Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Walker

  Meanwhile, I was staring at the hole of dirty water that Troll had so quickly rejected. I pumped my filter with maximum exertion and was finally able to get a decent supply for the night, although non-essentials like cooking and brushing teeth had to wait.

  49er and Doctor Death had been with or behind us all day. We had speculated they would pull up somewhere shy of the shelter for the evening. However, right at dark they came panting and sweating up the mountain to the shelter. “We sold you short,” I greeted them effusively.

  “Is there water?” they asked wild-eyed and in unison.

  “Just a bit,” I responded. “And you can put your tents. …”

  “No, the water,” Doctor Death cut me off. “Now.” I led them through the bushes just as Whitewater had taken Troll and me.

  When Doctor Death arrived at the puddle he had just the opposite reaction of Troll. He maniacally dipped his Nalgene bottle in the hole filling it with water, leaves, and probably dirt. Forty-niner and I stood by transfixed as Doctor Death downed a full liter of the cloudy liquid.

  “How is it?” 49er asked.

  “It’s wet,” Doctor Death answered immediately. He quickly filled up again.

  When we got back to the shelter I told the story of Doctor Death to Whitewater. “Yeah, ol’ Doctor Death,” Whitewater said, “he’s all salt and vinegar.”

  Sleeping in the rocky terrain behind the shelter was again nigh impossible. The bugs attacked in the most immodest places. What I couldn’t understand was how, with a stocking cap, a scarf wrapped around my ears, and ear plugs I could nonetheless hear the buzzing. It was maddening enough fighting them all day. But this gauntlet they ran you through at night could drive you over a cliff mentally.

  Others were spooked by the bugs as well. When I ran into the Troll family the following evening at a campsite Anchor absolutely refused to come out of the family tent, with its netting protection.

  “You look like one of those child hemophiliacs in a bubble,” Doctor Death noted drolly.

  The AT runs right through the streets of Dalton, Massachusetts, a charming working-class New England town right out of a Norman Rockwell scrapbook. A nice middle-aged fellow who worked at the local pharmacy permitted hikers to pitch tents in his back yard. Just where we were to use the bathroom was a question best left unasked. About eight of us were there when he pulled up in his car. He was a short, balding nondescript fellow, and very soft-spoken. “I had some luck with the lottery,” he reported with a smile. “I won $100 and want you folks to have dinner with me.”

  He then pulled out ribs, fried chicken, potatoes, slaw, etc. to serve us dinner. Like every other hiker, I was warming to New England fast. And the best lay ahead.

  Mount Greylock, the inspiration for the great American novel, Moby Dick, is the highest and most storied mountain in southern New England. Herman Melville, who lived in a nearby farmhouse called Arrowhead, had spent so much time staring at the eminence of Greylock from his second floor study that he became convinced of its likeness to a great white whale. The AT goes right over Greylock peak which is the biggest climb we had faced since central Virginia. After I scaled a steep section called Jones’ Nose, the trail crisscrossed a windy, paved service road that goes to the top.

  Thoreau had written vividly of getting lost on a cold, snowy day and spending the night alone (“Like most evil the difficulty is imaginary, for what’s the hurry”) on Greylock summit. But unlike Thoreau, I had blazes to follow. The summit was crowned with fine spruce trees, and a sixty-foot stone-tower war memorial affords visitors fine vistas including the Green Mountains, where we would soon be, to the north. Better still, Bascom Lodge was there to serve hearty meals.

  It seemed more like a leisurely day at the beach than Thoreau’s more pristine encounter with dense forest, snow, and complete solitude. But to me, the advantages of Bascom Lodge and the road to the top of Mount Greylock greatly outweighed the disadvantages. That’s the American way: giving access to as many as possible.

  Hamburger, 49er, Whitewater, Nurse Ratchet, and I crossed over into Vermont—the twelfth state—the next morning. The first one hundred miles of the AT in Vermont coincide with the famed Long Trail, the nation’s oldest long-distance hiking trail. After sharing the first one hundred miles the AT veers sharply east to New Hampshire, while the Long Trail continues straight north to the Canadian border.

