A Road to Nowhere

About a week ago, I was on the verge of writing about communal living, coffee, and the airing of grievances. I decided instead to drive five or six hours to Shenandoah National Park to walk in circles around Virginia, which is for lovers.

On the second day out backpacking, two day hikers commented on the baseball I was tossing with myself. I offended the one in a blue shirt when I mentioned how much easier it was to hike here than in New Hampshire. The one with a beard remarked that he’d never seen anybody hike carrying a baseball, and blue shirt asked if I didn’t get bored out here alone with nobody to talk to. I winked and said Rawlings made a fine conversationalist.

Shenandoah’s main attraction is the 100-odd mile Skyline Drive, which, in classic fashion, offers motorists rather than hikers the best vistas. Alternately to the left and right of this lovely road runs everybody’s favorite Appalachian Trail. Itching to get outside and take advantage of the early summer in Virginia, I found a “loop” recommended by the park website.

Historically, I have bitten off more than I can chew on these trips. I resolved this time to cut miles to avoid exhaustion, frustration, and non-peace. I had mixed results.

If you are supposed to be walking down a horse trail and find yourself thinking “Wow! These horses must be nimble!” you are not on the right trail. Particularly if there are no blazes. This I learned Saturday after an hour of walking ended in one of those dead ends where a river of a trail spills into an unnavigable delta of knee-high shrubs.

After a couple frantic breaths, I calmed down and turned back. I eventually found the well-marked, actual trail. The route had been advertised as for “advanced” backpackers, and I thought hey maybe now I’m over the line.

Despite the limited mileage, this was stressful. To decompress, sitting with nothing beyond my notebook and the unnervingly foreign, inconsistent noises of the woods to entertain me, I thought I’d try meditating. I fell asleep while it was light out for the first time in recent memory.

Sunday afternoon, I had more luck. I found myself drifting back and forth in my hammock by about 2:00PM, having already set up camp, chewing on one peanut at a time.

I jotted down some thoughts and seriously considered trying to list every song I know. I decided instead to see what the whittling rage was all about. I recalled the advice given to me by the local celebrity whose van was covered in pinwheels at Tux, “cut toward your buddy, not your belly” and scraped at a stick until there was less of it.

I thought maybe I could try to carve a captive ring or a ball or something, and I was wrong. If I was going to destroy this stick, I might as well make something. Michelangelo always gave his patrons a party favor whenever he destroyed a big marble block, after all. Not quite The David, what I made.

I read and re-read the directions I’d printed, and I finally realized my route was not a loop at all. Really, it was an out and back on a 15 mile piece AT with a few lollipop detours. It seems the park takes pains to call everything a loop, as backpackers consider out-and-back trips pointless.

While those of you with direction in life may not consider AT through hikers goal oriented, they only hike routes for which they’ll get credit. Out for a couple nights, I somehow picked up the, ahem, aura, of somebody out for longer. At each encounter, other hikers would ask if I was through hiking. I’d respond that I was just walking in circles a few days.

They’d ask what section, and I’d say I’m not sure, just a few miles here, a loop on some blue blazes there, and back the way I came. These people fixate on the AT’s white blazes and never venture onto blue-blazed side trails. They certainly do not retrace steps without moving closer to a season or career completion of the AT.

This early in the season, only a few section hikers, speed demons, and general enthusiasts had reached Shenandoah. Nevertheless, the cult of the through hiker dominated conversation to a greater degree that weekend than it had back in New Hampshire or elsewhere.

Sunday, I watched as a woman with a black lab and knee brace looked off into the distance to discern from floating triangles and Greek letters whether she could help give me a ride from somewhere to avoid the thunderstorms the next morning. I felt rude for saying I would just turn around and hike back the way I’d come, because she just wanted me to get the most out of this section.

Twice, I bumped into an aging man I’ll call George. Once upon a time, George had hiked the whole thing. Now, he was staying in his trailer at the Lewis Mountain campground, roughly halfway through the park. George set up a tailgate chair and had a Florida State cooler full of Gatorades to offer to hikers in exchange for conversation, a bit of trail magic.

The next day, George introduced himself to me again as a perfect stranger. I would’ve thought that my bright yellow Williams ultimate jersey was distinctive enough to remember, but no. When I again declined his Gatorade and again explained I had no real goal, he again seemed confused.

He twice furrowed his brow, puzzled that I would take a hike and accomplish nothing. Should I ever hope to complete the AT, he noted, I will hike this little 15 mile stretch a third time.

After our second discussion, I took a break at a picnic table in the campground for some lunch. As I ate my PB&J, George passed me four or five times, walking circles around the campground.  Maybe he thinks only people who've completed the AT have the right to walk in aimless circles.

While I ate, I chatted with a guy whose mumbled name sounded like, but was different than, Sean. As soon as I saw him, at least 6’7” and 220 lbs, I thought to myself “Aren’t you a little tall to be a through hiker?” I offered him some food, but he’d just resupplied at the camp store.

While Kevin from the Lakes of the Clouds hut in New Hampshire had alternated between affected shop talk and stern stay-away-from-my-paying-guests reprimand, the two women running the camp store at Lewis Mountain just wanted to help.

In addition to $5 Cliff Bars, they stocked tunafish packets, instant mashed potatoes, easy mac, and less glitzy hiker staples at hiker prices. To top it off, they kept two bins in the back full of free food, band-aids, socks, and other supplies. They explained with a what-else-you-gonna-do ease that we were a few days in either direction from a comparable resupply, so they’d taken it upon themselves to make this section passable.

Originally, I was going to hike four days and camp three nights. Around 1:30 AM the second night, the calming, white-noise-machine pitter patter of rain on my tent woke me up like an air raid siren. I sat there just waiting for a biblical deluge until all of a sudden it was 7:30, practically afternoon tea time for hikers. As I packed up, all I could do was stress about keeping the wet rain fly off the rest of my gear and how I’d pitch my tent in the rain that evening. My idea of decompressing is evidently to seek more exotic neuroses.

Backpacking is a pain in the ass. It is therefore easy, if not necessary, to forget that nobody’s forcing you to do this.

As I plodded through Monday morning’s mist, I changed my plans and decided to walk the 17 miles back to the car. Sitting idly in the rain is for more advanced meditators.

On my way out that day, I passed and chatted with a more colorful group. One guy, again a little too tall for the job, had started a section in Roanoke and still hadn’t caught his breath when he marched off. A grizzled fellow warned me about ticks but didn’t know whether I could catch lyme disease a second time. Two women chatted about sushi and avocado, things not even I would try to pack with me. A few others decided to say nothing at all.

Strictly speaking, I cut my trip short and am a quitter. But, how was your weekend? Oh, brunch was nice? The outdoors at their best enable self reflection and confidence building and at their worst prepare people for a holier-than-thou, I-know-the-True-True arrogance. I’ve never read Walden, but I understand that it bounces back and forth here.

One of the older hikers to pass me told me about the beautiful trillium flowers blooming up ahead. I told him about a piece of the blue-blazed Laurel Prong Trail where iridescent flowers thickly lined both sides over a distance of some eight or nine wedding aisles.

He looked forlorn and said that’s too bad, he had to follow the white blazes.