Stumbling Towards a Path

Last summer, I went for a walk. Afraid to commit too much time, I settled for a 10 day jaunt across the State of New Hampshire. 140 miles proved to be more than enough.

I wanted to do something along the lines of surviving in the wild. I had just finished college, and my next steps felt less than obvious. Hiking, there’s only ever two possible next steps: forwards and backwards. So, for 10 days, I focused on following along and stepping forwards.

A friend had asked right before I left if I had read Into the Wild by Jonathan Krakauer. The story tells of a recent college graduate who runs off to experience life in the Wild. He misidentifies some plants, and he dies. I had indeed read the book and seen the movie, so I admitted I sympathized with him, except for the dying part. She told me she thought he was the most entitled kid she’d ever heard of and that he ruined his parents’ lives for a whim. Ahh, I thought. Now, I would be even more embarrassed to die.

So, here I am, alive and well, a few months later.

I hiked for ten days, and I slept under a rain tarp, the rotting top of a lean-to, or the branches for nine nights. I am not sure I could claim to have slept under the stars, but I wouldn’t have been able to see them while asleep regardless.

I hiked just over 140 miles along the Appalachian Trail from Hanover, NH to Gorham, NH, where I split off for an extra few miles to reach the Maine border. Along the way, I slipped, tripped, or lost my footing 167 times.

I carried and ate a small jar of peanut butter, a squeeze bottle of jelly, 30 tortillas, 24 servings of oatmeal, four dehydrated meals, four cups of quinoa, 18 Cliff Bars, 17 other granola bars, three chocolate bars, six jerky sticks, five packs of beef jerky, and two packets of mixed nuts.

The hot food I enjoyed included nine bowls of AMC hut soup, the best breakfast of my life, and assorted leftovers and scraps not consumed by paying hut guests. Nothing ever tasted better than the piece of salami, the peanut M&Ms, or the Fig Newtons passing strangers offered me.

My pack weighed over 50 pounds because I loaded myself down with unnecessary luxuries like a book I never read, two external phone batteries I didn’t drain, and insect repellent I never used. Most people who hike the AT from Georgia to Maine, “through hikers,” avoid carrying more than 30 pounds before water. They typically find that they slow down to 75% of their normal pace in the White Mountains, where I hiked. To minimize weight and ensure they have enough food, they typically resupply in town every five days or so, but I decided to never visit “civilization.”

I found myself in some of the most difficult terrain of the whole East Coast carrying a bag too heavy with frivolities and too light with food.

I decided that I ought to keep a journal, though I never needed the extra notebook I lugged over mountains and molehills. The notebook remains unopened but has suffered modest water damage, which made it heavier. Every ounce counts on the trail. Despite the weight, my journal proved fruitful:

Day 1:

“I might not have a lot to record in a day-by-day sense because, if all goes according to plan, I’ll wake up, strike my hammock, walk, eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, set up my hammock, and hang my bear bag.”

Day 2:

“It took me an eternity to fall asleep last night because I was sure that my bear bag was going to fall down and that I was too close to the other bags. I jolted awake every time I heard something. I really ought to have taken a tylenol pm.”

“I am waiting for some so-called pasta bolognese to rehydrate and trying to figure out the best way to bear bag without letting my food get all wet. I can’t decide if bears would still be active in the rain.”

Day 3:

“Some thoughts from today include: do birds have vocal cords? Why do the pine woods seem so much less buggy than the deciduous ones?”

“The theme of the day was learning experiences.”

“I have no idea why I’m out here. I can’t decide if I’d rather nobody know or everybody know.”

“I genuinely didn’t bother to think that it might rain during this trip. I brought tons of socks and the right or good enough gear, but I totally just figured it wouldn’t happen.”

“Lots of yesterday’s good mood and productivity came from instacoffee”

Day 4:

“On the bright side, I saw what I think was a possum as well as an actual moose! It was right ahead of me on the trail and booked it away as it saw, heard, or smelled me. The most shocking part is even though I adore moose my first thought was ‘who brought a horse onto a trail?’ My second was ‘That dog is huge!’”

Day 5:

“One’s pack is always heaviest when one might be lost. Or in the last quarter mile to a shelter.”

