Appalachian Trail, Part 3

A good hike will-

“Oliver—I am your uncle. You are my nephew.” I say this aloud in a voice heard only by trees whose branches reach thick with new green on this rainy April morning. They reach like they want to be touched. Like they want to be in the way.

“I was not there when you were born,” I say. “But I met you shortly after.” I then name a handful of things that define our original and ongoing affinity.

It’s in times like this when the trail becomes a time machine. A black hole. Hours and miles add up without any conscious awareness until something triggers me to land and I remember to eat, or drink, or take a break.

This is when I notice I have, for example, a bleeding cut on my leg. Or a bug bite on my neck. It’s when I realize I’m actually out here on this trail. Loping forward and sidelong with a heavy bag on my chafed back, clanging my trekking poles to find purchase on the varied terrain.

I walk for more than twelve hours per day and dream about the possibility of doing it forever.

PA vista

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I race to reach Rocky Mountain Shelter before sundown as I wrap up my first marathon day. Upon arrival, I am the only person there. I pitch my tent in a wide clearing, then hurry down a steep and winding trail for another quarter mile before reaching a pooling spring adjacent to a secondary road.

A loud truck rips past as I scoop standing water into my filter bag. It feels weird to suddenly be close to civilization. Such proximity to the non-hiking world often makes me leery, but in this case I trust the long incline to the shelter is enough of an obstacle to keep away folks who might otherwise be up to no good.

My approach to the waterhole scatters a bevy of deer, who, I assume, are doing the same thing as me. This gives me pause—because where an animal drinks, it also relieves itself. But I haven’t any choice. I pushed extra miles to get to this water source and my bottles are completely dry.

I slam the first filtered liter, then squeeze an additional two before I turn back. It's late. Almost completely dark. I’m usually sleeping by now. After a few steps I am suddenly overcome by a fatigue I’ve not yet felt on this section. My legs are logs. I stoop over, gasping as grinding joints carry me upward. My heart races faster than the topography deserves. I can’t wait to be prone.

My camp seems too far away, which makes me wonder if I somehow got turned around. But that isn’t likely—it was a straight shot down to the spring, with no other intersecting trails to confuse things. Still, I don’t feel confident that I am on the right path and I briefly disassociate. I watch from above as my body lumbers uphill. When my white Duplex comes into view, it’s still forever ahead. Is it possible for an exact span to measure different lengths depending on the direction traveled? Logic be damned, this is tonight’s reality.

When I finally make it back, I chug another bellyful of water, then muster up what’s left in my energy stores to stash my food bag in the shelter's bear box still further up the hill. I return to my tent, and fall asleep as soon as I lay my head down. I had intended to look for tonight’s full moon through the forest canopy, but don’t even bother.

Long after the last birds have stopped singing and a gentle breeze sends ghostly whispers through the trees, I am awaken by rowdy conversation surging from the water trail. As it nears, a tumult of glowing headlamps sends a scattering of piercing beams into my tent. I hear a man’s voice note my presence as a glimpse of the moon peeks through a gap in my tent’s netting. “Look—somebody’s here.” I brace myself, turn my ear to their nearing footsteps, and fully expect my space, my peace, to be invaded.

They can’t be hikers. Actual hikers would be cautious about using white lamps at night, opting instead for the less intrusive red light option. Lately there’s been common chatter about aggressive townies hassling weary hikers at shelters. Would I be tonight’s target? What will they do? How will I respond? I doze in and out of sleep as the rambunctious crew whoops and laughs and repeatedly slams the metal door of the bear box. When things eventually go silent, I lay awake certain that they'd fucked with my food bag. Last thing I do before finally crashing is cuss them out under my breath.

Camp

Come morning, the invaders are long gone. There’s no physical sign of them. Just a memory. I’m surprised to find my food bag as I left it—leaning up against the back corner of the bear box. I prep for another long day as my stomach starts to gurgle. Minutes later I desperately run to the privy, and before hitting the trail I rush to visit it twice more. My intuition tells me the water at that deer pool is to blame. “Fuck,” I think. Because I knew it was bad.

It’s miles before I am able to replace the tainted water I gathered last night. By the time I finally reach it, I am parched. It’s dangerous to get behind on water intake. In my case, dehydration has been the root cause of my most severe trail maladies—soft tissue injuries, severe fatigue, spurts of disorientation, and in the most extreme cases, hallucinations. I hurriedly dump out the bad water and desperately drink from the fresh batch until my belly sloshes uncomfortably.

