Damascus

"All the good times are done and gone."

I finished the hike, around five hundred miles in just under two months. It has been a wonderful trip, marked by the fantastic luck that attaches itself to endeavors with an acceptably slow pace.

And slow it has been, no doubt about that; walking is a painfully slow way to get anywhere, especially if you walk as slowly as I do. There are, however, certain attractions to the pace, combined with the lack of a pressing need to ever arrive. For one thing, it lends itself to detours; sometimes I would take several days, hiking off-trail, to track down vague or non-existent destinations. (The only time one of these long detours truly backfired was when the destination of a three-day detour was a grocery store that turned out to be closed). Some of the most interesting ground I have covered has been along these detours; a spirit of discovery always accompanies travel through unmarked and unknown country.

A sufficiently slow pace also forces the attention to the present. Destinations and deadlines recede until they become irrelevant. Replacing them is a keen awareness of the immediate, the noise of the surrounding forest, the tug and sway of the pack against the shoulders, and the slow accumulations of hunger, thirst and fatigue. Taking care of yourself becomes a chief priority--the mind acknowledges its subservience to the body and devotes most of its energy to its primary task of ensuring physical well-being. This promotes a certain mental stillness, not to say that I stopped thinking about things, but thoughts lost their adamancy and tended to flow in a most unproductive manner from one subject to the next, regularly becoming preempted by the more pressing issues of various musculoskeletal complaints.

Not that complaint comprises the majority of communication from the body during a long hike. A deep, primal pleasure springs from the most simple elements of well-being—lying down to sleep in a warm, dry place with a full stomach contains a satisfaction of an ancient nature, completely different than the ordinary triumphs of life. Appreciating it requires a level of internal quiet not ordinarily encountered in the outside world, and, of course, if you are open to the joys of living as an animal, you are also open to the terrors of thirst, hunger, and cold. I found the balance to be favorable, propped up as I was on an array of technology and circumstance.

On a very few occasions, I did witness something akin to the transcendental holiness of nature. Generally, I don't buy into that manner of romantic silliness, but there were moments, separated by weeks of mere appreciation, when the forest inspired a tide of awe that can only be described as religious. These were the fleeting glimpse, the glimmer that inspires a contemplation of whether it might not be possible to lift the eternal veil and unchink the doors of perception. But it is best not to dwell on these moments; ethereal and sublime as they are, only trouble follows from them. Nothing more than a will o' the wisp, luring the soul into a futile game of waiting for enlightenment, and pretty soon, you end up writing like Annie Dillard.

Now it is over, and I am returning to normal life. I have shaved and gotten a haircut, and soon I will have moved back to Tennessee. So what has changed, now that I have finished the journey? I can't say that anything has. Walking alone through the wilderness has made me a bit more asocial, self-reliant, and resilient--traits that I already had in abundance. In the end, it was not a life-changing trip. Even the fundamental pleasures of life are beginning to fade; the slowness loses its grip a little each day, and soon I will be fully back up to speed. The primary value of the trip has come from the chance to live the American Dream. Forget widespread prosperity and economic mobility--the true character of the nation is to chase the dream of perpetual, unencumbered motion, a journey with no guide but curiosity. When I woke in the forest, I had the rare chance of spending a day as I pleased, with no man holding dominion or influence over my thought and movement. As I took survey of a piece of the 635 million-acre estate that is mine by birthright, I was, if only for a moment, Tom Sawyer on the raft, taking self-determination to its individualistic extreme. Of course, this freedom was nothing more than a fantasy, the foam on the crest of a wave, ultimately limited by my ties to society, which, if they are loose, are also sturdy.

My sincere gratitude to those of you who sent things to help me along my trip, and everyone is encouraged to come visit me in Tennessee this summer.

Alan

p.s. – I encountered bears, snakes, ticks, mosquitoes, ants, mice, weasels, owls, thunderstorms, snowstorms, rainstorms, rainshowers, wind, fog, mist, dew, heat, cold, bad food, no food, bad water, no water, strip mines, dead-ends, lost trails, washed-out bridges, blisters, sprains, strains, rednecks with guns, and most other phenomenon that people tend to phrase around the question “What will you do if _________?” I handled all of them without ever really crushing the wheat thins.

Waynesboro

Well, here I am at the Public Library of Waynesboro, Virginia. One hundred miles in, four hundred to go. Rain down in the valley today , more rain tomorrow. I may waste another day down here, relax and let all my inflammations work themselves out.

For eight days, Dan and I hiked over moutains, some taller than others. We saw a little bit of rain and snow; some days were sunny and hot, one night was so cold our water bottles froze solid. We cooked several tremendous meals and a few atrocious ones. A walking pace is very gradual--every so often, I felt I could begin to know the land around me, to imagine the song of the mountains and know the slowness of its tempo.

There was some real shoddy chainsaw work when they cleared the trail after an ice storm. I may shoot the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club an email and offer my services to help clean up all those leaners.

Shenandoah is a habitable place; people lived and died for centuries on the ridgetop. Their homes and graveyards remain.

Dan will be posting a more factual account of the trip soon. The only item of import I have to add to his version of events is that he snores like a dump truck.

PS-- It was very good to see Dad and Doug at Skyland, the shower, bed, meals, raincover and pants were much, much appreciated!

Itinerary

Date	Town	Total Miles	Segment Miles	Average Miles per Day	General Delivery
4/1/2007	Front Royal, VA	0	0		no
4/4/2007	Big Meadows Grocery Store	46	46	11.5	no
4/10/2007	Waynesboro, VA 22980	104	58	9.7	yes
4/15/2007	Montebello, VA 24464	145	41	8.2	yes
4/19/2007	Glasgow, VA 24555	183	38	9.5	yes
4/24/2007	Daleville, VA 24083	239	56	11.2	yes
5/2/2007	Pearisburg, VA 24134	331	92	10.2	yes
5/9/2007	Bland, VA 24315	377	46	7.7	no
5/13/2007	US11 & I-81 (Atkins, VA)	419	42	10.5	no
5/15/2007	Troutdale, VA 24378	445	26	13	yes
5/20/2007	Damascus, VA 24236	494	49	9.8	yes

Author's Forward

I don't plan to update this blog much. I may put pictures up onto it every now and then, and my itinerary is posted in case you want to send cookies. I do not anticipate many opportunities for updating on the trail, so if there are any further posts past this one, they are due to the kindness of whoever has transcribed my handwritten letters.

Supposing that I write any letters, that is. It may prove difficult to find anything worth writing about out there in the woods. Forests don't work well on paper--ironic, seeing as how many of them have been turned into paper quite successfully. Either way, I will have my camera with me, and that will capture much of the deciduous hardwood forest in which I will be travelling.

But keep an eye on this page. I will be walking through the cradle of many things American; I might just find something to write about.