By Tim Homan
By Thanksgiving of 1980, I had hiked all of the eighty-nine trails or trail sections save one - the longest one, Section 1 of the Appalachian Trail, Springer Mountain to Woody Gap (1) - to complete the field work for my first guide: The Hiking Trails Of North Georgia. In mid-November I had walked the last half of Section 2 of the Bartram Trail, about 10 miles from Sandy Ford Road to Georgia 28. The otherwise easy route forced hikers to ford the West Fork Chattooga River with 0.4 mile remaining (1986 measurement) to its Highway 28 end. On that November 16th the ford had been almost as bad as anticipated: the current pushy, over crotch deep, and painfully cold after the first few steps.
Now, with that last impediment past and rapidly fading from memory, I had only one more weekend's worth of hard hiking. To save Linda from driving her car on dirt-gravel forest service roads, I had agreed to backpack from Amicalola Falls State Park to Woody Gap-about 30 miles in two short-light days. If I started very early on Saturday morning and had decent weather, I could make it to Woody before sunset on Sunday, the last day of November.
I stepped onto the blue-blazed Approach Trail at nearly ten, more than three hours later than planned the night before. I had already hiked this 8-mile lead-in route to Springer Mountain and the southern terminus of the AT, so all I had to do until I climbed Springer was walk the rollercoaster ridgecrest up and down, up and down. The day was clear, nearly cloudless, and comfortable for the season-perhaps mid-fifties in the sun-as I ascended the first slope. Although hiking steadily, I couldn't force myself into the nagging pace demanded by the math: the number of mountainous AT miles walked at work speed divided by daylight hours. It would be my last weekend of Southern Highland hiking until spring, and the day was much too beautiful for a strict schedule.
I continued walking into a partly cloudy afternoon as I climbed the rise to the crown of Black Mountain. From Black I could see Springer, the weekend's highest point (3,782 feet at the bench mark), one gap and one grunt away to the north. To my left and west, a bank of clouds hung low, dark, and unbroken, probably the forerunner to the cold front I had read about in last night's newspaper.
As I worked my way up Springer, fast-flying outriders blocked the sun and a cool wind began racing increasingly faster up the slope. Gusts of wind whipped through the leafless branches overhead; the trees moaned an unwelcome warning of cold hard rain to come. The sky's rumbling gray dome darkened to thunderstorm threat as I entered the predominantly oak forest, squat and low-limbed and wind-sculpted, atop Springer's broad summit.
I stepped onto the open slab of outcrop rock-the Springer Mountain look-off, the exact southern terminus of the AT-touched the bronze-backpacker plaque for good luck, then hustled toward the welcome shelters. Cold rain popped against my poncho before I could reach the first of the two side-by-side shelters. I settled in and waited.
There was little point in pushing on in the rain; taking legible notes in a downpour was nearly impossible. The precipitation alternated between steady, low-intensity thunderstorm showers and teasing sprinkles for over an hour and a half. I sat on the shelter floor, drinking hot chocolate, watching, waiting, recalculating the remaining miles divided by the remaining hours of weekend daylight.
The rain stopped and the sky brightened somewhat late in the afternoon. Colder air had shouldered in behind the front. I put off my decision and backtracked to the southernmost white blaze painted on the slab-rock near the plaque. I couldn't see a single mountain through the mistshroud, so I sat next to the bronze backpacker and copied the inscription into my notebook:
Appalachian Trail
Georgia To Maine
A Footpath for Those who seek
Fellowship with the Wilderness
1934
The Georgia Appalachian Trail Club
When I arrived back at camp, the sky was clearing and a strong-legged man wearing T-shirt, shorts, gaiters, and a tan was standing in front of the other shelter. He had just completed a 120-mile AT trek starting in western North Carolina's Nantahala National Forest. His hike had been a challenging present. Now that he was finished, he was in good cheer because he had accomplished his goal-carrying a backpack an average of 12 miles per day for ten straight days-without painful halt or falter. And he had finished, as planned, at Springer Mountain on his fortieth birthday.
He had given himself the present of time away from work, and he had set before him a challenge of mountainous miles, ten days walking beneath the weight of a backpack. His success was an affirmation that he had been well prepared, fit and competent in the woods, and at forty, still a vigorous man at the outset of his fifth decade.
An older buddy of his had joined him at Dicks Creek Gap, where the AT crosses US 76 in the mountains of North Georgia, and had accompanied him along the southernmost 70 miles of the famous long-march trail. His friend's left knee had started bothering him after the third day, and now he was just gritting and grinding it out so he wouldn't quit on himself or his younger pal.
The day's good light headed west. Evening came on clear and quickly cooling as dusk slipped out of the surrounding oaks. The time, temperature, and my lack of momentum made up my mind for me. Leaving shelter and company for a solo-tent camp only a mile further was not a trade I was willing to make.
In the waning light Forty's tall, thin friend hobbled into the clearing and smiled, the quick wincing smile of an ordeal endured to its end. After supper, they invited me over to their shelter for a Springer Mountain birthday party: a large tin of chocolate chip cookies, two candle lanterns, and a bottle of brown liquor-sour mash Tennessee whiskey, a fifth of Jack Daniels already drunk down to the top of the black label. Forty filled my Sierra cup with celebratory hooch and soon the three of us were laughing and swapping hiking stories.
Not long after we drank old Jack down to dregs, we finally admitted that the night had become uncomfortably cold. I walked a little wobbly to my shelter and wriggled into my sleeping bag. The next morning the cold and sour mash conspired to keep me abag when I should have been afoot, all energy and intensity. When I finally stirred, my stove wouldn't work until I warmed up the fuel canister. When I was almost ready to work, Forty asked if I had a camera. I did: a new Canon single lens reflex, large and heavy and antiquated by today's digital standards. They had run out of film, and he asked if I would take their picture at the wooden sign back at the exact southern terminus.