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“Oliver, before you could talk,” I say. “You made a sound like ishta which, when I finally realized it was your name for me, inflated a previously unused chamber of my heart.” I tell him I’ve been playing rough with him—crushing his bones, as he calls it—since he was small enough to fit almost entirely in my hand. I tell him that he and I have the same eyes—not in color (his are blue, mine are hazel), but we both carry a long yet lost, ancestrally distinctive fold over our eyelids. “This is because we’ve been together for many lifetimes,” I say. “Perhaps you were my son,” I say. “Perhaps I was yours.” I tell him our connection is eternal. “Like the light of a star.” It reaches far past this short blip of life. “Oliver—I am your uncle,” I say again. “You are my nephew.”

My words break in my throat and make my body rain a storm of tears. I inhale deeply as I take meager strides across the choppy earth. The weight of my pack presses into my shoulders.

“Amy—I am your brother-in-law,” I say. “You are my sister-in-law.” I tell her that I didn’t take her seriously at first. That I thought she was just a curly-haired party girl my brother snared at a nightclub. “But I was wrong, Amy,” I say. “Because you are magic—the real kind.” I tell her she’s tuned into worlds beyond ours. That she’s a conduit to spirits who surround her like protective angels. “You are emphatically dedicated to your family,” I say. That she’s proof an upheaving transformation is possible. I tell her that her exacting nature is offset by her fervent love of Persian cats. By her ability to make topflight fart sounds with that bit of skin between her thumb and index. I tell her she is my family. “Amy—I am your brother-in-law,” I say. “You are my sister-in-law.”

Memories from last week seem like months ago. Years ago. How many days have come and gone without me even realizing it?

Unlikely scenery on the AT (South Middleton Township)

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The grocery checker at Carnes foods in Boiling Springs, PA makes small talk as she slowly scans my resupply items. “Where you from?” she asks. Then she tells me she once knew someone from the South. “An old friend,” she says. Then she pauses, staring down at the counter for a long second before continuing to check me out. “Do you know what’s ahead?” she asks. Her question throws me. Because this morning I’ve been thinking about all the loose ends I left dangling back home.

Before starting this hike, I made a conscious decision to let go of trying to control my life’s biggest unknowns. Specifically, my business, my professional direction, and my current living situation. All are in flux. And though each topic surely needs my attention, now’s not the time for it. I don’t want to sweat my uncertain futures while consciously trying to live fully in the present. I simply want to walk.

Do I know what’s ahead? No I do not. Not in my life, and not on this trail. My face must say as much since the checker shakes her head and lets out an exaggerated sigh. She looks at me over her glasses, then steps to the side of the register to afford a quick look at my shoes. “Hmmm,” she says. “Those what you’re going to use?” I know that my answer, to her anyway, is the wrong answer, so I don’t bother saying yes.

Instead, I answer a different question. One she didn’t ask. “Nobody wears heavy boots on the trail any more,” I say. “If they start with them, they switch to these lighter suckers before too long.” She harumpfs as she runs a Spam Single over the scanner. Shakes her head like I am just another sucker who thinks he knows something about the trail. Her trail. In the South she might have said, “Well, bless your heart!” but here she just smiles, shrugging any responsibility for me heading unprepared into the Pennsylvania wilderness. She did her part to save me from certain catastrophe. Good riddance to me.

Through the years I’ve learned to doubt the worriers. To read all the notes on FarOut with a grain of salt. To not alter my own plans based on dubious intel until I see, with my own eyes, what’s got everyone so riled up.

Earlier this week, hiker Keith sought a companion for his fear. “It’s going to be scary windy while we’re up on that ridge, don’t you think?” he said. Two Toes did the same. “Gonna be dangerously hot next week, man.” And frankly, most everyone has a thing or two to say about the Pennsylvania rocks ahead. “Ankle breakers,” someone called them. “They’re going to thrash our feet,” someone else said. There’s a difference between preparing for what’s ahead and worrying about it.

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“Lisa—I am your brother. You are my sister,” I say, conjuring up my eldest sibling. I imagine her face sparked with firelight. Her rounded brow an unmistakable clue to her endless wonder. “You were my first friend,” I choke out. “You and I carry the same memories—similar weights of time and experience,” I say. “You are beautifully soft. Your heart bigger than your imagination. Your clanging bangles a melodic remedy for chaos—one we alone understand.” I tell my big sister she is enough. Was always enough. “Your legacy is alive in other people’s love,” I say. “Lisa—I am your brother. You are my sister.”

Tears clear muddy paths down my cheeks. My very being opens, unfolds me inside out, rips me to a pile of shreds, then patches me up exquisitely, sashiko-style, in an way that honors all that I am my becoming. I reach for tenderness, for mercy, as I declare these living eulogies for everyone in my immediate family. In every case I am left feeling remarkably appreciative for all I have.

A good hike is a practice in humility. In risk and vulnerability. A good hike will make you contemplate the saddest things. The most pleasurable things. A good hike will regularly make you cry. A good hike will help you lose your mind.

My niece and nephew (2024)