“I got caught in the second hut talking to an oldish lady who said she drank 90 ounces of water today and felt worried. I didn’t tell her how proud I felt for having had at least 12 liters and having won this drinking contest against a septuagenarian. Maybe I’m the one who should be worried.”

“Today’s wisdom: the only thing worse than carrying your full water all the way up a mountain is not doing so.”

Day 6:

“The through hiker I showed my blister to said he thought I should drain it. I’m not sure what apparatus that requires, nor am I sure I should take medical advice from somebody who’s spending five months walking.”

“A case study: one sign pointed off the trail and said ‘Zealand mountain .1 miles,’ and another said ‘view that way’ pointing towards a swamp. I took the view one and never considered the first one because .1 miles was too many miles. I stood above a valley on the edge of a cliff and stared at all of the ridge lines and the sheer drop off. I still had my pack on, which felt dangerous because I could lose my balance and tumble into the plush greenery below. I probably had to walk over .1 miles to get there, but I couldn’t say no to the view once I knew it existed.”

“Today’s wisdom was about managing goals and expectations.”

Day 7:

“The guy who said he had been carrying hummus powder since Harper’s Ferry ate some of it tonight, so I bet he’s glad he carried it.”

“I guess I’m also doing this for the mountains, the physical and mental challenge, and just to occupy ten days or so. There would be better places to be totally alone, and it’s pretty fun talking to and getting to know other hikers. It’s baffling that some of them see each other regularly for months but only know each other by fake names.”

“One of the little girls from this family was farther down the trail, and they told her to come back to the top. She said she was stretching. They told her to stretch up here. She said, genuinely, ‘This is the only rock.’ The only rock! In the mountains! Some day, I’ll have opinions that strong.”

“I’m feeling nostalgic about this trip already. The freedom of the routine is so satisfying. I don’t much want to go back and tell people about it because I’m worried that will make it feel stupid. It’ll only be 10 days. It’s not the whole AT or anything.”

Day 8:

“I woke up no longer nostalgic.”

“Morale is low.”

“There was just a minute of clear sky, but who can you trust?”

“Somebody had stuck a big stick into a cairn and then another stick horizontally through the original one, making a cross that magically showed up through the fog/cloud/rain. It was real spooky. I thought I might as well just move into this ready-made grave. I felt like I was on the moon or something way out there. The visibility was so bad that these never appeared until they were 10 feet away”

Day 9:

“Morale is high.”

“Today was a very good culinary day considering I ran out of gas in my stove last night. I was starving when I made it the 2.5 miles from my stealth spot to Pinkham Notch. At the visitors center, I hoped at best to buy a ton of cliff bars, but I found to my disbelief and elation that they had a breakfast buffet.”

“I ate so much that my waist strap changed the shape of my stomach.”

“The guy I’m sharing the shelter with has the trail name Silver. He’s resuming a through hike after a month off, which I respect. He is a dead ringer for Paul Giamatti. He said nowhere else on the trail beats the views in the Whites, so I’m glad I came here. I like sharing the shelter with just one person because you can talk just you two. It reminded me of the guy all the way back my second night. I wonder how far he has made it. I ate his last peppermint to celebrate my last night.”

Day 10:

“I sit now hopefully visible on the side of the road on US Rt. 2 in Shelburne, NH, having just walked across the border into Maine.”

“The only trouble is that it is threatening to rain, I have no cell service, and I am a few miles up the road from the trailhead where the AT would have let out and they’ll be looking for me.”

“I can’t say for sure yet if I learned anything.”

While I spent ample time alone, these don’t appear to be the deranged scrawlings of a madman. I found it remarkable how much of my thinking I spent on “just walk, just walk, just walk” and “Keep going. You’re not almost there, this is probably going to be a false summit, but keep going.”

One of the biggest things that I learned about myself was that I am an optimist. Most times after a long climb, if the trees cleared and offered a view or a large exposed rock, I decided I had to be at the pinnacle of a mountain. Such was seldom true. The White Mountains seem to offer on average three false summits per peak, although the more tired I felt the more false summits I found.

