In honor of the coming Easter Sunday, our hiker friends from the Len Foote Hike Inn had hidden an assortment of gummy bears, sweet tarts, and other treats, in the bear box at the Springer Mountain Shelter. Most hikers, having heard this shelter could be counted upon to be filled early in the day, continued on to Stover Creek, where we were headed, too. Paradoxically, that trail rumor had left Springer Mountain Shelter desolate, and we wondered if that meant Stover Creek would be full when we arrived.
Retrieving a few sweets from the bear box and leaving the rest for future passersby, a wave of homesickness washed over me. I knew I would be back in time to surprise the boys with the baskets of candy I had prepared, but Sunday was nearly a week away. I was not in the habit of leaving my best little guy to go traipsing off, and especially not for the duration of eight whole days.
Continuing onwards to Stover Creek, it took some time to settle my spirit, but I found I had to let my worries go; there was nothing to do about them out here in the woods. Soothed by the shade of Rhododendron and twisting Mountain Laurel, I walked.
We were less than a mile from Stover Creek Shelter when a young man carrying a huge pack jauntily trotted past. A few minutes later, another young man, more wiry than the last, did the same, smiling and waving as he left us behind. In a moment, he was 100 yards ahead leaping nimbly over stones in the pathway.
For the first time, I felt old on the trail, trying to see myself through those young men’s eyes. They were still puppies, and I wondered how we looked to them as their lives were just beginning.
I turned to my sister and began singing “All the young dudes carry the news,” and she smiled.
The edible green ramps we’d encountered all day along the borders of the trail grew in even denser patches here. “Do you want to try eating some tonight?” Walkie asked. The idea of foraging from the Appalachian Mountains irresistible to both of us, we picked some and stowed them away to add to our dinner.
Where we stopped at the creek were several worn pathways hikers had been using to run down from the shelter to gather water. A lone wooden shelter stood at the crest of the next hilltop, and we followed the trail as it circled around the other side.
There were still plenty of campsites available around the buzzing shelter. We took time to scout out our best options for setting up camp.
“If you’ll follow me this way,” Walkie said, “you’ll find a spacious flat with lots of natural light.”
“And just over here, a single unit with a beautiful view and trees with no widow-makers,” I said.
While my sister continued her search for the ideal campsite, a young man introduced himself to me, offering a bar of chocolate. “My mother snuck a dozen candy bars in here,” he said smiling and rummaging in his pack.
My sister found a site a bit removed from the hustle and bustle of the shelter, and we admired our bit of prime real estate which featured woody plants from which to hang our hiking poles and a nearby tree trunk where we could sit, talk, cook, write, and tell ghost stories. Then, we wandered back up to the large three-sided cabin with its raised platform where hikers buzzed about.
A gregarious smiling woman introduced herself as Dorothy, and just then, a small dog yipped from the loft of the shelter. “That’s Toto,” Dorothy said.
Dorothy was lovely, adopting each incoming hiker as her friend, and acting as host of this great shelter in the woods. She had been at Stover Creek Shelter all day as she’d twisted her ankle the day before, so I imagined she was excited at the large gathering of folks arriving that evening.
As night fell, Walkie noticed the campers seemed quiet and pensive, sitting in their tents as mist crept over the campsite. “You should go build them a fire,” she said. I hadn’t wanted to encroach on whatever vibe had been established before our late arrival. Besides, building a fire is a lot of work, but my sister reminded me that for some of these folks, this was their first night on the trail, having hiked over 11 miles from the bottom of the falls in one day.
“They’re probably lonely. Some of them are far away from home and wondering what the heck they’re doing out here,” my sister continued.
At my sister’s prodding, I began gathering sticks of all sizes as unobtrusively as possible, casually piling them near the fire pit. A young, graceful girl was sitting nearby and quietly asked me if she could help. Emma had come alone all the way from Boston. I couldn’t imagine the guts it took for such a young person to do that. In my own early twenties, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. Back then, someone would have had to carry me off this mountain, likely tearfully, had I come alone.
The daughter of an engineer, I could not abide an ill-built fire, and my sister knew this. She was a admirer of my stick-stacking skills, usually hanging back to watch, making me feel like a fire-goddess. Although we each brought respective talents to our sister-hiking unit, this was perhaps the one skill which made me feel the most useful. I couldn’t go uphill worth a damn, although my legs were getting stronger, but I could build a raging fire around which to huddle telling ghost stories.
Graceful Emma and my sister grabbed another volunteer, a young woman from New York, and they went off to gather bundles of wood. I could hear them chattering on a far-off hillside as I began building the architecture that feeds fires. I could feel myself being a bit resistant to this new shared camping experience. It had always been just my sister and me.
“Were you guys doing yoga earlier?” A young man asked as he sat down nearby. “I kind of wanted to join you, but I didn’t want to intrude.” John was one of the “young dudes” who, it was revealed, had all come here together.
“Oh gosh, that would probably help my ankle,” said Dorothy.
“Oh really? That would be nice. We’ll do it in the morning, too, if you want to join us.” I told them.
Walkie, Graceful Emma, and New York returned adding their bundles of wood to the growing pile. As we lit the fire, campers wandered up to join the growing circle.
I monitored the fire carefully, making adjustments to prevent the tower of sticks from toppling over, trying to keep it centered and growing, while Walkie pulled out the knife she kept slung about her neck and began cutting up the ramps we’d picked off the trail.
The warmth of the fire slowly melted away the strangeness of sitting in the middle of the quiet woods, still much too cold for the comforting buzz of the cicadas or tree frogs that would grace these woods in just a few weeks. Shy introductions became stories about the day’s hike, plants people had seen, and shared hopes of seeing black bears in Georgia.
