Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (22 page)

But this wasn’t a bad day to have a spring in one’s step. The trail twice ascended above four thousand feet, including the Priest, which was a quasi-religious experience, with its majestic view of the very blue Blue Ridge Mountains. Then the trail quickly descended thirty-three hundred feet to the Tye River. The parking there in the George Washington National Forest was full on this hot, humid day. I had been thinking all the way down the mountain how heavenly some cold drinks and trail magic would be right here, but it wasn’t to be.

Instead, another three thousand-foot climb presented itself. Starting up the mountain I ran into Grump, an elderly gentleman I seemingly passed every day. His signature characteristic was the behemoth pack strapped to his hunched back. “Did you hear the big news on the trail today?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“There is a naked guy hiking around, scaring all the girls.”

“Well, the way the mosquitoes are swarming, he’s in a helluva’ fix,” I noted. Knowing Vogue was up ahead, and maybe the Sleazebags as well, I began to wonder if it wasn’t Hump Master himself who had become completely unhinged!

“How do you do it, Grump?” I asked. “I’ve passed you four times. You must night hike every night to keep getting ahead of people.”

“I hike til’ these here legs won’t go anymore, then I drop anchors,” he said.

“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked. “It was raining.”

“Oh, along about midnight,” he replied, “I threw down my sleeping bag under some overhanging rock and passed out.”

Now honing in on his backpack I said, “Grump, you’re not in the army anymore. You ought to try some of this lightweight equipment.”

Grump grunted.

“How much does that damn thing weigh, I’ve got to ask.”

“Oh, in the neighborhood of seventy-five pounds,” he answered.

“Jesus, Grump, you’re not going to make it to Maine with that much weight,” I lectured him. “Nobody could.”

“Now don’t worry about me,” he said, “I’ll be seeing you up there and I’ll have enough stuff for both of us.” I headed on up the mountain, never to see him again.

At the Harper’s Creek Shelter a chatty middle-age guy exclaimed “A girl with a University of Michigan hat on just came through here. Good gosh, she was unbelievable.” I had been thinking about calling it a day right there because of the big climb immediately ahead, but suddenly I felt a second-wind.

Harper’s Creek Shelter—mile 816

6-11-05
: The people who said Virginia is flat are about as right as the people who said the earth is flat.—
Vogue

6-11-05
: I hike the AT because I can.—
Knees

The sun fell behind the mountains and I was urging myself on when I saw a familiar figure halfway up the mountain. We looked at each other for a second, then the person said, “Skywalker,”

“Ha, not since Hot Springs, right?” I said to Knees, a brainy twenty-nine-year-old computer consultant from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

“Yeah,” he said. “but I’ve been reading your journal entries in the registers.” This was a double boost—to have some company to hike this tough section with and to hear that somebody was reading my journal entries.

Then he gave me a third boost. “Vogue is right ahead,” he reported. “We were at the same shelter last night, but her hiking group is breaking up.” Standard operating procedure was to take a Snickers break halfway up a large climb. But that news had me straining to keep up with Knees without a break. Finally, the sign for the shelter appeared.

Sitting on the picnic table in front of the shelter was Vogue, with her alluring combination of youth and maturity. She smiled as we walked up and I raised my hand for a high-five. However, she declined to reciprocate, saying, “I’m too tired.”

“I heard the tragic news,” I strained to gin up the atmosphere.

“What?” she said, semi-alarmed.

“That the famous ‘Gang of 10’ has officially disbanded.”

“Oh, Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was just being held up too much, and finally had to go ahead.”

Knees moved off to set up his tent.

“
What a fool you are
,” I thought to myself. This girl is very self-possessed and not vulnerable to theatrics. And she had obviously had enough male attention. I even noticed that unlike many females on the trail she didn’t hike sleeveless or wear a halter-top. Rather, she wore a full short-sleeve shirt, probably to minimize gawkings. In a more low-key manner I asked, “The Sleazebags; are they ahead?”

With a roll of the eyes she pointed over to a group of tents in a clearing.

“I hiked with ’em a little bit a few days back and they seemed okay,” I said. “All but your man, Hump Master.”

“My man, Hump Master,” she said disgusted.

I then pulled out my stove (alarmed at my plummeting weight, I had purchased it in Damascus) to try cooking. Remembering my previous ineptness she said, “Oh, we’re going to try this again, are we?”

“Don’t sell me short,” I responded.

“Oh, this is the new and improved Skywalker, huh,” she laughed.

“Actually, this is the Last Supper because I’m planning to send it home before Shenandoah National Park in order to not attract bears.”

“Oh come on,” she scoffed.

Blotter, one of the Sleazebags, came by and said to Vogue, “I’m going down to the stream to get water. Would you like some?”

