AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

by David Miller

  Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

  From the start of the day, I am sluggish, and I struggle even on undemanding climbs. The drenching rains don’t help. At Manassas Gap I stop to adjust socks on my hurting feet, and it starts sprinkling. I have to unload most of my gear to get my pack cover and rain jacket from the bottom of my pack. This day I’m peeved by these simple inconveniences. Why did I leave town? I could still be sleeping in a comfortable motel bed in Front Royal. The feeling is comparable to wanting to turn your car around midway into the morning commute.

  This day would turn out fine, even though I wouldn’t regain any spunk. The terrain isn’t too tough, and I enjoy the company. I cross paths with Ken and Marcia a few times. No-Hear-Um is taking his lunch break, and he shares carrots he brought from town. This is the last I would see of him on the trail. I meet section hiker Molly, and she tries to help me out with powdered Vitamin C.

  I flop down in Dicks Dome Shelter, a small dome-shaped experiment of a shelter. The arching roof provides less headroom than a typical shelter; it is low enough for me to extend my legs and rest my feet on the trusses. The leaky roof has left water stains on the ceiling and floor, so already I know I don’t intend to stay here. Molly enters and starts setting up her sleeping bag awkwardly, perpendicular to my position. The oddly-shaped floor space does not lend itself to a uniform sleeping arrangement. Elwood is here, too.

  I head on into the late afternoon. There is dense undergrowth and no room for a tent. I don’t mind, since I am covering miles in cool weather and putting distance between myself and Elwood. A side trail to Sky Meadows State Park branches off to the right. At the intersection of the AT and the side trail, there is an open piece of flat ground and a park bench. The little bench is a convenient place to cook and eat. The ground here is dark, packed dirt studded with pebbles and hard to penetrate with a tent stake. But as expected, I don’t feel the pebbles through my air pad. I settle in for a memorably comfortable night of solitude.

  Harpers Ferry is thirty-six miles away, and I intend to get there by noon tomorrow. I’ve arranged to meet my friend Tim Kesecker, who is visiting his parents in West Virginia. Tim is on vacation from the same workplace that I quit at the start of my hike. In the early going, my desire for rapid progress is waylaid, first by muddy trail, then by the Roller Coaster.

  The Roller Coaster is a nine-mile-long series of hills in northern Virginia over which the trail ascends and descends, as the name implies, straight up to the peaks and straight down to the valleys. Although no peak is higher than fourteen hundred feet, there is five thousand feet of elevation gain and loss. The first part of any uphill climb is the most difficult. It takes time for me to establish a pace that I can sustain. Especially hard is the transition from walking downhill to walking uphill. On the downhill my pace accelerates, momentum carries me into the uphill, and then I make the panting realization that I’m headed uphill at a near-jogging pace.

  The last ascent of the Roller Coaster ends on a rocky plateau called Bears Den Rocks. I take a short side trail to Bears Den Hostel. The hostel is in a beautifully rustic stone building that houses the hostel caretaker and a small supply store. Stretch is at a park bench out front eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Stretch has a friend, Justin, out to hike with him this week. Elwood is also sitting at the table.

  “Elwood, you beat me here!” I exclaim.

  “Hey, you know it, man. I got up early and hauled ass,” he says.

  I camped ahead of him and never saw him pass me, so I know there is some other explanation. Stretch and Justin head back out to the trail, and I leave soon after. “Until next time,” Elwood says, alluding to our continuing encounters on the trail. This time, there would be no next time.

  The trail stays atop Bears Den Rocks for the next half mile. On this stony ridge, there is a steep drop-off on the western edge with many overlooks. At one of these overlooks, Stretch and Justin are taking in the view. I pause to take a picture for them.

