Walking Home

July 21

2024

Last time you heard from me, we were just approaching the halfway point. I now write to you from Warwick, NY and let me tell you, it has not been an easy time getting here. The first task was making it  through Pennsylvania, an impassible labyrinth of razor-sharp rock. Picture, if you will, a stretch of about 150 miles; sometimes you're clambering over gargantuan rock piles, kind of like someone bought a mountain at IKEA and never bothered to assemble it, and other times it's like the entire earth has been covered in infinite quantities of jagged teeth, which you have to somehow pick your way through without twisting or spraining every joint in your body. It's a feet-eater, Pennsylvania, it's a shoe-chewer. It's also home to approximately 18 quadrillion affectionately-suicidal gnats, such that by the end of the day, it looks like you've been sprinkled with a giant pepper shaker.

Luckily, things mellow out fairly quickly after the state line. The rocks get a bit smoother in New Jersey and slowly coalesce into the mountainous rock flows that make up my home state of New York. The weather also for this stretch has been an improvement. Nothing above the mid-80's, and humidity a definite notch or two lower than the underwater levels of Virginia. The one notable exception was a massive, surprise thunderstorm a week or so back that took my poor tarp to task. I woke up in the middle of the night to a very wet bivy and in desperate need of a replacement shelter. Needless to say this left me in quite low spirits for a few days. On the trail the lows can be quite low just as the highs are abnormally high but this low was different for a very important reason: for the first time in 4 months, I was experiencing this low alone.

I decided to leave my tramily in Duncannon, Pennsylvania. I’ve been hiking on my own ever since.  My reasons are complicated, and still a bit too jumbled  up inside of me to try and articulate here. Suffice it to say I’m at a crossroads. I find myself the closest I’ve been to home in months and I’ve been thinking about the city and you, my readers. I think I’ve decided I’m going to catch the train in. I’ve had my Mom send a package with a replacement tarp and other stuff I need to that local gear shop in Crown Heights. If you’re in the city, which from some of your comments I think a few of you might be, would you meet me? I know that might sound crazy - I probably feel like a story in your head, like a character from a book that has just asked to leap off the page. I want to bring the story to you now. I’m struggling with what it all means and I don’t think there’s anyone else in my life who can understand quite like you can. You’ve been there since the beginning…will you meet me somewhere in the confused middle? I hope you will. 

VA Blues

June 29

2024

As the Proclaimers said: “Oh I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more” and so readers, who I have begun to think of as my imaginary friends though I know you are real, I have walked 500 miles and then I did, in fact, walk 500 more. (And yes, we definitely had a sing-a-long at both those milestones, not to worry).  Sorry it’s been so long since my last update but Virgina has well and truly consumed most of my energy for the past month and a half. Virginia spans 554 miles of the AT, the longest of  any state on the trip. After that, it's just 4 miles of West Virginia; barely long enough to get to the "West Virginia" part of Take Me Home, Country Roads, before moving on to Maryland. 

Besides its length, Virginia has stood out for other reasons. The rain combined with the heat and the dense tree coverage in this area has made it feel like we're hiking through a rainforest, complete with exotic (sometimes comically cartoonish) bird song that Moon Unit loves to imitate and heaping helpings of mosquitoes that love to feast on me. Judging by the number of bites I've sustained, I'd say I'm missing about a pint of blood at this point. Maddenly, Sandals seems to get no bites at all. He’ll just shrug and say, “Must be because I taste bad”.  Luckily, mosquitoes are the only biting creatures that have actually had success so far, with one notable exception which deserves its own paragraph. In fact, nearly all the wildlife we've seen has been pretty harmless. There are plenty of deer around, countless tiny, bright orange lizards we've dubbed "Gummy Lizards", Rat Snakes which like to lie across the trail and just stare you down (they're non-venomous, but alarmingly huge), and... ponies. Yes, that's right, ponies! Just north of Damascus, there's an area called the Grayson Highlands which actually has herds of wild ponies to help control the vegetation. It's a popular local spot, so they're very used to people and you can just wander amongst them, as if you were in some sort of Enya music video. Tree Beard decided they were going to wander off and commune with them and we didn’t see them again until camp that night. To this day I still don’t know what happened. 

