by Tim Homan
In June of 1989 Page and I took a belated and shortened honeymoon-a four-night backpacking trip in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park*. Because of her father's death and our subsequent care of her mother, we hadn't backpacked-or done much of anything-for over a year. We reserved shelters for the 31.0-mile stretch of the AT from Newfound Gap to Davenport Gap. The night before I printed, "Just married: Need Ride to the Appalachian Trail at Newfound Gap" on a large piece of cardboard.
We drove without pit stop or pause through the mid-June morning to Davenport Gap. We strapped on our heavy packs and began walking the dirt-gravel road, hoisting our hitchhiker thumbs and boldly lettered sign at approaching vehicles. Our message worked almost as good as a shuttle car; sightseers hit their brakes and backed up to give us lifts, always asking where and how far we were hiking. One woman in a bus-sized Winnebago asked, "Aren't you afraid of bears? I know I would be." Our fourth ride dropped us off at Newfound Gap, where the AT crosses US 441 at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line, late in the morning.
Red spruce and Fraser fir, Mountain South's highcountry conifers, added their dark and symmetrical shapes to the forest as the rocky track rose above a mile high. The tall spruce pointed their church-steeple spires straight up toward the sky. Fir-fragrant stands of the shorter Fraser's-conical and Christmas-tree shaped-perfumed the footpath with the northwoods scent of balsam, a parting gift from the last glaciation.
We quickly reawakened familiar sensations: the backpacker's feeling of freedom and physical prowess, the sense of peace and simplicity inherent in linear foot travel, the slight satisfaction of stretching our umbilical cords-if only for a few days-further than most. We were finally traveling by the means of our own muscles in the big woods again. Our legs and lungs worked in the familiar rhythm our bodies and minds were thankful for. Even the bulky weight of our backpacks felt good.
Despite our frequent breaks and attempts at slack-packing, we arrived at Icewater Spring Shelter by mid-afternoon. Located on the upper-east slope of 6,217-foot Mount Kephart, the shelter-like all the others along the AT in the park at that time-was a three-sided lean-to with a fenced front to protect backpacker food from hungry bears*. At dusk, as we huddled next to the flicker-dance of our warm fire, we were serenaded by the Veery's flute-like song-an ethereal vee-ur vee-ur veer veer that rolls down the scale-one of Southern Appalachia's most remarkable sounds. To our surprise, we shared the shelter and campfire with only the bright and slow-wheeling glory of the night sky.
We awoke early, the light and color just coming back into the mist-smothered morning. The Veery's haunting, downward spiraling song was even more remarkable in the thick gray fog. The Thrush-family bird's fairy flutings rose disembodied and ventriloquially, as if the notes floated up from a hole in the forest floor somewhere right around camp-anywhere, everywhere-before bouncing downslope like a slinky made only of sound. Eager for an early start on the high state-line ridge-Tennessee falling away to the left, North Carolina, to the right-we hoisted our packs before the mist had fully melted into the new day's sun. Within the first hour a red squirrel-a noisy and nosy mountain boomer all tail whip, twitch, and chatter-scolded us with a chirr from a spruce bough high overhead in Tennessee. Later, the sudden wing-whir of a Ruffed Grouse startled us to instant stop. The brown, chicken-sized bird followed its quick burst of sound and motion with a long, slanting, set-wing sail downslope into North Carolina.
Our first food break of the day was at Charlies Bunion: a humped outcropping of Anakeesta Formation, its rusty-brown rock soft and acidic. Clumps of tiny-leafed sand myrtle, shorn low and rounded by the contours of the wind, crouched tight to their rockface holdfasts. We scrambled up and out onto the furthest vantage point. Far in front of us, the graceful green curves of the ridges reared high against the blue sky, their ancient thrust and fold ranging away in paling ranks. Standing high and fir-capped, Mount LeConte lifted the rolling horizon to 6,593 feet 4 miles away to the west-northwest.
A man and his two sons-tall and gangly, thirteen and fifteen-were already unpacked when we arrived at shelter number two, Pecks Corner. Fit and close to one side of forty or the other, the man told us he had loved to hike in the Southern Highlands in his younger days, before multiple commitments starting with demanding job, marriage, and mortgage changed his life. But now, just this year, he had begun dayhiking and backpacking again, taking his boys to favorite trails he had last trod in his early twenties. He and his colt-legged boys were trekking the same stretch of the AT we were, only they were walking it from low to high, Davenport to Newfound.