  “Back there when Elwood told you that he ‘hauled ass’…” Stretch says, not bothering to finish the sentence. “We were sitting right there when a jeep pulled up and dropped him off.” I suspected that Elwood was again having a Rosie Ruiz day, but his brashness in telling the lie in front of people who knew better renews my wariness of him.24

  The trail dips down to Snickers Gap and then ascends steadily. Near the peak, I say hello to a couple of teenagers wearing daypacks walking in the opposite direction. Soon after, there are more small groups of teens and parents, obviously all part of one troop. A man and woman shepherding a distressed youth are straggling behind the rest. The adults are more likely counselors, judging by the patience with which they are handling the young man. The boy is overweight, red-faced, and listless. In an obvious attempt to engage me in their efforts to motivate him, the adults stop me with questions.

  “How close are we to the top?”

  “You’re almost there. Another hundred yards, then it’s mostly downhill.”

  The woman turns to the boy. “See, honey, we’re nearly there. It’ll be okay.” And then she says to me, “How far to the road?”

  “Oh, I passed the road about thirty-five minutes ago.”

  “Are you a thru-hiker?”

  “Yes.”

  They continue with questions about when I started, how much weight is in my pack, how many miles I walk per day, and so forth pursuing this conversation to show the young man by inference, “See how long he’s been hiking? It’s not so hard.” But I don’t think the strategy is helpful, so I don’t cooperate. The young man is deflated; I don’t know how anyone could inspire him at this point. Anything said will cause him to search for the counterpoint, to rationalize why he’s miserable, entrench himself in his position. If help is coming, it will be from within.

  I’ve encountered many large groups, and within each there are always one or more kids not happy to be there. Do I see this because kids have less patience for hiking, or because they are more likely to be here against their will? Adults with the same aversion to the outdoors—if they came at all—would get fifty yards down the trail, decide it is “not their thing,” and go home.

  Not everyone needs to be a hiker, but using “not my thing” is too convenient. Activities that even momentarily cause discomfort, that don’t provide immediate positive feedback, are subtracted from the realm of experience. We are outraged when we are constrained by others, but willfully, unwittingly put limits on ourselves. There are better solutions. The boy I saw struggling that day could conclude that he will get in shape so that he won’t need to avoid physical activity. Or he may realize that the outing was not as bleak as he imagined and resolve to keep a better attitude. These are solutions that build confidence and put no bounds on future opportunities.

  There are many thru-hikers on the trail late in the day. This is unusual. Ken and Marcia, Bearable, Torch, Superman, Doc, Llama, and Tipperary are still hiking past 7:30 p.m. All but Ken and Marcia take the side trail down to the Blackburn PATC (Potomac AT Club) Center. The Blackburn Center is located steeply downhill, about one-third of a mile from the AT. As we descend on switchbacks, music floats up to meet us.

  A wedding has just taken place on the lawn of the Blackburn Center. A sign posted on the side trail told us so and informed us that hikers were welcome to come anyway. A modular dance floor is assembled on the grass and covered by a white canopy. Next to the canopy a band is playing to a crowd of about fifty people outfitted in suits and dresses. A few diehards still dance, but most have moved on to eating and drinking, scattering among a dozen linen-covered tables. The transition from the trail to this celebration is striking and exhilarating. What good fortune.
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  Crossroads and two other thru-hikers have already checked into the hostel and have been delegated the job of greeting hikers and showing them to the bunkrooms and tent sites. They say the time is near for us to dig into the reception leftovers. Many nights on my hike I would spend alone, or with few other hikers. By wonderful coincidence, most of the hikers that I’ve enjoyed spending time with through the Shenandoahs arrive here on the same night, camaraderie culminating at the moment we stumble into a beckoning party.

  The bunkroom is one of the outlying structures of the Blackburn complex. There are other buildings for storage and equipment. The main building, a large, square building with a wraparound patio, is the caretaker’s residence. Bill, a former thru-hiker, is the caretaker.

  Bill tells us we are welcome to drink from the keg. We set up at picnic tables on the perimeter of the reception area, eyeing the buffet like vultures. Before long we are brought a tray of leftover meat and rolls. When guests take notice of us, they trickle out to mingle. The wedding photographer takes pictures of this anomalous intersection of people. Upon seeing how quickly the food dissolves, the guests take it upon themselves to bring more. We are treated to a remarkable feast of smoked pork, turkey, salads, deviled eggs, wedding cake, brownies, cookies, and champagne.

