Chapter 1. Reality Is All Uphill
"The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."
- HENRY VAN DYKE
We stood at one end of an endless trail. Three backpacks leaned against still-leafless trees. Three sets of tentative bootprints tracked Georgia dirt where a path wound two thousand miles north. Endless, the Appalachian Trail, or intended to seem so. It led to Maine. We were going to walk.
Our friend Rosemary Passano had driven us eighty miles from Atlanta to Amicalola State Park, dropped us near a wooded lake at pavement’s end and wished us a pleasant trip. Then she’d gone. I’d watched her drive our car down the steep hill from the lake, down and out of sight onto Georgia Highway 52, and expected to take it calmly. We’d planned this journey for more than a year, after all. The sudden, hollow feeling of that moment came as a surprise.
The car, my last link with the city and surroundings I found most familiar, headed south taking Rosemary home. A foreign, silent wood crowded round me and I heard little but the wind. To say I felt apprehensive hardly told the story at all.
It was March 21. We’d begun our hike on spring’s first full day as an optimistic gesture but the weather took no notice. A biting wind nipped our ears and fingers and swirled dead leaves about our feet and along the trail. The lake rippled and danced with shifting patterns, with broken reflections of trees and clouds. Weak sunshine offered the faintest of shadows. Spring was late, it seemed. We’d hoped for a much warmer welcome.
We dug out hats and gloves to fend off the cold, stood for pictures under a sign reading Springer Mt 7m, then put on our packs and started north. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
The trail proved easy to follow. Blue blazes painted on trees led around Amicalola Lake on a dirt road for two miles, then turned up a well-worn path into the woods. The forest pushed closer, closed behind us, and the grade steepened. Our hearts and lungs and muscles switched to lower gears. Uphill: a mile-long climb of Frosty Mountain.
Jerri walked in front. The walk had been her idea, though she wouldn’t always remember it that way. She’d wanted to see spring come to the southern Appalachians and follow it north. Pleasant spring days would last longer that way. From the looks of our barren surroundings, we’d arrived in plenty of time.
Five-foot-five, brown hair, smile radiating confidence from the depths of warm clothes she’d bundled in, Jerri already seemed at ease. She’d grown up in the country and knew the outdoors. Time in the woods was like a visit with friends to her, and she would likely fall quickly to watching birds and identifying flowers and lose all apparent interest in our destination.
Photographer, writer, and self-taught naturalist, Jerri had gladly left the Arizona desert to be among things growing and green. She wouldn’t rush to get anywhere, she said. She’d come to see things and to watch the seasons change. In front, she had first chance to look.
Ten-year-old Kyra (rhymes with Vera) followed along in the middle. She wore the blue knitted cap she’d made, with its bobbing, softball-sized tassel, and her blonde hair flowed from beneath it to wave in the wind. Already nearly as tall as her mother, Kyra shouldered her pack with nonchalance. She flashed a ready grin but it didn’t quite mask her wary look. Seven months’ vacation from school had come as riches beyond measure to her; she wasn’t sure this was the best way to spend them.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she allowed, not wanting to commit herself one way or the other. Better than sixth grade, at least. “But why did we have to keep it such a big secret?”
“Since no one knew,” Jerri explained, “we weren’t bombarded with reasons it couldn’t be done. And we avoid making excuses if we don’t get very far.”
Walking close behind Jerri, Kyra kept up the pace. We hadn’t even considered the possibilities, she was probably thinking ... surely we could have done something else with our time....
No stranger to the outdoors, Kyra had accompanied us on trips since she could toddle and had traveled through twenty-eight states. But none, she pointed out, on foot.
At the end of the line, I looked around at the quiet woods. I’d grown up in town. I thought of the forest as a place. One went there to do things, to hike, to camp, to find adventure. I’d walked and slept in the woods and in desert as well, and I’d come to the Appalachians for my most ambitious adventure so far.
I’d designed and programmed computer systems for eleven years. The work was interesting enough, but the prospect of walking through two thousand miles of new experiences came with a force I couldn’t resist. The Appalachian Trail seemed awesome in concept and scale. I’d seized it at once as a fascinating problem to work.
We’d settled matters of equipment, supplies, routing, and timing as months passed and arrived at Amicalola ready to go. Georgia to Maine, over scenic mountain trails -- it sounded great. But like other times I’d come to the woods, the surroundings seemed just out of reach. I felt remotely uncomfortable, like a guest whom the host did not know.
I looked the part, at least. Dressed in jeans like the others, plus similar rugged boots and down jacket, I stood six-three and had long hair showing beneath a wide-brimmed black hat. Years before I’d grown a full beard. I hadn’t trimmed it in quite a while.
The Chattahoochee National Forest around us gave no sign of bursting to life. Past summers’ leaves covered the ground and crinkled softly as we shuffled along. Pine trees lent touches of dusty green but deciduous trees stood stark and bare. Views from ridge-tops showed the drab Georgia countryside. Atop Frosty Mountain, we stopped for a look. A thousand mountains, likely more, marched in random heaps to the horizon and beyond, their colors fading with distance.