These woods were plum full of bears, but we hadn’t heard or seen them. Out back behind the Len Foote Hike Inn, my sister had seen a wild turkey stroll out of and back into the shade of the forest, and that was thrilling enough for now, but I was hoping we would see one or two bears, walk up on them on the trail, see them skitter and gallop away down a hillside. “If you see one, don’t tell me about it,” my sister had advised me.
“Does anyone know any haunted trail stories?” Graceful Emma asked as she poked the fire with a crooked stick.
I longed to jump in and tell the same story I had two nights before at the top of Amicalola Falls, but I’d made this campfire for them. This was really their night, these through-hikers. Their campfire and their stories.
I leaned my head on Walkie’s shoulder as she finished preparing our dehydrated dinner, dropping slices of ramp as she stirred in the boiling water.
“Let me ask you guys,” Walkie said to New York and Graceful Emma, “I keep hearing this sound. Like a basketball being dropped from way up and then, it kind of dribbles on the ground a few times.”
“Oh, I heard that, too!” said John. “That was the best description. That’s what it sounds like.”
After more discussion, another hiker offered that it sounded like a Grouse to him, a small ground-dwelling bird. We hadn’t spied them yet, but clearly, we’d been hearing them, and had heard tales before coming out here, of hikers being startled by these nervous creatures who frequently exploded from quiet underbrush.
“The ramps are good,” I told my sister, “they add a nice crunch.”
“Mmmhmm,” she agreed, “we should pick more and eat them tomorrow, too.”
“Do you still have that chocolate bar?” She asked me a few minutes later, the bottomless pit of hiker hunger setting in already. We split our gifted chocolate bar and devoured it.
When sleepiness set in, we left the young people at the glow of the fire, retiring to our tent where we lay on our bellies propped up on elbows reviewing the day. I had taken so many photos, and pulled out my phone so we could look through them.
“Here we are with that sign!” “There we are with some trees.” I said.
“And here are more trees!” My sister narrated.
“Here we are sitting on a rock,” I started giggling.
My sister swiped left to find another of our selfies featuring more trees. Soon, our mirth was spilling into the air outside our tent, and worrying that we would disturb sleeping hikers nearby, we tried to settle our spirits for sleep.
Sleep can be elusive on the trail, but at some point, your desire to be in control of your environment gives way to exhaustion, and sleep does, amazingly, come. I used to lie awake on trails wondering whether every sound signaled danger, but prior camping had taught me that there was nothing at all I could do about it anyhow. I could lay awake listening, or I could rest.
Whether or not a bear got me while I was sleeping really wasn’t up to me out here. Practically nothing is up to you out in the woods, and it’s a struggle at first. The only thing you’re in charge of, ever, is walking, just no matter how you’re feeling, keep walking. That’s it.
And it made me wonder about the illusion of control created by the regular world, the world we were leaving behind for four more days, five more days, it was truly difficult to keep a normal sensation of time. The real world that was waiting for us, it wasn’t in our control any more than these woods or those bears, we could only wake up each day, do our best, and go to sleep. Just keep walking, that’s it.
These woods, those bears, a heavy limb falling in the night and crashing into our tent, or a stranger who might wish us harm out here, just really had very little to do with me at all. Whatever happened, if it happened, I hoped it would be quick, and I slept.
The next morning, I woke earlier than Walkie as was becoming a pattern comfortable to both of us and wandered a little bit off in the woods to write and drink my coffee. Things that pass for clean surfaces in the woods include fallen trees, the tops of old stumps, even a nice flat scratch of dirt. Strangely, it was seeming to me that the woods were cleaner than a typical house with wind and rain regularly doing the sweeping and the washing. The privies were the dirtiest parts of the campsite, followed by the picnic tables which held innumerable invisible, crawling bacteria, followed by us, the hikers ourselves.
The importance of hand sanitizer on the trail cannot be overstated. My sister and I were careful not to gather and lay our hands and arms across those shared gathering areas including picnic tables. We also sanitized after touching logbooks and other shared materials. It’s easy to see those gathering spots as harmless and safe but just find a nice tree stump.
Over in the tent, Walkie started in with her verbal communion with the morning, with herself, with her hiking gear as she stuffed her sleeping bag into a sack. Joining me out on our tree trunk a few minutes later, she asked me whether we ought to go invite the other hikers to our morning yoga session. Striding up the hill, coffee in hand, we gathered ourselves in the front of the shelter where Walkie proceeded to lead a yoga class with some dozen hikers joining in.
Feelings are our paint. One of my weird habits had always been to throw them away when I found them messy, execute a precise blueprint with rulers and straight lines, and call it a day. Stilling my spirit to stretch and breathe used to raise my anxiety as it also drew my attention to my speedy cycling thoughts, but therein lied the power of yoga for me. No longer running and moving away from my own mind, I was learning to breathe through those feelings.
We were leaning into pine needles, stretching knees and feet atop fallen tree trunks, these strangers who were friends, and my sister, and me. I had really been dreaming of my sister and I wandering through dark forests alone. I’d read enough about the trail that I shouldn’t have been surprised by the weird communion that was taking place among firefighters, scholars, nurses, teachers, salesmen, students, mothers.
We were all hikers for just this time in our lives together. Then, we would all go back and do whatever it was we did in real life. Walkie had wanted all of this, and I had wanted only the woods, the walking, the challenge. Still, I liked these folks. I didn’t like them as well as I liked my sister, but if I was stuck in the woods with strangers, and I was, these were good ones to be stuck with. Yoga helped me be okay with the paint.
We rolled up nylon, damp in the morning air, and stuffed it all back into our packs. Our morning breakdown was becoming more efficient, and while we were not the first ones out of camp, neither were we the last, that honor belonging to the young dudes who, we were sure, would catch up and pass us on the trail later.
Rocks & Roots 