Read Online AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller - Free Book Online
Authors: David Miller
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it.
Gumption is the most important thing for a thru-hiker to maintain. Compare rounds of golf, one played while keeping score and one in which you hit a mulligan every time you are unhappy with a shot. In the latter case, being on the golf course loses significance. Rounds that are memorable are the ones that you make count. In a broader context, all rounds of golf are of no consequence, whether score is kept or not. But you are the center of your own universe. You are free to create meaning for yourself.
When you attempt to capture the highlights without burdening yourself with the tedium, the highlights lose the foundation that elevates them to the status of "highlight." Analogies abound because a focused attitude defines the quality of all that we do. In playing a game, dieting, or hiking the AT, you benefit most when you commit yourself to it, embrace it.
Stretch is the most athletic person I've met on the trail. He's two years out of college, where he played soccer. He and I seem to be the ones most concerned about stopping our weight loss, but I can't match his eating: six pancakes, two bowls of granola, cantaloupe wedges, and probably stuff he snatched from plates on either side of him.
Fourteen hikers are having breakfast at Elmer's. One of them comments that he has to stop taking these zero weeks. Hot Springs is a hard town to leave. "Would you consider staying a while longer?" Elmer offers. "I'd like to build a bay window in that farmhouse, and I could use your help. You could stay at the inn, and your knee would get more rest."
The offer is tempting, but I'm determined to keep to my fast hiking plan. Before leaving home, I had laid out my plan on a spreadsheet. The plan had me hiking over eighteen miles a day with no zero days, and finishing in 116 days. 17 It was a crazy plan. At the time, I had never backpacked, run, or even walked unburdened on flat Florida ground eighteen miles in any single day. Remarkably, upon arriving in Hot Springs on May 13, I am still on schedule.
Leaving Hot Springs, I see Steve O. on the other side of the street, talking to another hiker. He doesn't have his pack with him. "Good," I think to myself. I plan on walking a few long days. I'll never see him again.
Hot Springs to Damascus
From the French Broad River, I follow the trail along switchbacks up to the rocky cliffs of Lover's Leap. At the cliffs, the narrow path bends along a vertical rock wall. There is a view back to the river and the city I have left behind. In Hot Springs I had time to stand at a pay phone in the middle of town and talk with my wife and say hello to my kids. As I look back on the town, I miss this connection to home.
I take my time at a stream crossing, getting water, eating lunch, and writing a letter to Juli. A young man in sandals and day pack walks by, carrying a butterfly net. He sees that I am writing, nods, and continues on. The trail bends at the stream, so I am able to see him in profile up ahead. He slows, pauses, and slaps the net down over nothing on the side of the trail. It's best if I stall and let him move on. Now he sits and starts writing. Okay, I can get ahead of him.
Forgoing the urge to compliment him on the nice batch of dead leaves he snagged, I ask, "What are you looking for?"
"Oven birds. There is a nest right there," he says, pointing to where his net landed.
He shows me a hole about the size that would be made by stabbing the handle of a shovel into the ground. Inside there are three eggs, but no bird. He is a naturalist gathering data on the small, ground-nesting birds. If a bird had been in its nest, it would attempt to fly out and trap itself in the net. This encounter is a tip to be more observant; surely there is much more wildlife I pass without noticing.
The AT just north of Hot Springs, North Carolina.
Tenderfoot is one of the few hikers on this section of trail today. She does not come as far as Little Laurel Shelter, so I have it to myself. It's a lonely
Gumption is the most important thing for a thru-hiker to maintain. Compare rounds of golf, one played while keeping score and one in which you hit a mulligan every time you are unhappy with a shot. In the latter case, being on the golf course loses significance. Rounds that are memorable are the ones that you make count. In a broader context, all rounds of golf are of no consequence, whether score is kept or not. But you are the center of your own universe. You are free to create meaning for yourself.
When you attempt to capture the highlights without burdening yourself with the tedium, the highlights lose the foundation that elevates them to the status of "highlight." Analogies abound because a focused attitude defines the quality of all that we do. In playing a game, dieting, or hiking the AT, you benefit most when you commit yourself to it, embrace it.
Stretch is the most athletic person I've met on the trail. He's two years out of college, where he played soccer. He and I seem to be the ones most concerned about stopping our weight loss, but I can't match his eating: six pancakes, two bowls of granola, cantaloupe wedges, and probably stuff he snatched from plates on either side of him.
Fourteen hikers are having breakfast at Elmer's. One of them comments that he has to stop taking these zero weeks. Hot Springs is a hard town to leave. "Would you consider staying a while longer?" Elmer offers. "I'd like to build a bay window in that farmhouse, and I could use your help. You could stay at the inn, and your knee would get more rest."
The offer is tempting, but I'm determined to keep to my fast hiking plan. Before leaving home, I had laid out my plan on a spreadsheet. The plan had me hiking over eighteen miles a day with no zero days, and finishing in 116 days. 17 It was a crazy plan. At the time, I had never backpacked, run, or even walked unburdened on flat Florida ground eighteen miles in any single day. Remarkably, upon arriving in Hot Springs on May 13, I am still on schedule.
Leaving Hot Springs, I see Steve O. on the other side of the street, talking to another hiker. He doesn't have his pack with him. "Good," I think to myself. I plan on walking a few long days. I'll never see him again.
Hot Springs to Damascus
From the French Broad River, I follow the trail along switchbacks up to the rocky cliffs of Lover's Leap. At the cliffs, the narrow path bends along a vertical rock wall. There is a view back to the river and the city I have left behind. In Hot Springs I had time to stand at a pay phone in the middle of town and talk with my wife and say hello to my kids. As I look back on the town, I miss this connection to home.
I take my time at a stream crossing, getting water, eating lunch, and writing a letter to Juli. A young man in sandals and day pack walks by, carrying a butterfly net. He sees that I am writing, nods, and continues on. The trail bends at the stream, so I am able to see him in profile up ahead. He slows, pauses, and slaps the net down over nothing on the side of the trail. It's best if I stall and let him move on. Now he sits and starts writing. Okay, I can get ahead of him.
Forgoing the urge to compliment him on the nice batch of dead leaves he snagged, I ask, "What are you looking for?"
"Oven birds. There is a nest right there," he says, pointing to where his net landed.
He shows me a hole about the size that would be made by stabbing the handle of a shovel into the ground. Inside there are three eggs, but no bird. He is a naturalist gathering data on the small, ground-nesting birds. If a bird had been in its nest, it would attempt to fly out and trap itself in the net. This encounter is a tip to be more observant; surely there is much more wildlife I pass without noticing.
The AT just north of Hot Springs, North Carolina.
Tenderfoot is one of the few hikers on this section of trail today. She does not come as far as Little Laurel Shelter, so I have it to myself. It's a lonely
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