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

trail being heavily populated with people having gone through a major life change such as graduation, divorce, or retirement.
    About this time, three attractive girls from Chicago showed up in what appeared to be designer hiking clothing. The oldest one, at about twenty-two, came over and asked a couple questions at which point my mother began to elicit biography information. “I have a certificate for outdoor excellence,” she said. “I’m in charge of safely getting my younger sisters to the finish.”
    “Have they hiked before?” my mother asked.
    “Barely,” she said rolling her eyes.
    “So you’re leading your inexperienced younger sisters almost two thousand, two hundred miles through the mountains to northern Maine?” I asked in disbelief.
    “We’ll get there,” she said stoutly. From what I later heard they barely made it to North Carolina.
    As hikers streamed through the parking lot and headed north—hopefully to Maine—it was clear I was entering a whole new world. Growing up I had spent nice Sunday afternoons like this at the golf course, before going home for dinner, a shower, and sleep. But here people were spending a nice Sunday afternoon hiking in the mountains, followed by God knows what.
    My mother and I hugged as I worried about her trip back down the steep, rugged U.S. Forest Service Road. Looking around at mountains as far as the eye could see she said, “Bill, I’ll have dinner ready for you next Saturday night. Don’t let pride get in the way of good judgment.” And then I departed.

     
    Quickly, I caught up with long-haired Justin. He was adjusting his back pack, which looked to be twice the size of mine. His most visible accoutrement was a bulky dagger sheathed to his side. This was a surprise because I hadn’t even considered bringing a weapon. What more, there seemed a basic assymetry to his strategy. With his impressively muscled physique, Justin should have been able fend off any possible human attackers without any weapon, but this knife couldn’t possibly keep a mauling bear at bay for long. Nonetheless, eager to make my first real trail friend, I followed him along the trail. In a sense this was following a lifelong pattern of standing or walking behind shorter people, and I was to continue it much of the way on the AT.
    Justin appeared, unlike me, to be well-schooled in the wilderness and preferred solitude. While solitude is obviously part of the bargain on the AT, this springtime Sunday saw hikers galore all over the trail. Most everyone appeared clean, well decked-out, and upbeat—not a surprise given that it was opening day. It was a scene not to be witnessed again.
    Out of a combination of shared camaraderie, curiosity, and insecurity, I was trying to talk a bit with everyone possible. Adding to the buoyant atmosphere was some quite friendly terrain that wound along Stover Creek. In 1958 the trail’s southern terminus had been moved twenty miles north from Mount Oglethorpe because of overdevelopment, and the change seemed fortuitous.
    At the 7.6-mile mark Justin and I came to a sign pointing to the Hawk Mountain Shelter. One look over there showed a scene out of Grand Central Station. As a true babe in the woods I was heavily influenced by Warren Doyle’s iconoclastic bias (“people farting, snoring, mice running rampant”) against these nocturnal gathering points. And, given Justin’s solitary instincts, we trudged on.
    But then I began to feel winded going up Hawk Mountain and said, “Ha, Justin. You wanna’ take a quickie?”
    “It’s getting late,” he said. “I’m gonna keep going and scout out a campsite.”
    “I’ll try to catch up with you,” I said, feeling a bit forlorn.
    Unsure of myself, but trying to remain calm because this was going to be my life for the next six months, I cut my break short and caught Justin as he was descending Hawk Mountain. We decided to spend the night right there at the gap.
    My biggest weakness as a long-distance