  After the wedding party leaves, we move to a linen-covered table and continue to work the keg and talk with Bill and a couple of lingering guests. One of the guests brings out a bottle of his favorite whiskey, and we pass it around until it is empty. The same fate meets a second bottle. We discuss hiking, blue-blazing, politics, and the war in Iraq with logic and earnestness peculiar to those who have drunk alcohol in quantity. Bill has a proposition that we all accept: stick around in the morning to clean up after the wedding, and he’ll drive our packs to Harpers Ferry.

  I wake, confused, to the sound of running water. There’s no stream outside and no water inside this bunkroom. Maybe the sound is from a dream. There are only two sets of bunk-bed platforms with floor space in between. I am in one of the upper bunks. The hiker in the upper bunk on the other side of the room asks, “Is someone urinating in here?” I hear that clearly. I’m not dreaming. The sound is someone urinating. A drunken hiker sleeping on the floor had made it to his knees, but couldn’t struggle free from his sleeping bag before the urge to pee overtook him. He passed out, clunked to the floor, and started to drag the sodden sleeping bag back onto himself. I struggle too, between overwhelming grogginess and the desire to get up and help. I retrieve my watch and push the “illuminate” button. It is 1:30. Thankfully, another hiker gets up and takes the bag outside.

  At seven in the morning, a bunch of hung-over hikers are out of bed cleaning up after yesterday’s wedding and reception. We spend about an hour picking up trash and packing folding chairs and tables. Even the hiker whose sleeping bag is out to dry is working. Bill heats up leftover potatoes, peppers, and bread for breakfast, along with much coffee. By nine o’clock most of us, sans packs, are headed for Harpers Ferry, twelve miles north.

  I am so tired I sleepwalk through the miles. The grade is fairly level, rocky in places. Someone has assembled twigs to form a square frame on the trail. Inside the frame, pebbles are arranged to spell out the number “1,000.” I’ve been hiking for one thousand miles.

  On the final stretch into town, I cross the Shenandoah River on the long, bending bridge of Highway 340. I am isolated from the cars by a concrete barrier, but I feel propelled by their breeze as they whip past, like I am on a victory lap. After crossing the bridge, the trail enters woods on the outskirts of town. I take a side trail that leaves the woods, crosses the grounds of Storer College, and leads to the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC), a nonprofit organization that builds, protects, and manages the trail. A staff member is out front taking pictures of thru-hikers, using the building’s facade as the backdrop. The ATC keeps a photo album for each year, with a photo and a blurb of information on every thru-hiker passing this point. I am the 528th thru-hiker this year.

  Laurie Potteiger takes a picture of Awol in front of ATC headquarters in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

  I hear “Awol!” yelled from down the street. Tim, my friend from Florida, is doing as the Romans do by using my trail name, yet it is odd to hear it from him. He is here with his parents, Dan and Wilma Kesecker. They take me back to their home in Martinsburg, West Virginia, twenty miles to the west.

  I have only met Tim’s parents on two occasions before this. They are exceedingly friendly and caring, the type of couple who seem like parents to us all. I am treated to a shower, a home-cooked dinner, and a comfortable bed. Tim talks about how projects have progressed since I left the workplace. There is much work to be done, and they are likely to be hiring in the fall, when I will be finished with my hike. He believes that the company will be willing to rehire me. I am content knowing that decision is still months away.

  The day starts out great with Wilma Kesecker making me the best pancakes I’ve ever had. The Keseckers return me to the ATC Headquarters building, and I take the blue-blazed trail out of town and back to the AT. The AT wiggles briefly through the woods overlooking the Shenandoah River, and then reenters Harpers Ferry on the north end of town. I cross the Potomac River on a wire-fence-enclosed footbridge. From the bridge, there is a view down to the convergence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. The merged river keeps the name Potomac and flows east through Washington, D.C., about fifty miles away.