  The section of the AT with the Long Trail was one of the most crowded sections of the entire AT. The AT had a diverse cast of hikers to be sure. But the grim task of thru-hiking had narrowed the demographics in these later states, with a definite preponderance of people in their twenties. The Long Trail, meanwhile, seemed to have the most ecumenical population imaginable. Middle-aged school teachers, accountants, engineers, day laborers, etc., were well represented in its swarm of participants. You could take a long vacation and do the Long Trail, instead of having to quit your job, as with the AT. Some use the Long Trail as a warm-up for the AT—the rule of thumb being that if you could hike it in twenty-five or fewer days, you were fleet enough to thru-hike the AT.

  As in other arenas in life, gossip thrives on the AT. In fact, it’s especially advantageous for hikers given that it weighs nothing. We had spent the last three states arguing about the propriety of a married couple that was spotted en flagrante on a couple occasions in the streams that we frequently crossed and drew water from. (I didn’t see a helluva lot wrong with it considering they were married, and it was running water—others heatedly disagreed). But after several months of writing shelter register entries, discussing all conceivable subjects ad-nauseum, and making every idiotic joke imaginable within our insular community, I had noticed some of the jokes were losing their luster.

  Fortunately, we were traveling with a very intelligent and witty fellow named Hamburger, who provided a new dimension to our conversations. Hamburger was a poster child for the modern global economy. He was from Hamburg, Germany, worked for an American company, and was based in Paris. Annually, he talked his company into letting him take six weeks off—he is based in France, remember—to hike a section of the AT.

  “You daft Americans never cease to amaze Europeans with your foolishness,” he chortled. “The Monica Lewinsky story was endless entertainment—the way the entire country was obsessed with this one man’s penis.”

  “Well, if we’re so bad,” Nurse Ratchet popped back, “why are you talking about moving here?”

  “I didn’t say you don’t have some nice parts,” he replied a bit defensively.

  Then it was my turn. “Is it true, as I’ve read, that a higher percentage of Germans have penil-implants than any other country in the world?”

  “Where did you read that?” Stranger interjected to laughs from everyone.

  “I would have thought Japan would be first,” Nurse Ratchet commented incisively.

  “What are penil implants?” Hamburger asked in a seemingly authentic display of ignorance on the subject matter.

  When we explained, he laughed, “Oh, yes. I often receive e-mails from America offering these.”

  When Hamburger marveled at the number of American leaders who had been assassinated it was Stranger’s turn. “Hey, at least we know when to take care of ’em. Ya’ll couldn’t even get rid of Hitler. He had to do it himself for you.”

  Touché.

  The descent to Vermont Highway 9 and Bennington was a precursor for what lay ahead in New Hampshire and Maine: steep and rocky. It was on this particular descent, in fact, that Baltimore Jack was supposedly brought to heel in his bid for a record ninth thru-hike with a foot injury.

  I hitchhiked into Bennington to re-supply and attend to a metastasizing wound on my arm. Lyme disease was spreading at an alarming rate among hikers, but this ended up being from a brown-recluse spider—not surprising given the swampy terrain we had recently covered. But I had been lucky with injuries so far. Before beginning the thru-hike, my doctor had ordered me to take six Advil daily to help absorb the pain from an
old neck injury. The pain had flared up while hiking on many occasions to the point that I often had to awkwardly move the left backstrap of my backpack over the rim of my left shoulder onto my arm to relieve pressure. From the outset I had feared this had the potential to knock me off the trail, but it hadn’t happened. And while I had lost too many toenails to count, that hadn’t posed a serious problem either.

  However, in Bennington I was shaken by the skeletal figure and haggard facial features that appeared before me when I looked into a mirror. Further, I felt a deep, down-to-the-bone dehydration that couldn’t be remedied by a few cold glasses of water. I decided to take a “zero” day for the first time in weeks.

  Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet hiked ahead, marking the end of our hiking partnership. We had been together about 60 percent of the time since Tennessee. When we had started together I had easily been able to keep up with them. Then, in the Mid-Atlantic States, Whitewater had developed an extra spring in his step that Nurse Ratchet and I had trouble matching. But in the last few weeks I had been struggling to keep up with both of them.

  It made sense. Whitewater had started off at 5’9” and two hundred pounds. By losing thirty-five pounds he had strengthened himself. Nurse Ratchet had lost only a few pounds. But, as mentioned earlier, women have this magical quality of turning fat reserves into heavier, leaner muscle. On the other hand, if a person starts at 6’11” and 212 pounds and loses thirty or more pounds, his legs might be stronger, but he’s weakened in some basic ways. I’d feel more of this in coming weeks.

  Northern New England was getting prettier by the minute. The AT goes over the mountains of three prestigious ski resorts in the Green Mountain National Forest: Stratton, Bromley, and Killington.

  The second day out from Bennington we summitted Stratton Mountain. The story goes that it was while sitting in a tree on the slopes of this mountain in 1921 that Benton MacKaye was suddenly struck with the idea of a trail running the length of the Appalachian Mountain Range, and covering its major peaks.

  On the way up the mountain, surrounded by fine balsam trees we saw some moose scat for the first time. “You know what that is, Skywalker?” Troll asked.

  “Yes,” I responded, “but a moose is nothing more than an enlarged horse, right?”

  “Let me tell you,” Troll said, his eyes narrowing. “If you have nightmares when you’re in bear country, you should be straitjacketed in moose country.”

  “Get outta’ here,” I countered.

  “I’m serious,” he shot back. “They will charge and trample you when the mood suits them.”

  “I’m glad to hear I don’t have a monopoly on outdoor phobias,” I said.

  We hiked down only about nine hundred feet over the next three miles to the Stratton Pond Shelter. Down by the lake was a beautiful piped spring of crystal-clear, cold water. Later, in Vermont, we would come across entire spring-fed lakes; you could just dip your bottle in and drink up.

  We were back in the mountains, and the bugs were no longer as invasive. Everything was perfect.

  The shelter had been constructed by the Green Mountain Club, one of the oldest outdoor clubs in the country. Ninety percent of the shelters on the AT are free. However, the Green Mountain Club in Vermont and the Appalachian Mountain Club in New Hampshire and Maine usually have a caretaker who charges around six to eight dollars. Given the amount of work that goes into the construction, maintenance, privy-care, etc., it seemed reasonable to me, but not everyone agreed.

  One of those who didn’t agree was Lemon Meringue.

  “I don’t believe in paying for the use of the outdoors,” she flatly said.

  “I guess when you’re on the cusp of completing the Triple Crown you can set your own rules,” I chided her.

  “And throw in some European socialist philosophy behind that as well,” Troll quipped.

  We all paid up, except for Lemon Meringue. She hiked out alone at dark to camp somewhere unbeknownst. Her cool aplomb was to later impress me in a variety of situations. We came across her after a couple miles the next morning, camped alone along a creek. Such are the ways of Triple Crowners.

  The trail passed by the William Douglas Shelter. William Douglas was the seventeenth thru-hiker ever on the AT in 1952. He later became a U.S. Supreme Court justice in the 1960s and 1970s, and was renowned for being a firebrand in support of environmental causes.

  I couldn’t help but believe that the current thru-hiker population contained some future environmentalist firebrands as well. It was almost impossible to walk through the northern New England trees and picturesque landscapes and not identify with environmental causes, whatever your political stripes.

  Manchester Center is another lovely, quaint northern New England town. A friend with roots in Vermont had told me that Vermont was “Mississippi North.” Indeed, the people were charming and hospitable, and knowledge of the AT was high. In fact, you could say that in most of northern New England a “hiking culture” exists. It made a thru-hiker feel good to be a part of some grand endeavor, rather than a freak show.