A definite lowlight, on the other hand, happened just on the other side of Damascus, two days before we hit town. We had just finished up a brutal 18 mile day, and ended up claiming the very last tent spots at the nearest shelter. The water source was down an extremely steep grade which stretched down so far it felt like we were hauling water out of Hell. So I guess it was really no surprise that, when we finally collapsed in our respective shelters, we completely slept through the brazen theft and vandalism of a bunch of our cooking equipment. The suspect: raccoons. Nearly everything in that particular bag was gnawed into uselessness, and Catnip’s cooking pot was missing entirely. We  spent a good while combing the underbrush for it, but without success. Presumably there is now a gang of raccoons out there making fiendish little stews and scheming after a nice cutlery set. Catnip now has a blood feud against racoons and I caution any that might be reading this to steer clear of her in the future. 

Also, it turns out that Virginia wasn't exactly the land of gently rolling hills and effortless travel that we had been led to believe. The rock dial has definitely been turned up over the past few hundred miles, as has the heat dial, and the 'feels like an unvented bathroom after a long shower' dial. You may feel my complaints are exaggerated, however, I will just say if you have hiked Virginia’s “Roller Coaster” in 90 plus degree heat, then you will know that I am not. For those of you who might not have undertaken such an insane thing, this is the jist: the Roller Coaster is an infamous section of the trail that covers just 13.4 miles but has over 3500 vertical feet of steep up and down hills with absolutely no views as pay-off. I think this must have been where the term PUD (pointless up and down) had to have originated because the Roller Coaster has them in abundance! The hardship though makes the cold beers at the end even sweeter. It makes me lose myself in the sound of my tramily laughing. It reminds me that these are all just moments, some beautiful, some terrible but all fleeting and there won’t be an infinite number of them. The halfway point approaches and with it….the end not too far behind. 

The Hunger Is Real

May 3

2024

Hello to any of you out there still reading - what are you like I wonder - do you think I’m crazy, brave, or some combination of the two? Well, I’ll tell you what I really am and that is hungry!!!!!! The hiker hunger has arrived, my friends. I have made it into Tennessee at this point, passing both my 200 and 300 mile markers and I am ravenous not only for miles but for anything with a high caloric value. Incidentally, do you all know about sugar? It's amazing! Things taste so much better with sugar in them! 

The Smokies, the part of the trail that passes through Great Smoky Mountain National Park, ended up being a gorgeous, if rainy, region of drifting mists, moss covered pines, and mountain views above the clouds that felt like we were  looking out over a fluffy sea. Despite the warnings of a high black bear population in that region, no bears were seen on the actual trail, although we've had two occasions now of seeing them roadside out of car windows. We made some good time through the mountains only pausing to spend two days in Gatlinburg which is a bizarre kind of mountain-themed, Vegas/Times Square hybrid with a healthy appreciation of all things moonshine and beer. Oh my god, beer! It's been placed on a pedestal. Something about such heavy hiking seems to make the body call out for it like a vital nutrient. Must be the carbs.

And maybe you clocked the change in pronoun usage - we are, in fact, a we now. A tramily has indeed formed out of us late sleepers and we have been hiking together ever since the second week on trail. There’s me, Maps, Sandals, Catnip, Moon Unit and Tree Beard. We are now a fearsome fivesome and starting to pull some bigger miles. Not only has our hunger truly arrived but we have finally been gifted with our trail legs, feeling fitter and stronger and able to endure more every day. As we speak, Sandals and I are conspiring to try to convince the group to try and pull our first twenty mile day tomorrow - we’ll see how well that goes over. In the meantime I will bask in the truly awe inspiring plate of food that has just been set in front of me. A veritable cornucopia of all things fried and cheezy.  Finger food really hits the spot these days. Our tastes have really regressed to grade-school levels, but is it truly a regression? Maybe it's just the truth at the heart of all things. 

Introducing Maps

April 17

2024

Hello again and welcome to another episode of the walking unwashed, as that is now what I truly am! I have just passed my first 100 mile marker and am now in my second state having crossed from Georgia to North Carolina a few days ago. As I sit and write this I am in Franklin, NC at the Gooder Grove Hostel run by a Robert Downey Jr. look-alike named Zen (a trail name - more on that later). I was lucky enough to get in yesterday morning and dodge most of a rainstorm, though not enough of it that my tarp didn't get pretty soaked - it's drying out on a clothesline right now. I must say it has been quite a learning curve dealing with my ultralight tarp/bivy set up but after a few nights of near collapse, I think I have more of a handle on it now. I now know to be much more judicious when selecting my campsite and that all the guylines on my tarp are not just for show…they are actually structurally important!