Chattahoochee: the Cherokee word meant “flower-painted rock.” Sorry, no flowers today, and too little sun to paint the sky and far-off peaks. Lots of rocks, though, and the wind still blowing. We didn’t stop for long.
The trail led on from Frosty’s summit a mile and a half to Nimblewill Gap. We walked downhill quickly then started back up, another mile to the top of Black Mountain. The trail guidebook used discouraging words, like “steeply,” and we shifted gears once more.
Uphill: hardly ever fun, especially with a pack. I wondered if I’d get used to it, or forget to notice the soreness already beginning in my shoulders and legs. Other hikers’ accounts described the trail as all uphill, in either direction. “I climbed the Appalachian Trail,” went the suggested T-shirt message.
We reached the base of Springer Mountain weary, out of breath, and only too glad to set down our packs. We’d walked three hours, covered six miles, and the next climb looked like it went on forever. The uphill business had gotten serious.
“Zigzag steeply up slope,” directed the guide in terse dismissal of another mile. Jerri sat down, back to the wind, and pulled off her boots.
“Blisters,” she said. “Where’s the moleskin?”
Jerri cut protective patches for both heels with supplies I retrieved from the first-aid kit.
“Don’t the boots fit?” I asked, knowing we’d broken them in, jogging and clumping fifty miles around the block back home.
“They slip a little at the heels,” she admitted. “For short walks on level ground, it wasn’t enough to matter.”
Great ... and we’d barely started. She must have felt them coming on ... we could have stopped sooner....
She’d felt them for miles. Annoyed that expensive, carefully fitted, properly broken-in boots had failed to protect her narrow heels, and wary of my reaction to trouble so soon, she’d walked on. Her blisters were too big to ignore now.
Springer Mountain gave way slowly. The trail rose steeply on switchbacks and the wind blew stronger and colder with each upward step. A rhythmic creaking came from my pack as I moved from foot to foot. The ache from packstraps spread through my shoulders, to my neck, down my back. I felt mounting strain all through my legs as I climbed on, pushing upward, following the two figures just ahead. Looking up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the top, I noted frost on the grass and trees. Patches of white thickened as we advanced.
“How much farther?” Kyra asked, pulling her cap tighter around her ears. “I’m tired, and cold.”
“There’s a shelter on top,” I said. “Pretty soon we’ll be out of the wind.” A dull orange glow through the trees foretold sunset. Daylight wouldn’t last much longer. We climbed higher, following turn after turn of zigzagging trail.
Gaining the 3,782-foot summit at last, we came to a dead stop. New snow outlined the scene ahead in sharp relief. The trail led through woods nearly devoid of color, through stark, twisted black brush, through undergrowth white and bent with frost. Trees hung heavy with ice. Wind-blown branches clattered together like drumsticks in a grade-school rhythm band.
“But there were cardinals and daffodils and new green leaves in Atlanta.” Jerri protested.
It had rained there, too, and rain had come as ice and snow to Springer Mountain.
A signboard marked the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. The walk officially began at that point for northbound hikers, where two-by-six-inch white paint blazes replaced the side-trail blue. We could start counting there. Everything so far had just been practice, warm-up for the big event. We leaned wearily against the sign for pictures, against words that told of a mountain footpath leading to Mount Katahdin in Maine. It suddenly seemed like a long, long way.
“Where’s the shelter?” Kyra asked.
“A little farther on,” I replied. “We’ll get there soon.”
“Brrrr, I want to get in my bag.”
I looked around for the register to record our names. The guidebook had mentioned it and on my way up the mountain I’d imagined the scene. I’d find a rusting iron box chained to a tree, and inside, safe from the weather, an aging bound volume. Paging carefully, reverently, through years of signatures, I would pause at names well known ... Avery ... Gatewood ... Shaffer. I would nod at those whose books I’d read ... Sutton ... Garvey ... Baker. Then, in a history-making moment, I’d add ours. Thousands had started; we would be among them. A few had finished. So, perhaps, might we.
Right. I found a two-foot-square board mounted at waist level on a pipe driven into the ground. A dented metal sheet covered the board, shielding what valued contents there might be. I pried the cover loose. A sudden gust sent torn, wet, random scraps of paper fluttering like confetti over the frozen mountaintop. I watched, shrugged, and dropped the cover to the ground with a loud clang.
On one reasonably dry sheet, I signed us in: Mic, Jerrianne, & Kyra Lowther - Phoenix, Arizona. I added Georgia Maine with very little ceremony. I stuffed remaining papers inside and hammered the cover back in place with my hand. So much for history.
We filled canteens from a stream beyond the summit and walked to the newly built shelter. Its three sturdy wood walls, platform floor, and pitched shingle roof looked inviting in the wintry scene. It was the first of more than two hundred such structures we would find along the trail. As we approached, a man stepped from behind the canvas tarp that covered the shelter’s open side.