“Oh, that would be nice, thanks,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

Then starting down toward the stream Blotter stopped and said as an afterthought, “Would you like some too, Skywalker?”

But I quickly declined, realizing he was just trying to save face and not betray too much fondness toward Vogue. I don’t know about all these other animals I was seeing out there in the wilderness, but we humans sure do have our weaknesses.

Summer was in full swing now, and like it or not, the woods were teeming with wildlife. When Knees, Ug, and I arrived at the Paul Wolf Shelter one hiker had just seen a bear running down the ridge from the shelter. And while we sat there eating, a big, black snake came out from under the shelter, showing its full seven-foot length. And Shenandoah National Park, with its famously abundant flora and fauna, lay just ahead.

We were planning to stay at this shelter, but the long-promised easier part of Virginia seemed to have finally materialized. We decided to hike the remaining five miles to Waynesboro and arrived at dusk.

When we exited the trail at Rockfish Gap we crossed the street into a big parking lot. A car pulled up with two girls in it. A college-age girl in a bathing suit got out and ran over with three slices of pizza on a small paper plate. “Welcome to Waynesboro,” she said. “We love hikers.”

“Can we get a ride into town?” I called out.

“We give out pizza, not rides,” she shouted out the window as they sped off.

The townspeople in Waynesboro had been instructed to treat hikers well, as we were a source of revenue (which is a pretty fair working definition of a humble town indeed!). Thus, the minute we stuck out our thumbs, a pickup truck pulled over and carried us five miles to the Quality Inn in Waynesboro.

The Sleazebags were in evidence all over the place, from the swimming pool to the parking lot. Hump Master, in a last-ditch Hail Mary pass, had completely shaved his head. He then approached Vogue and apparently got right to the point. But Vogue responded negatively and brusquely headed to her room. Being an attractive girl on the AT has its advantages, but it apparently also has its disadvantages.

The next morning after being embroiled in a dispute over having too many people in our room—a common motel complaint against hikers—I called one of the many trail angels listed in the motel. Unfortunately, everybody seemed to have an excuse why they couldn’t hike this day, but the real reason was the hot, humid weather. So a pleasant elderly man chauffeured me back up to the trailhead alone to begin the one hundred-plus-mile trek through Shenandoah National Park.

Chapter 12

O
n May 14, 2000, the remains of Claudia Bradley, a schoolteacher from Cosby, Tennessee, were found in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. She had been eaten by a bear.

This episode restored to focus a question that scientists, outdoor people, and others have puzzled over through the eons. That is, just why don’t bears eat more humans? After all, they voraciously eat almost everything else, including deer, caribou, salmon, birds, ants, rats, wild berries, nuts, and an infinite variety of plants. Experts have noted significant behavioral differences in bears based on what they eat. Those that dine mostly on meat tend to exhibit significantly more aggressive traits than those whose primary diet is plant-based.

Of course, there have been other notable incidents. On April 13, 2006, Susan Cankus, from Ohio, and her two children were on a vacation in the Cherokee National Forest near Chattanooga, Tennessee. They were strategically located in a tourist spot below two waterfalls when a bear approached. They started yelling at it and clanking metal items together to scare it away, but the bear grabbed Mrs. Cankus’ two-year-old son in its mouth. Mrs. Cankus frantically attacked the bear with sticks, rocks, and the like. While she ended up with eight puncture wounds in her neck and too many cuts and wounds to count, she successfully dislodged her son. Park rangers, alerted by the pandemonium, arrived and fired two thirty-eight caliber pistol shots into the bear’s dense body. At that point the bear ran away. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cankus’ six-year-old daughter had run into the woods. When the rangers pursued the bear into the woods they came upon the daughter’s lifeless body. She had died from head wounds inflicted by the bear in its flight from camp.

But the fact remains, compared to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bear-human encounters yearly, the number of bear attacks is small. Do they respect us, do they fear us, or do they consider us irrelevant? Perhaps we humans smell so horrible and taste so bad that only the most decrepit bear, unable to chase down fleeter and tastier prey, would have the least bit of interest.

Would you believe that cubs only weigh from six to sixteen ounces at birth, and aren’t much larger than your average mouse! It’s conceptually difficult to reconcile with the enormous size and strength they later achieve? But consider just this one story. At a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game in 1979, a 105-pound, one-year-old
cub
earned a measure of notoriety by eating seventy-seven hot dogs, twenty-one pizzas, and nineteen Cokes just during halftime. Their appetites are truly awesome. Male bears, which are considerably larger than female bears, have even been known to put their lives at risk from irate females by eating their cubs. Bears spend their entire lives hunting for food—they prefer roaming in the daytime, but stories are legion amongst hikers of their moonlighting activities. And they are smart and fast—far faster than any human on the planet (up to thirty mph!), and they are famous for accelerating uphill.