We quickly fell into the familiar weave of trail talk as we reminisced about the old days: fewer people, less gear, more energy, easier to get away for three or four days. During supper the younger boy asked if we had seen a bear yet. We told him we had yet to encounter a black bear on this trip, and besides the larger birds-Turkey Vulture and Common Raven, Ruffed Grouse and Pileated Woodpecker-all we had seen so far was a few red squirrels, eastern chipmunks, and one garter snake.
The boys had seen their first-ever bear up close and had taken pictures to prove it. Their first night out at Cosby Knob Shelter, a "huge bear" appeared at the bottom of the opening and hung around for at least twenty minutes while they ate their supper inside the cage. The older boy finished the story. The big male bear was not aggressive; he was content to remain in the lower half of the clearing, sniffing their supper and occasionally glancing sideways into the woods. "After a while, since we were inside the fence, we were hoping the bear would come closer so we could get a better look at him-and better pictures. But dad wouldn't let us lure the bear in closer with food."
Night number three we shared Tricorner Knob Shelter with a tall, eighteen-year-old runner bound for Vanderbilt on a cross country scholarship and a powerfully built man who looked to be in his mid-forties. The slender young man was making quick work of the AT from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Damascus, Virginia, before starting a two-runs-a-day regimen later in the summer. In the park, where overnight stays in shelters are mandatory along the AT, he skipped every other one and still arrived in time for a late lunch.
The man, with a close-cropped beard and calves pumped up into Picasso proportions, told us he had begun backpacking so he would have both the time and tranquility to think. But the thinking part of his plan hadn't worked out at all. He soon discovered that he couldn't, or at least didn't, turn his mind inward to complex philosophical exploration. He found that his mind continually focused on outward beauty, the everywhere, everyday beauty of Highland Dixie. Beauty kept barging in, breaking the connections of his thoughts, tugging too hard at his attention. So he quit trying to think, and mostly just looked. And that, a surprise of epiphany proportions, was fine with him.
After preliminary trail talk we settled in for the main event: shelter stories, that subset genre so much a part of the rich mythology of the AT. Page and I swapped one of our shelter stories from two years before, when we followed the long green tunnel through the western side of the park starting from Newfound Gap.
On our second day out we met two separate women who stopped to tell us about the scary-looking, slack-packing construction worker from Florida they had passed coming north a few days before. Female backpackers had been warning one another about this "serial woman pesterer" face to face and in shelter journals since he had embarked from Springer. "You can't miss him," the first woman insisted, "he's tan and tattooed, wears raggedy cut-off jeans that are too tight and too short, carries a radio he keeps tuned to loud country music, wears his bleached blond hair long and lank, and continuously flashes a gold-toothed grin he must think is sexy. His idea of eye contact is staring at your boobs like a wolf looking at a plate full of pork chops." He creeped out the second woman so much that she bolted from her permitted shelter and made a wildcat camp in the woods.
Late that afternoon, not long after we had settled into Silers Bald Shelter, we heard loud country music coming our way. His appearance was exactly as described. Soon after he swung off his pack, he told us he was taking a long break from construction work in Florida and was slowly working his way up the AT until time, money, or inclination ran out. He admitted his pace was far below par. He kept hitchhiking into small towns to flirt with Waffle House waitresses and motel cleaning ladies for two or three days at a stretch.
In Hiawassee, Georgia, a deputy sheriff thought it would be a good idea if he realized his goal of reaching North Carolina, the sooner the better. Like right after he finished breakfast. The deputy, helpful enabler that he was, insisted upon giving him a protect-and-serve ride to the Dicks Creek Gap Trailhead off US 76. The considerate lawman even stepped out of his patrol car to give him a proper sendoff: a wave of his thumb and forefinger pistol followed by "don't come back unless you're looking for trouble. Have a nice long day heading north."
Pester was thoughtful enough to ask if we minded the country music if he kept the volume down low. After talking with him, I decided he might be halfway decent, maybe even harmless. But I wasn't taking any chances; I'd watch him like a wolf looking at a plate full of pork chops.
It wasn't long before I noticed a disconcerting character flaw. Each time Page left the lean-to, he bird-dogged behind her. The first two times I tagged along behind him; the third time I said, "how about staying here until she gets back, you're wearing me out." He looked at me without guile or guilt or, worse yet, comprehension. Finally, his face showed traces of understanding. Evidently, I had called him on an old habit, one he was scarcely aware of now. Bobbing his head with sudden insight, he replied, "Yeah, yeah, sure, that's cool."
(Continued next week)
