be in Maine.” He quickly shot back at me a look of utter bewilderment.

  Fork Man himself was about 6’2”, and solidly built. He was in his early thirties and had apparently been a successful government contractor. But based on the earring through each nipple and large amount of marijuana he smoked on a daily basis, he appeared to have “gone counterculture.”

  I asked Fork Man, “Are you going to try to make it to Pearisburg in two days? It’s forty-two miles.”

  “Sure, just stay with me,” he said boldly. “We’ll make it there in two days.”

  “But the next shelter is twenty-six and three-tenths miles away,” I said concerned. “That’s one-tenth mile longer than a marathon.”

  “Be somebody, Skywalker.”

  I was dubious about meeting Fork Man’s challenge, but we set off in a drizzle together. Fork Man soon disappeared into the distance, despite my best efforts to keep up with him. Fortunately, the sun soon came out brilliantly, making it a good day to max out. When I got to the Jenny Knob Shelter, 12.1 miles out, Fork Man was just finishing lunch.

  “Bad news,” he said. “There’s no water in the creek down there.”

  I had started with two liters and had judiciously drunk just one, hoping to fill up somewhere along the way. But the area was in the midst of a drought.

  Appearing slightly embarrassed, Fork Man said, “The data book lists a water source at this shelter.” Then the normally commanding Fork Man meekly asked, “Do you have any extra water I could have?’

  I pulled up my liter bottle and carefully said, “A bit,” and threw it to him.

  “I’ll just take a little bit,” he promised.

  “Take a third of it,” I suggested. The fact of his drinking water I had been toting all morning clouded the situation.

  I looked at the data book and it showed no more water sources for seven more miles. “It is awful dangerous to run out of water out here,” I said.

  Fork Man nodded dutifully.

  I had gone day hiking a few years before in Chilean Patagonia and ended up with a group of Israelis. I only had brought a half-liter for the day. They all gave me a stern lecture from their military training about the absolute necessity of always staying well-hydrated. But they also had insisted on sharing their water.

  Fork Man then finished the bowl of marijuana he was smoking and headed off. A half-hour later I finished lunch and headed off again, focused on hunting for water. A mile later the trail descended steeply to Lickskillet Hollow. The most reliable water sources were usually at bottoms, such as this. But my search turned up nothing. There was nothing to do but move on. I slowly climbed the mountain out of Lickskillet Hollow with the grim knowledge that at higher elevations I was less likely to come across running water. It was a sunny, windless day.

  Suddenly, I heard something very heavy about forty yards to the right on the other side of the ridge. A quick look revealed a very heavy, jet-black animal tearing down the other side. Although I didn’t see the face, my first thought was that it might have been a wild boar because I didn’t think bears were so black. However, that night I learned that bears are, indeed, just that black, whereas wild boars are a lighter shade. Thus, I had in all probability had my first spotting of ursus Americanus, the American black bear. Besides its color, this creature had other notable characteristics. Its size and strength were awesome, its speed was blinding, and, it had an apparent total fear of me.

  Several miles later, with my water level reaching an alarming stage, the trail crossed Kimberling Creek. When I dipped my Nalgene bottle into this “creek,” the water was so cloudy I could see only the top of the bottle. I dumped it. Fortunately, a couple miles later at the point of maximum concern, I came upon a gushing stream, and it gave me a second wind. The sun had disappeared behind the hills, and I was still loping along a stream at my maximum speed of about three miles per hour. Finally, I heard voices, and Fork Man yelled out, “Skywalker, you’re a marathon man. I knew you could do it.” We had hiked 26.3 miles.

  Night Owl and his son, Quick Quiet, were there at the Waipiti Shelter as well. Night Owl was a mystery man on the trail. Various theories had been expounded on who he was. For starters he was always dressed to the eights and nines, while the rest of us were dressed like tramps. Then, there was the strange fact that he and Quick Quiet had passed me on a half-dozen occasions and were destined to pass me several more times. How could that be? He had tried thru-hiking with his teenage daughter the previous year, but she had become disillusioned over the lack of telephone contact with her friends back home and they had dropped out in Virginia. But this year Night Owl was back thru-hiking not only with his son Quick Quiet, and had his other son, Outrider, driving a van to meet them at various road crossings. Not only were they well dressed, but they always looked well fed. In fact, on this occasion he pulled out a spare corned-beef sandwich that Outrider had just this day purchased for them and offered it to me—which only added to my giddy mood.

