Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail Read Online Free

remote spot. The irony of a seventy-year-old mother dropping her forty-four-year-old son off into the mountains for a six-month journey didn’t elude me. As the formidable north Georgia mountains began to appear in the distance it occurred to me that many hikers from outside the South probably had a different image of Georgia and were in for quite a surprise.
    Driving up U.S. Forest Service Road (USFS) 42 our eyes widened as we wound our way up the narrow, steep mountainous, dirt road that dropped off precipitously on the outside. Between “oohs” and “ahs,” my mother renewed her lecture that this should be considered a two-week adventure, and I should be proud to do that much.
    Finally, we arrived at the trailhead parking lot, and I was relieved to see several people unloading backpacks. It was about 1 o’clock, and the weather was gorgeous. I asked a couple people where exactly the trail began. The summit of Springer Mountain was nine-tenths of a mile hiking south from the parking lot—the trail then went straight back down through the parking lot and continued north. I decided to hike south up to the starting point without a backpack and come right back down to the parking lot.
    At the top of Springer Mountain a “ridge runner” named Glenn was giving an orientation lecture to a group of hikers and asked me to join in. His theme was “low-impact hiking,” which minimizes humans’ effect on the environment. He so belabored the point of digging six-inch “cat holes” to bury our feces and toilet paper that our necks became sore from nodding. It seemed especially ironic that animals have more rights than humans in this regard.
    Then he segued to the subject of bears. I listened closely as he spoke in deliberate fashion: “Bears have seven times greater sense of smell than bloodhounds. It is incumbent on you to hang a ‘bear bag ’ (a food bag suspended out of the reach of bears) every evening at your chosen campsite .”
    Oops, another task at which I was incompetent and, thus, had been amenable to Warren Doyle’s counsel to just keep my food bag with me at night.

     
    “And one final thing”—Glenn paused for gravity—“there’s a certain amount of glorification attached to thru-hikers. Some start thinking they are the only people on the trail and want to dominate it. All other hikers—day hikers or section hikers—have the same rights as you.” I was too green to have any sort of attitude or a swagger, but would eventually learn the basis for his remarks.
    I then went over and signed the register for thru-hikers. I was number 1,093. The obvious question was how many of these hikers would still be headed north come September.

     
    Back in the parking lot I found my mother with some newfound friends. She introduced me to a late-twentyish fellow named Justin, and his girlfriend. Tattoo-covered and bedecked with a headband and long flowing hair, Justin seemed an unlikely friend for my more traditional mother. But they hit it off.
    I introduced myself as “Skywalker.” This had seemed like an obvious trail name, given my height and surname of Walker. People often ask me how a thru-hiker gets a trail name. As best I can tell about half choose their own, and the rest get tagged by others. It seemed like a good idea to name myself and not risk picking up some unflattering name such as Snot Rag, Rat Puke, or Puss Gut, three thru-hikers I would meet farther up the trail.
    Justin and his girlfriend had a tearful parting and he headed off down the trail. Then a middle-age, upbeat looking fellow passed through the parking lot and stopped to introduce himself as “Scottie Too Lite.” My mother, being partial to resume talk, immediately had all the essentials down. Scottie had worked at IBM in Connecticut for thirty-three years, until a recent corporate restructuring. He would be one of many such victims of corporate downsizing I would meet on the trail. In fact I would soon notice a clear pattern of the