chapter one

those who wander

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors—home, car, gym, office, shops—disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it…exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, walking travels both terrains.”

- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Many of us have heard about the Appalachian Trail by now, probably in large part from Bill Bryson’s popular book A Walk in the Woods or through its film adaptation. We know it’s a long trail; it spanned 2,185 miles in the summer of 2014 during our journey, though it too morphs in time. The southern terminus begins in Georgia at Mt. Springer, the northern in Maine at Mt. Katahdin, a colossal mound of rock flanked on all sides by succulent coniferous forests. Most aspiring thru-hikers traditionally begin their trek from Mt. Springer and head north. We couldn’t start until after graduation in May so starting in Georgia wasn’t an option if we wanted to do an unbroken stretch, as snow would be setting in by the time we made it that far north and Baxter State Park, where Mt. Katahdin resides, doesn’t allow people in after the snow flies. Plus, we wanted to be unconventional nonconformists, so we started at Katahdin to head south...

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When I awoke at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 26th, 2014 in room 118 of Baxter Inn in Millinocket, Maine, I was in a slight haze of confusion. The previous day’s twenty-hour drive from Indiana was largely absent from my mind. The window curtains were closed and the room was dark, though not entirely obscured. Enough light seeped into the room to silhouette this dull unfamiliar place. It took a moment to find my bearings. Groggy, I forced myself up. Once I flipped on the light in the bathroom, a little more became clear. I’d prepared the complimentary coffee (if these motes of dark dust can be labeled as such) the night before and toggled the cheap plastic switch on.

I looked myself over in the mirror, noted my puffy, eager eyes, and then stepped back out into the main complex of the dim room. Being the first one up, I moved stealthily so as not to disturb Hilary and her father, Steve, who had graciously offered to drive us here to Maine and climb Mt. Katahdin with us before bidding us farewell on our journey. I moved slowly toward the unexposed window anticipating a rising sun to mark the beginning of our trek and romantically imagined some kind of soundtrack music like that from a Spielberg film would suddenly begin and follow us on our voyage. I drew back the curtain and cocked my head to peer out into what I fantasized would be a pure bliss of sunshine. In dismay my heart sank; darkened gray clouds and drizzling rain amidst a poor scene of a dilapidated building and rusting cars were all that confronted me. And no music except for the off-beat pattering of rain on asphalt and tin roofing muffled by a pane of foggy glass. Hilary, more the realist, has always taken great pleasure in scolding me for being overly idealistic. My pride was fortunately spared this time as she still lay snoozing. Before I’d even begun, I’d already made my first mistake: never expect that things will go the way you anticipate. This would prove to be a relentless lesson over the next eleven days as we trekked from Mt. Katahdin through the Hundred-Mile Wilderness into the small, charming town of Monson.

While we checked in with the ranger in preparing to make our 10.4 round-trip mile ascent and descent of Katahdin, he forewarned us that this was the most difficult and strenuous section of all the 2,185 miles making up the current length of the Appalachian Trail. He estimated it would take us around ten hours to finish this section seeing as how we weren’t accustomed to the trail yet. I scoffed condescendingly to myself at this and thought “no way will this take that long. I just hiked 10 miles in four hours in Indiana wearing my fucking sandals!” Damn was I ever wrong and was he ever right. It took almost exactly that amount. It was unbelievably taxing, and I was confronted bluntly with a second hard lesson: bury your ego at the base of the mountain, because nature’s indifference will quickly take advantage of it if you don’t. It might just mean a harsh blow to your pride or could turn out to be something far more serious and devastating, i.e., stay vigilant and humble in the woods.

The first mile was fairly easy, though muggy and wet. A faint sticky mist wafted through the forest of pungent conifers in the late June air; their mixing aromas stimulated nostalgia for ancient times long gone. Sweat soon beaded through the pores of our bodies. Bone and blood, tendons and joints, muscle and skin, chemicals and nerves, all fueled and conspired together in an intricate display of unfathomable symbiosis; the biological apparatus of the human body is such a striking durable machine, uncannily crafted for movement.