  Night Owl and Quick Quiet pulled razors out of their backpacks and headed over to the nearby stream to bathe and shave. When they got back to the shelter Night Owl was polished to a fine sheen.

  “It is incumbent on me to provide a bit of history of this shelter,” Night Owl said. “Two women were murdered at this shelter about ten years back.”

  “Get outta’ here,” Fork Man rejoined.

  “Scouts honor,” Night Owl said. “Apparently, they were literally in the act of a homosexual liason when some hillbilly kook came up and shot them.”

  “I hope nobody spots us and gets suspicious that there happen to be four males in this shelter tonight,” I half-joked. “Let’s try to space out as much as possible.”

  It ended up that the impeccable Night Owl for once had his facts wrong. Two lesbians were murdered during lovemaking in Pennsylvania. However, two people had been killed on a separate occasion at this particular shelter. So perhaps that huge, furry animal I had seen tearing down a hill earlier in the day wasn’t the animal I needed to worry about most. Maybe it was those animals they let loose out there called humans that represent the greater threat.

  “Are you going to be stopping in Pearisburg?” I asked Fork Man before he pulled out of camp.

  “No way, man,” he said firmly. “I’m going to get a quick bite to eat and head out of town.”

  The relatively flat terrain of the previous day was short-lived as the trail gave way to a much more angular and jagged topography. At the Doc’s Knob Shelter at the eight-mile mark I wrote in the register:

  Doc’s Knob Shelter—mile 610

  5-29-05: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow hikers, fellow Americans: It is my high honor and great privilege to inform you that Pearisburg, which lies just eight miles ahead, is the most underrated town on the trail. The citizens even genuflect when smelly hikers pass by. Take extra long strides to get there as soon as possible.—SkyWalker

  There was a steep descent into Pearisburg where the trail emptied out of the woods with a motel just across the street. Better yet, the parking lot was bustling with hikers.

  In the parking lot it became clear that the group of about ten hikers all knew each other well, as they tossed the Frisbee around. A quite attractive brunette in her late twenties wearing a University of Michigan cap was sitting out taking it all in.

  “Are you all hiking together?” I asked her.

  “It’s ended up that way, yeah,” she said. “My name is Vogue, by the way.”

  “I’m Skywalker,” I replied.

  “Hi, Skywalker,” she replied.

  “Did you all start together at Springer or meet on the trail?” I asked.

  “We met and formed a group of five the first night on the trail, and have been together ever since,” she replied. “Then, we hooked up with another group of five. The ten of us have been together ever since.”

  “Wow, everybody must be on their best behavior to hang together like that,�
� I said, amazed.

  “We’ve had some colorful arguments, to be sure,” she replied, “but it’s been to everyone’s advantage to hang together.”

  Given Vogue’s grace and seemliness she seemed like an unlikely candidate for all the controversy she would soon find herself in.

  Hot weather was finally setting in after a cooler-than-average spring, and I seemed to be almost the only person on the trail happy about it. Fork Man, Lizard, and Mark, the biologist from Indiana, all became exhausted and bored, and dropped out in the middle of the 500-mile stretch known as Virginia. Like Seth before them, these were all strong, fast hikers. But they were classic victims of that congenital trail condition veteran hikers had warned about: “The Virginia Blues.”

  After the trail crosses the New River outside Pearisburg it climbs twenty-eight hundred feet to Rice Field, an exposed, grassy expanse. With the mid-day sun beating down directly on me I hurried through the wide-open field. Suddenly, I heard a sharp, hissing sound. About ten feet in front of me was a coiled rattlesnake. I had seen snakes (“no shoulders” one hiker memorably described them) almost every day up to this point, most of which didn’t appear to be terribly dangerous. But I had wondered if I would even recognize a rattlesnake when I finally saw one. Yet the way this tanned, diamond-exterior reptile in front of me rattled, it left no doubt.

  I stepped back about twenty feet, but the snake didn’t move. The way it was so tightly coiled I wondered just how far and how quickly it could uncoil and strike. A friend who is an avid hunter later told me they have the capacity to uncoil about half their length to strike. Finally, I grabbed a rock and threw it at the snake as I ran by about twenty feet to its left.