“This one’s full,” he said. “Sixteen of us. There’s another lean-to just down the mountain.”
This wasn’t part of the plan ... Big Stamp Shelter lay a mile and a half farther on ... darkness would soon close in.
“It will be warmer down there,” Jerri said. “We’ll just have to hurry.” She set off in a rush down gently descending trail. Kyra followed without a word.
Regular white blazes led us off the mountain and out of winter’s ice and snow. Wind still stirred branches above and brush around us and light faded fast, but smooth footway kept our steps from straying in the dark. Trees loomed black and ghostly as we passed. Restless forest sounds came from every side. We hurried on.
Details vanished in the dark. We saw no blazes, no trail, only shapes that gave a sense of passage through the night. The path leveled. Jerri pointed to something dim, black, rectangular off to one side. Big Stamp: refuge at last.
This shelter seemed older and smaller and wind blew directly into the front. A tarp was stretched part way across the opening to block it. We looked inside, around the tarp’s flapping edge, and in the gloom saw a picnic table heaped with gear. A large, pointed rock protruded from the dirt floor beneath it. Wrapped tight in sleeping bags, four hikers filled the remaining space. Big Stamp was full, too.
“Hello,” Jerri said.
“Hullo,” said two of the four.
“Where ya headed?” I asked.
Maine, they allowed.
So were we, Jerri replied.
Silence ... now what?
“And how old are you?” asked a voice.
“Ten,” Kyra answered.
Silence.
“... A ten-year-old going to Maine?”
Four male visions of hiking the long, rugged trail suffered measurably. Grandmothers and girls in their teens had done the AT; that was bad enough. Now a ten-year-old. Was nothing sacred? Was there no escape from amateurs, even on a howling, freezing night on Springer Mountain?
They said nothing for a few moments more, then one by one offered to scoot forward and make room for Jerri and Kyra to sleep along the back wall. That left no space for me. I lit our sputtering candle lantern and petted the small collie pup that came over to me from one corner. We couldn’t cook dinner in such cramped quarters so I handed out jelly-bread as Jerri and Kyra settled in.
One of the four, Peter Home Douglas, resumed the conversation our arrival had interrupted. He’d hiked long distances before, he said, and planned to cover at least fifteen miles a day. We hoped for ten, I said. He talked about his backpacking gear, why he’d chosen what he carried, and told of techniques he’d developed walking the 260-mile Long Trail through Vermont. I mentioned lessons we’d learned hiking in the West. Basic things, like staying on the trail, bringing warm clothes, and not running out of water.
Peter thought it best to have clean equipment. He planned to keep his so at all times, he said, especially his expensive goose-down sleeping bag. I nodded agreement, just as a full slice of jelly-bread slipped from my freezing fingers and landed on his bag, jelly-side down.
The crowded shelter grew suddenly quiet.
“Th-that’s okay ...” Peter managed, as I apologized and quickly cleaned up. What timing ... no need to worry now about where I would sleep. I packed up, ducked around the tarp, and got out of there fast. Silence returned to Big Stamp.
I leaned my pack against the back of the shelter and rolled out my bag in a pile of wind-drifted leaves. Getting in brought a satisfying crunch. Wind still howled and beat at the front of the shelter. I felt safe and out of its reach. And soon, for the first time in hours, I was warm.
What if it rained, a passing thought asked. Clear sky, stars ... not likely. Long day. Nine miles, we’d walked, or just under. Not bad for a mid-afternoon start. We’d done that much in a day only once before ... Yosemite ... in the rain. We’d have to do that every day. I turned over on my side. Leaves crackled beneath me.
Quite an ordeal to get this far ... a year of planning a “different” family adventure ... months of research and preparation ... three weeks to move everything we owned to a storage warehouse ... the drive to Atlanta. On the trail at last. Only a few people knew where we were.
Noises. Wind in the trees ... no, something crunched through the leaves. Squirrel. They had squirrels in Georgia didn’t they? Chipmunk, maybe. What if something big did come by? We’d had bears in Yosemite. Lumpy ground. Colder, too. Nine miles ... not bad ... could we keep it up? Would all days be this odd? Why did things seem less possible in the dark?
This was it ... the Appalachian Trail. A narrow path grooved into the earth leading up mountain and down. Or maybe just up. A centerline for the very different lives we would live for a time ... till nearly winter, I figured. And we were on our way.
I scrunched around in the leaves and finally went to sleep. Whatever adventures lay beyond Springer Mountain could wait....
Machine-gun fire startled me awake at four in the morning. Bombs exploded in the distance and the whirring and chopping of a battle-ready helicopter filled the air directly overhead. Searchlights stabbed the trees and ground nearby. Rifle shots barked from the woods. I watched without moving. I knew that U.S. Army Rangers used the area for training, and we’d expected to meet them. But on the first night?
The attackers weren’t concerned with us so I settled back to sleep, first pulling a canteen from my pack for a drink. Frozen solid. I couldn’t help but laugh. This adventure would be different, all right.
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