Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Walker

  At the Full Goose Shelter I set up my tent and then wandered up to the shelter to see who had arrived. Stitch was there. So was Pokey-Pikey, but his hiking partner, DA, had not arrived. I had a soft spot for DA, dating to his self-deprecating humor on that cold, grim night on the porch of the Zealand Hut in the Whites. On just a few occasions I had felt I might be in over my head on the AT. But from what I had seen with DA, and from various wry remarks he had made, it may have been more than a few occasions with him. One veteran hiker had said that this twenty-mile stretch was the toughest on the entire AT. Now it was pitch-black dark and DA had not arrived. It was hard to see where in the jagged, steep terrain a lost hiker could pitch camp.

  Finally, I started yelling “DA” at the top of my lungs. In the distance I could hear him respond. All was well, so I sat down and cooked a Lipton dinner. But at the conclusion of dinner DA still hadn’t arrived. “He has some serious vision problems,” his hiking partner Pokey-Pikey said. I yelled out again, and once again he responded in the distance. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the same distance away as before.

  We sat around and chatted for fifteen more minutes, but the whereabouts of DA seemed to be putting a damper on the conversation. I yelled out again as loud as I could, “DA, are you okay?” Again, an unintelligible response came back from seemingly the same place. Since I had arrived at the shelter first, I was the logical person to try to help him. “I’m gonna’ go find him and show him the shelter,” I finally said, and put on my headlight.

  “Do me a favor,” Stitch said. “Use my headlight. It’s incredibly powerful.”

  Stitch’s lighter lit up the dark Maine wilderness like a stadium. And after tip-toeing up and down rocky terrain for a few hundred yards, DA’s responses to my calls started getting louder. When I arrived at the point of a steep climb, it sounded like he was right above me. Finally, I saw him. He was perched over a precipice the trail descended. But all he had in his hand was a backup key lighter. “I see you,” I yelled up, but he kept asking my whereabouts until I was almost on him.

  “Skywalker, what am I supposed to say?” he asked.

  “That you bit off just a little bit more than you can chew,” I said.

  “This dang lighter,” he said with consternation. “My main one went out, and I can’t see five feet with this thing.”

  “Here, let me carry your pack,” I said.

  “No, no, I’ll carry it,” he insisted. “I’ve been standing here for an hour wondering how to take the very next step.” He marveled at the glow of Stitch’s lighter and within fifteen minutes we were at the shelter. His life had not been in danger, but I honestly don’t see how he could have made it to the shelter in steep terrain with such poor vision and almost no light source. He probably just faced a very unpleasant night on the rocks.

  Several times in the next few days he thanked me effusively. It felt good to finally be on the giving end, after having been almost exclusively on the receiving end of advice and succor from the likes of Justin, Sal Paradise, Fork Man, Whitewater, etc.

  Mahoosuc Notch, despite being completely flat, is widely billed as the toughest single mile on the AT. House-sized granite boulders have fallen from the mountain and filled the ravine, and ice caves lie at the bottom of these boulders. For one mile the AT traverses this veritable jungle-jim of rocks.

  Before I left the shelter, the caretaker asked, “Would any of you mind carrying this little eight-pound tool to Adam, the caretaker at the next shelter?” We all looked at the ground, avoiding eye contact with him. We had heard about this notch since starting in Georgia, and nobody wanted to be burdened with extra weight.

  So off I went, sans eight-pound tool, and was soon staring at Mahoosuc Notch. I waited around vainly, hoping somebody would come along in either direction, but it was to be a solitary adventure.

  Hiking Mahoosuc Notch seemed almost like a puzzle. For starters, hands were as useful as legs in traversing it. Every twenty or thirty yards the hiker is faced with a straight-up boulder climb, usually requiring all fours. Three different times, while squeezed between rocks, I could think of no other way of advancing myself than to take off my backpack and slide sideways between two boulders. At one point in a section aptly named “Hangman’s Noose,” the AT went under some low-lying boulders requiring hikers to get on the ground and scrounge forward. Being mildly claustrophobic this was definitely the toughest ten feet on the AT. After ninety minutes I reached the end. On average I could cover a mile in twenty or twenty-five minutes, but Mahoosuc Notch had required four times that much time.