Gnarled and brazen roots bulged through the Earth’s surface defining, and ever-so-slowly redefining the landscape and the path before us. Moss and lichen coated much of the forest floor and all the debris that lay embedded upon it like the shaggy puke green 1970s carpet left moldering in your grandparent’s basement. The second mile still didn’t give much of a challenge and we were making excellent time. At this point, I confidently maintained my skepticism of the ranger’s purported ten-hour day.

The rain began to fade and the mist dissipated soon after we crossed a wooden bridge that effortlessly carried us across the crashing Katahdin Stream Falls. London, a beginning southbound hiker like ourselves, passed us shortly after. We would only encounter two others that day and come to find later that a majority had delayed due to the forecast rain; perhaps they too shared a similar romance of sun-filled inauguration and Spielberg symphonies. I suspected they might have experienced the same heart-sinking feeling I too felt earlier that morning.

Once we reached the top of a rustically engineered stone staircase, the sun was emerging and the clouds were clearing some. Droplets of water clung and fell from the dominating conifers. Occasionally one of us would nudge a tree, shake the water off the succulent needles and shower us in the process. Around the three-mile mark, the stones lining the trail began to morph and take on a much grander shape; increasing rapidly from that point on with the rising gradient. Water trickled, then streamed down the same path.

Pebbles and cobbles had now become boulders. Panting and perspiring, my skepticism began to erode. We eventually made it above the tree line where we met the force-ridden wind and the great spine of Katahdin that resembled the grandiose plated back of an eon-extinct reptile. The wind came in powerful gusts that would make the most stable feet budge and second-guess their assurance.

Our pace was slow going now and the pleasant walking jaunt we began with had now shifted into an intense bouldering exercise as we climbed over and upward on barren rock. Had the white blazes not been painted to indicate the trail’s route, one would surely think they’d gone astray from the path. The moment was daunting, yet simultaneously thrilling. As I turned around to look below, an immense white cloud confronted us. Thick and opaque, it blotted out a large portion of the view. Though the scene was ominous, awe and raw beauty were retained in the visible remaining dark greenery, rock, and sky.

We’d made it up the spine and within a mile and a half of the peak. We were walking a fine line between a divided field of boulders, small shrubs and grasses, rare and endangered plant and animal species; a unique butterfly species, islanded by climate, found nowhere else, but on this very site. The chilled temperature amidst the wind and pattering rain summoned goosebumps and uncontrolled shivers.

There remained our final incline, though we did not yet know it. London emerged from the mist that was ebbing and flowing, obstructing visibility. He informed us we had less than a half hour until the peak. We exchanged a few words and within the minute of separation, he’d faded and returned to the mist.

The fog lifted for some time and there it was at last; the weather-scarred sign of Katahdin not thirty feet away. My eyes widened and my heart pulsed an even greater throb of excitement. I’d already glanced over dozens of photographs and the blogging words of many others who’d captured their victorious moments here, but I’d never felt the pulsing thrill or been able to fully empathize with those in the blog posts and images in the abyss of Google’s search engine. But now, this was my moment. This was our moment. And there it was, as real as ever an experience could be.

A hand-stacked stone cairn five or six feet high stood twenty feet from the sign; a collective monument that would perhaps stand far longer than this weathered wooden sign, yet remain a relic, mysteriously indecipherable and curious of its signifying meaning to those of the long-distant future should the threads of our history be severed.

Even the plaque’s text that lay close by may very well corrode and diminish before the cairn. It declares this piece of land, gifted by Percival Proctor Baxter in the early 1930s, “Shall forever be used for public park and recreational purposes, shall forever be left in the natural wild state, shall forever be kept as a sanctuary for wild beasts and birds, that no road or ways for motor vehicles shall hereafter ever be constructed therein or thereon.” I thought to myself how overly optimistic that statement sounded and asked, “For how long do the mere hopeful words of the past dictate the actions, perceptions, and values of the ever-changing people of the future?”

I found myself back in the drizzling present. For the many northbound hikers, this site signaled a very well-accomplished end, for others calling themselves “flip-floppers” the start of the last half of the trek, for still others a successful day hike or check off the bucket list, but for us “southbounders”, the thinned out loners of the AT herd, it signified the very beginning. Another salient lesson dawned on me: whatever goal, dream, or adventure one imagines pursuing, make it a reality because pure imagination alone can never fathom the truth and beauty of something left undone.

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