The Beginning
Aug 2006 - stalking Tortoise
The
Beginning
It all began with a
simple e-mail exchange. In the spring of 2003, Tim e-mailed me at
work to vent about his current work situation and asked the
rhetorical question “Did you ever feel like quitting your job
to hike the Appalachian Trail?” To that point, I had no idea
that Tim had any interest in the AT.
My interest dated back
to August of 1977. My family piled into our van to drop my oldest
sister off at college in Poughkeepsie, NY. At some point, we crossed
the trail and I saw a group of hikers standing at the road crossing.
Something about the encounter stuck with me and I filed the idea of
backpacking deep into the recesses on my mind.
I met Tim during my
last two years of high school. We went on camping trips to
Assateague Island in Maryland but never mentioned backpacking to each
other. Post-college job relocations found Tim in Massachusetts while
I settled down south of Harrisburg, PA. My job was eventually
shifted to a new factory that just happened to be located two miles
south of the AT’s Swatara Gap road crossing. It wasn’t
long before I started taking my lunch up to the AT and walking a few
hundred feet along the white blazes. Around the same time, I
received access to the World Wide Web and found that hikers were
posting journals detailing their hiking trips along the AT. My
favorite journal then (and still) is George Steffanos’ “Then
the Hail Came”. The backpacking dream moved rapidly to the
forefront of my consciousness and I became almost obsessed with the
idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail.
It took until 1998 for
me to purchase all of the required gear from Campmor, EMS and LL
Bean. I read all kinds of hiker reviews before choosing each piece
of equipment and was like a kid at Christmas every time the UPS man
arrived with another package. The only remaining impediment was
time. Between parenting a pair of pre-schoolers and engaging in my
existing hobbies, it was difficult to find a free weekend to get out
and hit the trail. Finally, as part of my 38th birthday
weekend, I scheduled a solo overnight trip. Armed with an
overstuffed pack and a ton of confidence, I left work on a Friday
afternoon and walked the two miles to the AT.
As I took the first
steps on the trail over familiar terrain, something was noticeably
different. I was no longer a hiker wannabe; I was a bona fide
backpacker. My goal for the evening was the Rausch Gap shelter, a
manageable six miles of trail and eight miles from my starting point.
In my mind, I imagined striding into the shelter, meeting all sorts
of interesting hikers, and talking about gear well into the night.
The reality was that the shelter was empty and the flow from the
spring was just a trickle. Not to mention that it had taken me
considerably longer than I estimated to hike the eight miles. I
ended up backtracking to the last stream crossing and setting up camp
amongst the ruins of an old town. Spending my first night alone
wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I survived. At first
light, I hastily packed up my belongings for the hike out. By
lunchtime, I was home with the family and busy telling stories of my
successful first trip.
Back to the e-mail
that got us started on this odyssey. I didn’t take Tim’s
question rhetorically at all. I replied back that I always
thought about quitting my job to hike the AT. The topic was
discussed back and forth at great length and we soon cooked up a plan
to do a section hike. Since I had been reading numerous on-line
journals and was a little more familiar with the trail, Tim left it
to me to choose the location. I picked New Jersey due to the
forgiving elevation profiles and the fact it was pretty close to
halfway between the two of us. The dream was about to transform into
a healthy dose of reality.