  The AT out of Manchester Center climbed straight up the ski slopes of Bromley Mountain. At the top I ran into English Bob. He was a thirtyseven-year-old from England who was doing the second half of the trail this year. He had worked as a janitor for one company for most of his career, and had taken various hiking vacations in Europe over the years. English Bob was all of about 5’1,” and for the next few weeks we were the hiking odd couple. With his understated British wit, and coolness in the face of adversity, he was the perfect hiking partner.

  Nurse Ratchet, who had noticed my propensity to lose the trail in rocky areas, had explicitly suggested on multiple occasions, “You need a hiking partner going through the White Mountains, Skywalker.” After seeing English Bob’s style and pace I planned on making him that person.

  Very little virgin forest remains in the eastern United States. It was surprising when people kept telling me this in such densely forested places as the Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah National Park, and Green Mountain National Forest. But consider this arresting statistic: The USFS (U.S. Forest Service) has eight times as many miles of roads as the entire interstate highway system! But that statistic will soon be outdated because there are aggressive plans on the drawing board to build many, many more. After watching truck after truck motoring up and down dirt roads groaning from the weight of strapped down wood, it became clear the principal purpose of the USFS roads we frequently crossed is to haul lumber out of the woods.

  Of course, some stoutly maintain that timber cutting serves a larger end. These modern foresters see trees competing with each other for the necessary water, sunlight, soil nourishment, and growing space. The death of one can be the blessing of another. Systematic cutting, forest managers assert, allows the remaining trees to grow stronger.

  That sounds like a viable position. But too often this management is not done prudently, and whole areas are cleared out. What’s more, the U.S. Forest Service is notorious for leasing out large tracts for timber cutting to favored customers at below market rates. These sweetheart deals have resulted in more trees being cut down than growing. And I recently was startled to read that more greenhouse, heat-trapping gasses are emitted by cutting down trees than are emitted by every single car, truck, and airplane in the world. Walking through the wondrous, fine whispering forests it’s easy to understand why environmentalists get so up-in-arms over cutting down trees.

  The environmental movement, which was so ascendant in the 1960s and 1970s, is now outmatched politically by commercial interests. In the 1980’s Ronald Reagan loved to say, “Sometimes I don’t think these people (environmentalists) will be happy until the White House is turned into a bird’s nest.” I absolutely loved Reagan, but like most people at the time, he didn’t give two cents about the environment. Neither did I. We pursued money and material success in almost monolithic fashion. The environment was an issue for hard-core activists, counter-cultureniks, and the like. B
ut as I so often observed on the AT, the environment has become the issue for the generation in their twenties, and they will have to be reckoned with. My bet is they will turn the tables in the next ten or twenty years.

  Southbounders had been streaming by for the last couple weeks at this point. Some chose to start at Katahdin because they graduated from school in May or June, and thought hiking south would lengthen their hiking season. Others were from the North and just thought it was logical to begin there.

  But a lot of us northbounders were put out by southbounders. “They think because they’ve already done the Mahoosucs in Maine and the Whites in New Hampshire, they know everything,” complained one northbounder.

  Another said, “I get the impression they think they’ve outsmarted us tactically.”

  “They’ll find out how smart they are,” one wit mused, “when they arrive in the most remote regions in the South during the middle of hunting season late this fall.”

  For my part it, certainly was easy to detect them as they approached. They not only had the swagger and sense of purpose of thru-hikers, they had the smell. They walked down the center of the trail as if everyone else was supposed to clear out of the way. When they stopped they acted as if they were doing you a favor talking to you. At shelters their body language bespoke, “Approach me at the risk of reproach.” In fact, the more I saw of them the more I thought they reminded me of, well, us.

  On my second-to-last day in Vermont I was following the trail through a dung-filled cow pasture, when I approached two female hikers having lunch on the edge of the pasture.

  Both were in their early twenties. One was short and pigeon-toed, but cute as a button. The other was fair-haired and fair–featured, with a graceful, appealing look. “Hi, I’m Cackles and this is Box-of-Fun,” the shorter one said. “We’re the Joy Machine.”