  When I reared my head out of the notch I was almost euphoric. Then I saw a fast-moving hiker coming in the opposite direction. “You must be Adam, the caretaker.”

  “Yes,” he said, expressionless.

  “Yeah, the caretaker back there tried to get somebody to carry the tool to you,” I told him, “but none of us felt confident we could get through the notch with it.”

  “Well, that’s too bad for me, isn’t it,” he said, and started down into the notch.

  Next came a sixteen hundred-foot climb up Mahoosuc Arm to Old Speck Lake. It seemed odd to arrive at a large body of water after a long climb. It is the highest body of water in Maine.

  I didn’t break long because I was eager to get over Old Speck Mountain which is exposed to harsh, cold northern winds. One hiker, Swinger, had told me, “I don’t really believe in God or anything like that. But at old Speck I prayed to God.” As the old cliche goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. For a brief instant I even considered turning back down the mountain when the wind began to play havoc with my balance. Fortunately, the trail turned left before reaching the summit and cut along a ridge lined with the heroically resistant krummholz.

  There are certain sections on the AT that an average hiker such as myself is bound to worry about. This had been one of them, and I was relieved to make the remaining five miles to Baldpate Lean-To (Maine shelters are called Lean-To’s). A group of French-Canadian section hikers was happy to put national rivalries aside and offer me plentiful servings of pasta. But because they seemed so merry, with empty wine bottles lying about, I decided to tent out and not risk a chorus of lusty snoring. It was my single best night of sleep on the AT.

  I needed it. The air was sharp as a knife the next morning as Wildcat, who I hadn’t seen since North Carolina, and I headed straight up Bald Pate Mountain. Bald Pate is a typical example of why Maine’s mountains are so difficult to negotiate. It has multiple peaks, separated by deep gorges, as Bigelow, Saddleback, and Chairback Mountains would later have. Furthermore, Bald Pate is a steep walk on glazed rock, following cairns on an exposed summit. It would have been flat-out dangerous to traverse in bad weather. I counted my lucky stars to be on Wildcat’s heels on an overcast and blustery, but dry day. Hiking in Maine was indeed an exotic brew of exhilaration and fear. But absolutely no money can buy the adventure and freedom it offers.

  A steep sixteen hundred-foot descent brought us to the Frye Notch Lean-To. Inside, a long, gaunt figure with a stubby, gray beard lay sprawled out in his sleeping bag at noon. For a second the unspeakable occurred to Wildcat and me. But then a creaky voice came from the supine figure, “Skywalker, long time, no see.”

  “Yeah,” I answered quizzically.

  “Vertical Jerry,” he finally said while rising to his elbows. “Not since Georgia.”

  I looked at him with astonishment. Vertical Jerry had been a strutting, healthy-looking dandy with a style and Žlan all his own. But what lay in front of me five months later had a gallows-like appearance.

  The only question that came to mind was the obvious one, “What happened?”

  “I’ve been stuck here for two days,” he said. “It’s coming out of both ends.”

  “You’re probably dehydrated, or have giardia,” I suggested, and went off to the nearby stream to retrieve some water. He hadn’t talked to anybody in two days and seemed overwhelmed with emotion. Then I remembered that my doctor had sent
me some Lo-Motil prescription pills to me in Hanover. I offered him a couple and said, “Believe me, these will put a cork in you like you’ve never had before.” But I warned him, “They’ll dehydrate you. Maybe only take half.” He downed both as Wildcat and I looked at each other, worried.

  “Have you thought about getting off the trail?” Wildcat asked. “There’s a road five miles ahead.”

  “Yeah, that’s the direction I came from,” Vertical Jerry sighed. “I’m flip-flopping. I got off at Harper’s Ferry, and flew to Maine. Now I’m headed south.”

  It was clear he had no realistic chance of making it back to Harper’s Ferry before winter. In fact, in the condition he was in he’d be lucky to make it out of the wilderness period. We wished him well and left him to suffer the agonies of the damned.

