Appalachian Trials
Good morning.
We are on the road, headed to visit family in Alabama. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Kodak, Tennessee last night, which is right outside Seiverville.
One of our stops yesterday was to take a walk on the Appalachian Trail. It wasn't a long walk, but now all of my kids have been on a portion of it.
I nurse a dream to one-day through hike the trail. A lot of people do it as a solo adventure, but I think it would be great fun to hike it as a family. A man can dream.
Back in 2013, Chesley (my wife), my mom, and I spent a week hiking a section of the trail around Damascus and the Grayson Highlands with our dog Hoss.
Chesley and I started the hike in Vibram 5-finger toe shows, despite the fact that B-Man had minced no words in telling us that this was an absolutely terrible idea.
B-Man was someone we met in the process of getting ready to hike the trail. He was an experienced AT through-hiker who happened to be working at REI when we went in to get supplies.
We listened to most of his advice but ignored the part where he insisted that the most important thing was good boots.
Things started well, despite the fact that we were hiking in a downpour.
Our spirits were high, and we had managed to pack a bunch of cans of beer in the spare nooks and crannies of our packs.
We had a carefully planned out itinerary that would take us through the Grayson Highlands and back to Damascus (we were hiking in reverse) on easy 10 to 15 mile days.
Easy.
By the end of day 1, we were in tears because our feet hurt so bad. I don't mean that figuratively.
The only thing that saved me was the fact that we stumbled on a trail-side shelter and goody chest set up by a local church that happened to have an old pair of boots available for the taking.
The boots were about 18 sizes to small for me, but I used my knife to cut a hole in the front of the boots so my toes could just hang out the front.
We still have the boots as a momento.
I mentioned the rain. We hiked in a downpour that continued for most of the first two days.
We wore ponchos. I remember them actually being garbarge bags, but I could be wrong, so I'll say they were ponchos. One thing I know is that the ponchos didn't keep us dry because we sweat more than we had in our entire lives.
I can still remember the smell that wafted off the three of us and into the woods. I remember thinking that I didn't know women could smell that bad.
One of my fondest memories of the whole experience was the first night, listening to my mom weave a tapestry of obscenities that still linger over the ridges and valleys of the Appalachians to this day as she tried to get Hoss to lay down in the tent with her.
Speaking of tents, there was also the moment where Chesley got stuck in our tent with a bug. My mom and I sat outside wheezing with laughter as we watched the tent jumping off the ground as she tried to get away from the bug. The tent leaping off the ground was straight out of a cartoon.
That was actually our last night on the trail. We hitched a ride back into Damascus earlier than we had planned and stayed a night with a man named Crazy Larry who runs a hostel there.
If you ever happen to find yourself in Damascus, I highly recommend stopping to have a conversation with Larry.
I don't know what the point of sharing all this is.
We're on the road, these memories are on my mind, and I don't want to risk running out of time to publish something later.
Let's see if we can find a moral.
I've got one!
Don't turn away because something is difficult. Difficult things are often the ones that are most worth doing. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and soon you'll have an experience and memory that you'll cherish forever.
Not bad, considering I believe it to be true and had no plan to get here at the outset.
Life is good!
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