  The Potomac River is the northern border of West Virginia, so upon stepping off the footbridge, I start my sixth state on the trail, Maryland. The state begins with the easiest two and a half miles on the AT. This bit of trail is on the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Towpath. The towpath is a wide pathway of packed dirt, similar to a dirt road, but thankfully without tire ruts. The towpath and the shallow canal parallel to it were constructed as a trade route between Washington and towns in the Potomac Valley as far west as Cumberland, Maryland. A team of mules driven along the towpath pulled barges loaded with cargo. The towpath was last used commercially in 1924. Now, it is a 184-mile-long national park.25

  A hundred yards down the towpath, I turn to look back at the footbridge. There the Keseckers stand, waving goodbye. All the towns through which the trail passes are distinctive and inviting. When I hike in one day and out the next, as I have done here, it feels rushed. I would return to spend more time in Harpers Ferry—sooner than I could have imagined.

  Thru-hiker Kodiak passes me on the climb up Weaverton Cliffs; we both stop a short distance later at the Ed Garvey Shelter, a fine new bi-level shelter. Kodiak started a thru-hike in 1999 but quit halfway through for lack of funds. He regrets not finishing the hike on his previous attempt and is determined to finish this time. This year he started the thru-hike with his wife, who decided to get off the trail at Harpers Ferry. This is his first day hiking without her, and he seems caught up in his thoughts.

  The first half of the trail through Maryland is a nice stroll in the woods. The terrain is fairly smooth, and the grade is mild. Trees and undergrowth are pleasantly green, but not suffocating. When I arrive at Gathland State Park, a small, grassy park, I see enough sky to determine that rain is coming. There are soda machines at the park under a small overhang on the porch of the bathroom building. I huddle under the overhang with four other thru-hikers, getting our feet wet by the slanting rain. I buy a soda and, with it, eat all of the treats Wilma packed for me.

  Dahlgren backpacker’s campground is my stop for the night. There are restrooms with showers, picnic tables, and a tenting area large enough for at least a dozen tents. Kodiak, Ken and Marcia, and more than a handful of other thru-hikers are here. I fix and eat my meal at a table with Orbit, whose situation is similar to Kodiak’s. Orbit was hiking with his girlfriend, who got off the trail yesterday.

  Harpers Ferry is a major milestone. Thru-hikers consider it the halfway point, even though it is eighty miles short of the trail’s midpoint. A number of hikers have chosen t
he Harpers Ferry milestone as a drop-out point. Ken tells me, much to my surprise, that Bigfoot is off the trail. Some hikers have taken time off to visit Washington, D.C., and still others, like No-Hear-Um, head up to Katahdin to walk the second half of the trail north to south. The rest of us continue north with our mood receding from the elation of making it this far. We are a bit more serious, down to the business of focusing on the next goal. I always feel apprehensive when thru-hikers decide not to continue, particularly at this time of mass defections.

  I am up and away early, opting to walk an hour to Washington Monument State Park before making breakfast. I cross over two walls made of stacked stone. This part of the country is rich with history, detailed by frequent plaques and monuments. Seeing these stone walls in the dewy, peaceful morning woods gives me a more visceral feel for history than any of the plaques. Civil War soldiers hunkered behind these walls as the opposing side approached. The harsh percussion of bullets on rock would be a devastating departure from the stillness of the woods. How could a man function from behind this explosion of splintering rock and smoky lead?

  The original Washington Monument, built in 1827, is a sturdy stone building thirty feet tall, shaped like an upside-down drinking glass. I walk a staircase that spirals upward along the inside wall of the cylinder, exiting on the flat roof to see a grand view of the valley below. I descend from the park, back to the present, and cross Interstate 70 on a concrete pedestrian overpass. From the woods, north of the interstate, I look back to see Orbit crossing as a pair of eighteen-wheelers rumble underneath.

  The rockiness of the trail increases as I progress, as if I am heading toward a great mound of rock from which these scatterings have been dispersed. Eventually, my feet no longer touch dirt, and I am stepping from rock to rock and weaving around boulders. I reach Ensign Cowell Shelter after fourteen miles that have seemed much longer. A small group is at the shelter, and Kodiak and Orbit arrive while I am snacking. Even though the rocks have worn us down, it is still early, and the three of us will likely move on.