  The physical appearance of most thru-hikers has gone to pot by this point. Our complexions—especially the males—had gone sallow, and many of us looked like a two-iron golf club. A thru-hiker experience may not have rated with those of Cro-Magnon Man, who had life expectancies of fewer than thirty years. But it was wilderness immersion well beyond the point of healthy balance. And humans may not be alone in this regard. I recently read that bears living in the wilderness have an average life expectancy of ten to seventeen years, but those in zoos live to a mean age of twenty-five. Wilderness is indeed one of God’s greatest gifts to humankind, but its essential wildness—even savageness—should not be underestimated.

  Chapter 21

  We had seen thru-hiker wannabes bailing out all over the place for all kinds of reasons up through New York. But those still on track were now focusing like a laser beam on their daily tasks and Mount Katahdin. Everybody was taking far fewer breaks as the days got shorter. It definitely seemed like the thru-hiker completion rate had improved from the 10 percent baseline figure up to 20 or even 25 percent. Of course, some of the improvement was probably due to the wonders of modern-day lightweight gear.

  The conversation deep in the woods this September often centered on what people were gonna’ do back in the “real world.” But Cackles of the Joy Machine often pointed out “We should refer to the ‘other world,’ not the ‘real world.’ This world out here is just as real as that other world.” That was a profound point.

  I was having trouble finding people to hike with here in this most isolated state. Several months of extreme exertion, weight loss, and poor sleep had finally started to take a toll. The X factor that had goaded me on to hike until dusk almost every day during the summer had gone missing. Through the first twelve states I had been passing people 80 percent of the time, but now this pattern seemed to have reversed itself.

  Whitewater, 49er, Stranger, and other familiar faces had moved ahead, according to the trail registers, and I didn’t feel capable of catching up. Meanwhile, I kept running into this young group of the Joy Machine, Stitch, and Foamer.

  The Joy Machine fully lived up to their billing, and could be highly entertaining. Yet, I felt dated in their presence. The lingo seemed of a totally different era. Seeing my new green cap, Cackles said, “That’s really pussy, man.” When somebody had to perform a bowel movement in the woods, they would say, “Time to go lay a deuce.”

  Cackles had a cheeky flamboyance about her and thrived on being the center of attention. But like many such entertaining personalities she had a volatile side. She had a tendency to rifle harsh charges at other hikers who were out of earshot, and I began wondering if I was on the receiving end of some of her sharp invective.

  I had known Stitch before ever meeting the Joy Machine. He was a good, down-to-earth guy with a bit of an all-American look to his freckly face. But he was captivated in the extreme by the Joy Machine and treated me very differently, tone of voice and all, while they were around. Foamer, a young Kentuckyite whose bug eyes and overwrought monologues earned him his trail name, also seemed to be in the thrall of the Joy Machine—but to his credit he didn’t let it affect his attitude toward me. However, it inspired Stitch to consistently treat Foamer in a demeaning, even cruel, manner.

  Of course, none of these things are new under the sun, as a reading of any Shakespeare play will show. But, it did show that this world we were in had some similarities to the “other world.”

  On a few occasions I even tried to get away from this group, and at times felt they were conspiring to do the same. But we were traveling at roughly the same speed which, more often that not, dictates hiking partners on a 2,175-mile hike.

  Because of the long distances between Maine towns, hikers were forced to carry more food. Fortunately, this was offset by the frequent streams, which gave me the confidence to carry less water. But those same water sources necessitate many log walks. Often long logs had been laid lengthwise along the trail to facilitate progress in these boggy areas. It would have been a hat-in-hand horror show traversing these boggy areas without what had obviously been yeoman work on the part of volunteers. God Bless the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. But even as it was, we would often be on rickety logs over swampy areas. Stories were legion of hikers toppling over into this mud soup.

