TRAIL DAY 19
Thu, Mar 10, 2016 Breakfast wherever; sunrise on return; finish packing; check around; Theo’s last nap.
I was across the street by the manager’s office by 10:00 a.m. in time for the shuttle to the trail. I did not examine the hiker box outside the door to the office – didn’t need to and it was too late for that. Had checked it out on arrival a few days before and found nothing I needed.
A “hiker box” is found at most every hostel and contains a myriad of items which some hiker no longer wants and another may well. There’d be extra food someone didn’t want or couldn’t haul; medicines; socks; tent stakes; hats; shirts; containers. Some saw tents; backpacks; jackets; you name it. If hikers carry it, you may see it in a hiker box.
In New Hampshire someone observed that the hiker boxes had a lot less stuff than they did in the south where hikers were newer to the requirements and needed to dump stuff. By New Hampshire, they’d learned all too well what they didn’t need and they had left it all behind long ago.
Oh. . .it’s so nice to take pleasure in little things. I just poured myself another cup of coffee from my thermos in my office above the garage – the one we constructed before I left. The light is low over the desk and it shown through the steam rising from the thermos spout as I poured. What a delight! What goodness, beauty and even awe at the physical science of the wafting vapors. Oh. . .sure, the darkness can descend but what treasures there are about us at ever turn!
Ok! Where was the shuttle? I inquired and was told it had left. It was in the lot when I arrived but never saw hikers getting on so I MISSED IT!
Someone heard my quandary and approached me.
“Do you need a ride?”
“Yes.”
“I can take you.”
“Really? Oh, thank you so much. You O.K. with the dog?”
“Sure. Get in,” he said gesturing to his black sedan.
Packs and poles in the trunk and Theo in the back seat, I crawled in the front passenger seat.
It was a sunny day and it was good to be getting back to the task at hand – walking to Maine.
“I was not sure if I should offer you a ride. I saw the beard and didn’t know.”
“Well, I’m really glad you did – I’m grateful.”
My driver was a “Trail-Angel,” the first I’d met. A Trail Angel is a very real and treasured phenomenon on the AT. Someone who is just there tending to something you really need. Give you a ride, take you on an errand, or feed you some awesome food. A Trail Angel might leave a cooler of food on the trail or maybe set up a site along a road or in the woods to prepare a substantial meal. They are usually people who have thru-hiked themselves and received the same benefits in their year and want to give back. I’d like to do the same in Pennsylvania in the near future.
It was about a 10-mile ride back to the trail. My Trail Angel dropped us off at Winding Stair Gap where we had stopped three days. As happened so many times, the goodness in another’s heart saved the day for a thru-hiker. With my I’ll-do-it-myself independent streak, there was life-changing beauty in being homeless and dependent on the generosity of others. And there is a lot of generosity out there every bit as beautiful as a view over endless mountains on a sunny day. There is something about the boots-on-the-ground, little-on-my-back trek through nature that anchors the soul in the good, the true and the beautiful. Minimal. Essential. Real. Earth and sky. Dirt and breath. As it was in the beginning and, with a little wrenching separation, still is.
There was a fairly steep climb up from Winding Stair Gap during which I came upon my first “Trail Magic.” It was turning into an enchanted day! First Angel. First Magic. I think the Styrofoam containers the Angel had left were empty but no matter. It was neat just to encounter the phenomenon. Trail Magic was real!
Mid climb it was time for lunch and I found a spot off to the left of the trail. Soon I was joined by “Tesla,” “King Arthur,” and “King-Scum” whose name jarred a bit. They were in their 20s, the usual hiker age. We chatted and I learned that all these youthful folk were from Reading, Pennsylvania, 45 miles northeast of my hometown of Lancaster. I learned, too, that King Scum’s cousin runs Zoetropolis which shows independent films in Lancaster. I’ll have to look her up.
It was sunny and warm and youth-guys were hiking in their underwear or some such skimpy covering – no shits. Tattoos. This old dog was feeling out of the loop and a little judgmental. I finished before them and headed on my way but not before we got onto a discussion of my kids. I must have mentioned Marian and her struggles at the time as to which way she should go in life, consecrated or married. Some such conversation.
As ususal, it was not long before youth-guys passed me and, as they did, King Scum at the back and closest to me once past, said, “I’ll pray for your daughter.”
Oh, judgment! Where can you settle? Where do you belong? Who is your author? Whence your authority? “It is mine,” says the Lord. From my heart, may it ever be gone or flee as soon as it arrives. You have no place here. You weigh me down and I must travel light or I will never make the finish.
“I’ll pray for your daughter.”
“Thank you,” I said and carried on – up and into the wilderness.
Soon I was at Swinging Lick Gap which leaves you wondering how this place got its name.
Along the way I met “Handels” whom I sought to remember by the notation “dreadlocks” in my AWOL guide.
As I write, I don’t remember Wayah Bald Shelter which had to be near Wayah Bald Lookout Tower but maybe somewhere along the verbal trail, I’ll have another POW! and the memories will flood in. I did not take a picture and nothing online is helping.
On the way to the shelter, however, I had another first. My first bald! I loved the balds from pictures I’d seen long before my first step on the trial and here I was climbing one myself.
A grassy hill in the sky has always elicited a reaction from me, at time visceral. It is full of life: Mother Nature’s breast, an ocean wave, life and movement rising into an infinite sky. Something deep and primordial is tapped within me when I see a rounded, barren hill mounding and heaving up into the timeless blue.
Nonetheless, that’s where my AWOL markings tell me I stayed.
Day #19 Winding Stair Gap > Wayah Bald Shelter 11.0 miles