Not only have I been adjusting to setting up my new home away from home, but I have been adjusting to trying to sleep in it - specifically trying to sleep when there are so many other noises going on around me. I thought I was used to background noise having lived in NYC for almost 10 years but street noise does not hold a candle to this. It’s a cacophony out there! I thought I was going to find peace and solitude out in nature but quite the opposite. There are so many other creatures around me all the time even if I can’t see them. And the creatures of the human variety are quite plentiful as well. I am smack dab in the middle of the bubble so I have been feeling a little like I’m in the midst of a giant caravan of other hikers. We all seem to go the same amount of miles and stop at the same campsites every night as we all inch slowly toward our goal in Maine. Though it has felt a little crowded at times, I have been meeting some amazing people. There’s a small group of us that tend to sleep later than everyone else and we’ve been slowly turning closer and closer towards each other, sharing bits of our history and commiserating at lunch or when we finally reach camp. Perhaps they will end up being my trail family or ‘tramily’ as thru-hikers say. Only time will tell on that front.

But one thing I can say for certain is I have finally found my trail name. There is a long standing hiking tradition of finding a trail name along the way, which is yours for this and any future hikes you might do. I have officially been christened ‘Maps’ by this strange and lovely community and like any name, this one is full of meaning and stories. Maps was born out of my love for paper maps and the uniqueness of the fact that I carry them at all out here. Most folks just use their phones for navigation and the white blazes that mark the trail are so ubiquitous, it is actually quite tricky to get lost on the AT. As soon as I pulled one of my paper maps out, the name was almost a forgone conclusion. So to all of you (whoever you are) who might be reading this, I want to introduce you to someone who I had never met but who has also been in me all along: Maps has arrived and is ready for adventure!

Why Do This?

April 8

2024

It all begins with an idea: I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail. How does a brown girl originally from Chicago and current New Yorker get such an idea you might wonder? Well, there’s a story behind it of course. Isn’t there always?

I was out at a bar in my neighborhood - my neighborhood being Crown Heights, Brooklyn for anyone who might be curious - and I noticed this crazy looking guy coming out of the shop next door. He was wearing brightly colored everything but it all seemed to be covered in a layer of dirt. His hair and beard had reached mountain man status and he was carrying a pack with multiple trappings strapped, buckled, tied, and fastened to the outside of it. There was something intriguing about him, maybe otherworldly even, and I must have been staring cause he waved. So I waved back. I asked him what the pack was all about and he said: “Oh I’m hiker trash. I’m thru-hiking the AT right now.” For any of you uninitiated like I was then, a thru-hiker is someone who undertakes to walk a long distance trail from start to finish all at once. The AT or Appalachian Trail is one such long distance trail that spans roughly 2200 miles from Georgia to Maine. It passes through 14 states, has the total elevation gain and loss equivalent to climbing Mount Everest 16 times, and takes most thru-hikers between 4 and 6 months to complete. Unbeknownst to me, it passes fairly near New York City with there being an actual Appalachian Trail stop somewhere along the Metro-North. My mind was blown. I immediately offered to buy him and his friend a drink because I had to know more. His friend Ken actually turned out to be the owner of said shop, Outlandish, a place specializing in hiking gear that had just opened up. The other worldly guy was simply known to me as Goose - that was his trail name. I never learned his real one. He was self-proclaimed hiker trash and from that moment on, that’s all I wanted to be too. 

And now here I am at Amicalola Falls in Georgia getting ready to undertake the single craziest thing I have ever done. I have spent the last 8 months researching  gear, falling down Youtube rabbit holes, and visiting Outlandish almost every week to figure out how to do this. I quit my job, broke my lease, and put all my stuff in an over-priced storage unit. My pack is light, my trail runners are brand spanking new, and I am terrified. Will I ever figure out how to set my tarp up without it sagging awkwardly? What if I get eaten by a bear?! Am I even cut out to be a thru-hiker? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. This is where the real story begins.