  There are no bridges on the AT in Maine despite the fact the trail frequently crosses surging waterways. The data book showed that hikers were expected to ford in over a dozen places, and anticipation was building. The last thing I had done in Gorham was drop by the outfitters to buy some lightweight, foam shoes called “Crocks,” to ford streams in. But, the first couple of streams that were listed as to be forded we were able to get over with some fancy rock-hopping. For once I found something to brag about. “I’m the best rock-hopper on the AT.”

  In Maine we were running into piles of moose scat along the trail seemingly every five minutes. And given the fact that they are vegetarians, it made one wonder at the enormous extent of their plant diet.

  I was not surprised one day to come upon a couple moose, nibbling at some plants. One was smaller than the other so I tread carefully, assuming it was a mother-daughter tandem. But since moose are vegetarians, with no interest in human foods, there was none of the trickery or gamesmanship associated with bear-human encounters.

  Those two moose had the gentlest dispositions of any creatures I’ve ever seen. However, they seem to be in the grips of a lifelong lassitude and ennui (except, of course, during mating season!). The smaller animals, on the other hand, ranging from bugs and mice to raccoons, are often raring to go on the attack. Bears, which are low to the ground, but impressively wide, seemed to be in the middle.

  It’s no radical theory to postulate that bigger and taller humans have to guard against being excessively laid-back and unassertive. Shorter people, on the other hand, are notoriously more aggressive. What I was witnessing there in the wilderness showed this tendency wasn’t just human nature, but the natural order of all living things. When I spouted my highly unscientific theory to Swinger at the campsite that evening, he replied with amusement, “Thank you, Professor Skywalker Darwin.”

  Fred Flintstone, a fifty-eight-year-old ex-military serviceman from New York, and Steady Eddie, a sixty-eight-year-old from Minnesota, had been paired up since North Carolina. That, in fact, was where I had passed them. I had never expected either of them to make it this far, but they had combined great discipline with an innovative transportation arrangements to facilitate slackpacking.

  However, this strategy became inoperative in New Hampshire and Maine, which were so isolated, with infrequent road crossings. They made up for it with great determination. Each morning they would be on the trail by seven o’clock and they took few breaks until reaching their daily destination. Steady Eddie would then quickly eat and get straight into his sleeping bag, where he stayed approximately thirteen hours per day. He spent the remaining eleven hours walking. This was in keeping with Thomas Edison’s philosophy that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

  Fred Flintstone, on the other hand, was more garrulous. His military-like daytime discipline waned dramatica
lly when it came to evening campsite conversation. At the Poplar Ridge Lean-To, on a cool, stormy fall night in the Maine wilderness, Fred Flintstone found the perfect audience to relive the late 1960s, when he was a serviceman in steamy, humid South Vietnam. And it was the steamy nightlife he remembered so fondly. “We’d go to downtown Saigon for a steam-blow and a bath job,” he said.

  “Didn’t you say that backwards?” Swinger asked confused.

  “No, goddammit,” Fred Flintstone said insistently. “That’s what we called it, and that’s what it was.” “I always wondered why the U.S. stayed in Vietnam so long,” I said.

  “And get this,” he enthused, “this one named Coop-Coop, with green teeth, said I was the biggest tipper in the whole damn American army.”

  As the old saying goes, there is no fool quite like an old fool. It began to look like this might go on all night until Swinger finally said, “We’ve got some big climbs ahead tomorrow. I don’t have any military training, and need some sleep.”

  I stayed on Swinger’s heels the next day for a hellish eleven miles over jagged terrain, until we finally came to the Sugarloaf Mountain Side Trail. “There’s a summit house up there where hikers can sleep,” he said.

  “And get this,” he added in an awestruck tone, “you can see Mount Katahdin up there sometimes.” My feet were pleading for mercy and there was no campsite nearby, so I followed him straight up the face of this steep, rocky side trail.

  Sugarloaf Mountain is Maine’s second-highest mountain and biggest ski resort. We located a bubbling crystal clear, mountain spring on the way up, and finally arrived at what looked like a perfect cone peak. Fortunately, we quickly spotted the summit house and hurried over in what were almost unbearable wind gusts. The mood inside was glum as powerful gusts of wind mixed with a U-Boat silence.