I even managed to convince myself that each successive day would be easier than the prior one. This wasn’t untrue, as I ate food to lighten my pack, my legs got stronger, and I had experience that might be valuable. However, the second-to-last climb of my trip, to the top of the Wildcats, was notorious as one of the hardest in the Whites. I convinced myself, though, that such misinformation came from SOBOs (southbound through hikers starting in Maine and ending in Georgia) who saw the Wildcats as their first exposure to the Whites. I might by that same logic claim that Moosilauke is some of the hardest hiking in the area, as it was my first and one of my biggest continuous climbs, at nearly 3000 feet of elevation gain. The hardest climb of the trip usually turned out to be the one I trudged through at that moment.

A second lesson I had to learn night after night was that I have a very hard time sleeping on my side in the woods. I read once that people sleep more comfortably and foster spinal health if they sleep on their side. In my hammock, trying to sleep on my side led me to swing back and forth vigorously enough that I worried about falling out. In a lean-to, my head would droop down the length of my shoulder, bending my neck to acute angles because not even I, toter of literature, lithium ions, and deet, brought a pillow.

I could have surrendered and slept on my back, but hours and hours of walking made my heels sore from my usually wet boots, and miles and miles of pack friction left a callous-bump combination known as pack rash on my lower back.

Nevertheless, however I fell asleep, I did not become a morning person. What the night before felt unsustainably uncomfortable inevitably became the best sleep of my life. I struggled to forsake my sleeping bag for the cold trail. When I did achieve an early start, I discovered the first to hit the trail walks into every one of last night’s new spiderwebs. It felt like the hike equivalent of catching first tracks skiing, except unpleasant.

In between the first and second lessons, while walking up the trail but before trying to sleep, I encountered my third lesson: you just can’t capture it. I tried to take photographs, I tried to write, but every time I fell short. It turned out Mount Washington’s sideways rain had broken my analogue camera, so most of my photos were imaginary, too.

The sky dwarfed the mountains in my photos, and my prose never captured the feelings and thoughts I had while strolling.

Nevertheless, I have ten days worth of the best views, smells, and senses of accomplishment I have ever had packed away in my head, where they weigh nothing. I looked down at Crawford Notch from the first of several false summits along the Webster Cliff Trail, and each time, the cars below seemed minuscule and impossibly far away. Just two hours ago, I had been down among them, looking up at the impossibly high — how could Mount Webster be less than 4,000 feet? — mountain that was my first step toward my highest climb of the trip, Mount Washington.

A few days earlier, I had stared off from Mount Kinsman towards Mount Lafayette and Franconia Ridge, wondering how I could expect to go somewhere so far away and so high up that same day.

I don’t expect to soon forget the cliffs and brooks below me when I took the trail towards the view along the Twinway, but I didn’t try to take a photo because I knew it wouldn’t work. Maybe the essence of the view mattered more than its substance.

As for the smells, I had never smelled a breakfast like at the Pinkham Notch visitor center, and each time I walked through a pine grove I understood why the air fresheners tried to mimic them and how bad a job they did. When my sister picked me up, I found out how badly I and all of my gear smelled, too. Thankfully, my brain learned what scents to go nose blind towards and what to let me enjoy.

Each time I slipped, I felt a sensation like 1000 tiny bugs stung me all over my body at once. Each time I ate a tortilla, my mouth felt thick, dry, and shrunken. Each time I drank some water, I felt saved.

I had prepared adequately, but things always come up. I knew that Mount Washington is famed for the worst weather in the world, but I never foresaw the fear of stumbling through sideways rain, hail, and 30–60mph winds along a clouded ridge with visibility so poor I could barely make out the next trail-marking cairn. I did not anticipate the pain and uncertainty of my first three steps each morning as my knees, hips, and ankles struggled to unfreeze, loosen up, and prepare for another day of overtime.

It didn’t matter why I did it. It didn’t matter if I learned. I had a great time. I’ll even take precious vacation in the future to exhaust myself and hang out with nobody I know, losing my balance as I step along the path.

Over several months, the through hikers seemed to have transcended cynicism and learned to focus on finding comforts in every day of their barebones, goal oriented life. 10 days wasn’t long enough for me to find such inner peace, but maybe 11 would have been.