Forty wrote his name and address in the back of my notebook. He repeatedly offered to pay for postage and development costs, but I steadfastly refused to accept any compensation. The spirit of last night's comradery had spilled over into the morning. I told him not to worry about a thing; the photos would be my belated present for a fortieth birthday well spent.
The morning was almost eight-thirty by the time I shook hands, said my farewells, and was finally underway toward Woody Gap. All that morning I pushed hard into the good hiking country of the Southern Appalachians. The 10-mile stretch of Section 1, from Springer to Hightower Gap, is Georgia's easiest long AT segment. If I walked fast and steady to Hightower, where the grades grew longer and steeper, I might have a chance of making Woody a couple hours after dark.
I entered Hightower Gap a little past one-thirty and sat down for the first real rest of the day. But the remaining miles spun like a Ferris Wheel in my head, so I hopped up and kept hiking. Beyond Hightower the rest of the section is primarily a ridgeline and upper-slope route that winds generally east. Last night's cold front had swept the sky clean of its pollution and woodsmoke haze. To the north and northeast, Highland Dixie reared up and rolled away in high forested folds created by the collision of continental plates, the remnant heave and buckle of an immensely ancient and once majestic orogeny still powerful upon the land.
I had expected the views of the miles-away mountains, but to my pleasurable surprise, the nearer views also revealed a landscape rugged with far more gray rock than expected: slanting cliff faces, boulder fields, long breaches of outcrop rock. I had hiked the rest of Georgia's AT when the contours of the mountains were softened by the mantling green of their guardian angels (2): the lush growth of trees in the incredibly diverse Southern Highland forests. But now the hardwoods stood stripped to their gray-bark longjohns, and I could see the bones of the hard old bedrock knuckling and ribbing up through the soil's soft flesh.
I crossed Blackwell Creek at five-thirty, my pace slumping since Hightower. I continued walking as the last of the day's good light went dull, faded, disappeared with the shadows. I kept moving with a flashlight, the occasionally rocky track and darkness slowing me down even further. I sat down for a rest in the Gooch Gap Shelter after seven o'clock, but only had time for a quick snack and the last of my filtered water before my sweat cooled in the early evening chill.
The distance, the all-day hurry, and the up and down backpacking became increasingly tiring. I had stopped taking notes after dark and would have to make a return trip to Woody Gap to finish the section another day. I crossed GA Highway 60 to my ride under a black sky grown cold and sprinkled with stars.
The next morning I awoke late and hungover with fatigue. After breakfast, I dragged myself into our spare bedroom to pick up my notebook and begin the day's deciphering of hastily scribbled notes while I could still match handwriting to visual image. I couldn't find my notebook. I ransacked everywhere I had been the night before. No notebook. I called Linda and asked her to search her car. No notebook.
I sat down and tried to recreate the sequence of my actions in the dark at Woody Gap. I had opened the driver-side backdoor first and loaded my pack in the back seat. Then I had tossed in my hiking stick, which I had leaned against the car when I had first arrived. But I couldn't remember what I had done with my notebook. When I arrived at the highway at close to ten, I had been carrying my hiking stick in my right hand and my notebook in my left. I had needed both hands to shrug out of my backpack, which meant I had placed my notebook somewhere. The realization of what I had done, what I must have done, hit me like a wave of nausea.
For an extra ten bucks the nearest gas station-repair shop delivered and hooked up a new battery for my Rabbit. I drove off with a cup of coffee and newfound confidence I would find my notebook at or near the Woody Gap parking area.
As I approached the Appalachian Trail, I began seeing small pieces of lined paper cleanly sliced at crazy angles littering both shoulders of the highway. I could see what had happened with heart-sinking certainty. I pulled off the blacktop and walked toward the epicenter of the paper explosion. I bent down at a windrow of notebook confetti to confirm the obvious. I recognized the scribble of my hurried hand writing on a triangular scrap.
Last night's U-turn had slung the notebook onto the grassy shoulder on the south side of the highway. This morning's mower had passed right over it, powerful rotary blades cutting and pinwheeling notebook paper all over the place. Wind and the whoosh of cars had done the rest.
I sat in my compact station wagon for a few minutes, slowly inhaling deep and calming breaths. A mower. A mower first thing in the morning on December first. What incredibly rotten luck. And, to make the irrevocable loss of my notebook even more disheartening, my notes for Section 2 of the Bartram Trail-two days of work, the West Fork ford, close to 19 miles-had still been in the first half of the notebook. In my hurry to send another chapter to Peachtree, I had not transcribed the notes, nor had I torn out the pages.
Back home after lunch, I remembered that Forty had written his full name and mailing address in my notebook. I also remembered my enthusiastic pledge of making the photos a belated birthday present. His limp-along buddy had called him A. J, and I had never heard his surname spoken or seen it written in my notebook. He is going to think bad thoughts of me, and I will never be able to explain and apologize. Well hell.
(Continued next week)
Footnotes:
(1) Much of the AT from Springer Mountain to Three Forks had been relocated by 1986, when I measured the route with a wheel. As a result of the relocations, Section 1 of the AT had been shortened by 1.8 miles from Springer to Three Forks. Overall, Section 1 became 1.5 miles shorter (22.3 miles in 1980 to 20.8 miles in 1986) from Springer to Woody Gap.
(2) I called the green-forest trees "guardian angels" because they provide an incalculable amount of protection against a mountain's worst enemy: erosion. The pines and the newcomer broadleafs have prolonged, and will prolong, the lives of Mountain South peaks for an immensity of time compared to past geologic eras, when rain beat down upon the bare rock of earlier orogenys.
