He was southbound ….. in
Pennsylvania, in late October. It seems he had a difficult time
acclimating to hiking with a heavy pack and it took him a while to “get going” and
start making the mileage he needed to be doing every day to have a
chance of getting to Springer. Obviously, his early difficulties had
sabotaged a thru-hike, but he was going to go as far as he could and
pick up the AT the next year and finish. He was a charming man, easy
to talk to, interesting, and you could not help but like him
immediately and hope that he realized his goal of completing the AT.
The following day, it was raining and
my friend and I got a late start on the next section of trail we were
tackling. It was south of the Pinnacle and we had to pick our way
carefully through the rain-slick 'river of rocks' that was the
trail. As we rounded a bend in the trail ….... there, on a large
rock, sat our thru-hiker friend from the day before. He immediately
recognized us and we struck up a conversation again, after teasing
him quite a bit about how every time we saw him, he was sitting on a
rock and he'd never get to Springer that way! He laughed it off
good-naturedly, but after maybe 15 minutes of talk, he admitted that
he had just taken a bad fall on the slick rocks and hurt his ankle
and this was the reason for the 'rock sitting'.
We offered to help him …. carry his
pack, give him a ride to a doctor, whatever he needed, but he assured
us that he thought he'd be ok, his ankle was feeling better already
and he was just bumped and bruised. During this day's conversation and while giving him some time to make sure he'd be all right, I told him I
was a trail maintainer in Virginia and who knew? Maybe I'd see him on
the trail as he headed south the next year. I told him my trail name,
which was “inca” and I wished him the very best. It was really,
really hard to leave him sitting somewhat forlornly on that rock in the rain, but we finally did.
I had a
personal 'tradition' of going to the sunrise service at Natural
Bridge on Easter Sunday and then hiking The Priest after. Somehow,
hiking The Priest, in the 'Religious Range' on a beautiful Easter
morning just hit the right notes with me. The Easter weekend after
the fall hiking in Pennsylvania, I planned to spend Saturday on my
section of AT (at the time, this was the west side section between
Dripping Rock and Cripple Creek), overnight near Natural Bridge, then
hike The Priest on Sunday. So, on a beautiful spring Saturday, I found myself deep into
my section and facing a messy 'tree down' situation right smack in
the middle of the trail. After much contemplation, I ended up off the trail and well down the mountainside in my efforts to get enough of the tree off the trail for hikers to pass by.
As I worked on the tree, I heard a
hiker coming down the trail, whistling, singing ..... and as I watched him approach closer, it seemed to me
that he looked familiar. That hat …. that pack ….. could it be?
About the time the realization dawned on me that I did know this guy, he spotted me down the mountainside and I heard a
familiar voice joyfully call out “Inca, is that YOU?” It was the
thru-hiker from Pennsylvania! It seems he had made it as far as
Front Royal the fall before and one night in late November, absolutely freezing
and miserable in his tent, he decided that was the end of the line for him until next
spring. When we spotted each other, he had been on the trail about 10 days and was making good
time south and was all smiles and more than thrilled to be back on the
trail. We both marveled that we had indeed met on the trail again and
when he thanked me for the maintaining work I was doing, I don't think being a
trail maintainer was any more meaningful than it was at that moment.
Finally, he needed to hike on and I still had that tree to deal with
so we said our good-byes again.
The tree problem got resolved, I made
it to Natural Bridge at sunrise the next morning, and headed slowly up The
Priest after the breakfast buffet at Shoney's in Lexington. There's
an interesting creek you cross fairly early on when climbing The
Priest and I had stopped to admire a patch of Dutchman's Breeches (one of my favorite wild flowers) blooming along the bank,
when I heard a hiker coming …... yes, it was
the thru-hiker from PA, again! He had never seen Dutchman's Breeches
before so we took a few minutes to talk about them and then, after the
fourth good-bye of our short acquaintance, he passed me and hiked on. The last sight I had of him
was the back of his pack, with a big red bandana draped across (to
let the spring turkey hunters know he was not a turkey!), going
around the bend in the trail up ahead.
Later that spring, I happened to be on
TATC's section and taking a break at the Harper's Creek Shelter. I
always enjoy looking through shelter registers and I came across an
entry by the PA thru-hiker the Saturday night after meeting him on my AT section ….. knowing him the little I did and
having spent some time talking to him, it just seemed the perfect
entry for him to have written and it summed up his hike and his joy in being out on the
trail:
My life flows on in endless song, above earth's lamentation. I hear
the clear, though faroff hymn that hails the new creation. Through
all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing. It finds an
echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?*
In late summer, I made some inquiries and I found out that the PA thru-hiker
made it to Springer and finished his hike. I also found out that he
had a fine singing voice (I was not surprised – he had a fine
speaking voice, too) and was popular with the other hikers on the
trail for entertaining them around the campfire with his songs. For
many reasons, still to this day, the PA thru-hiker is one of my
favorites, a very special memory, and he comes to mind fairly often
when I'm out on the trail.
Yesterday, on our
work trip, it was one of those days when he was very much on my mind. We were
seeing thru-hikers, the woods are still 'greening up' and beautiful
with spring flowers, the bugs were all but non-existent, the humidity
was low and the breeze a little cool, some great trail work was
getting done, and it was just a terrific day to be out maintaining on
the AT. All day, running through my mind and in harmony with my own thoughts, were the words in the shelter register entry from the PA thru-hiker I met
years ago:
with the pure joy
(I hear the music ringing)
of
being out on the trail
(It finds an echo in my soul)
on such a day......
"How can I keep from singing?”
 |
| Mountain Laurel in bloom just north of Bear Spring yesterday |
*For some reason, when I first saw this in the shelter register, I was under the impression that the song these words came from was called 'Appalachian Hymn'; however, in doing a little research to pin it down, I found that it is from a hymn by a Baptist minister, Robert Lowery (1826-1899) My Life Flows On (How Can I Keep From Singing?)
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