Now shall I walk or shall I ride?

"Ride," Pleasure said:

"Walk," Joy replied.

-W.H. Davies

Brothers and Sisters,
I am writing to announce my departure from this world. Yea, for the next five months I will categorically renounce the fine things of domestication and the warmth of women, and I will instead fall headlong into a love affair with the hills- particularly the ones between Georgia and Maine. With the weight of my world on my shoulders- and of that efficiently transfered to my hips- I will be raptured up to this heavenly place beginning Tuesday, April 8th, where I will remain steadfast and moveable until I arrive in Maine- via the Appalachian Trail- in August (provided that the Lord wills and tarries, to be sure).

Upon my heart you will surely find each of your names written- in all capitals- and that is why I write to tell you these things. [...]

In the spirit of T. Waits and R.W. Emerson, I believe that the tread of my (trail running) shoes wears directly into my soul, and that my largest debt should be to my cobbler/chain outfitter. So it is with this in mind, that I depart. I love you all like in a song.

[A prefatory note to you, kind viewer: these photos were taken with a regular (and of necessity, lightweight) 35mm camera, and they were then scanned into the format you see here by my Grandpa. On account of such, please forgive any imperfections you feel are unbecoming of this adventure journal, and remember to thank my mom's dad when you see him.]

Here they are-- the trees of the Appalachian Trail. At this point, I still can't believe that I'm really doing it. Forgive the dramatic italics, but it truly was blowing my mind that I was there taking the first baby steps of what would become the experience of a lifetime (or rather lifetimes, considering all of the deep and warm support I received from my family principally and my friends as well).

My mom would later make for me a large painting of this very scene, and I treasure it to this day. Also, being as I was in the woods of Northern Georgia, I counted it a plus that I'd never seen Deliverance.

Everything I need for life and godliness, weighing in at a scant and respectable 10 pounds*. I would say that all of the research and preparation work that I did paid off in no small way. For one, the gear that I began with was almost to the piece the stuff that I finished with, with only a few exceptions. For example, the GVP G4 pack that you see there ultimately ended up just having too much room for my tastes, so I downsized further to a Golite Breeze in Harper's Ferry. But anyway, the point is that I was fortunate to have no need of throwing burdensome and nonessential "bad ideas" gear off of the mountains of N. Georgia, and neither did I need to replace a single thing at Neel's Gap-- the Holy Land of Desperately Needed Lighter Gear to many thru-hikers.

And yes, those are 80's ski poles. I got the pair for $3 from a thrift store, no doubt donated by some Northerner transplant to my fair Virginia.

*Of course, I'm speaking here of "base weight," which is everything except the consumables of food and water.

Have you ever been more inspired by seeing a man giving his all for something so Grand, against all odds and in jeans? I haven't. Meet "Beach Preach," "Pastor Ken," or just "Dad." The plan was for him to walk with me to my Granny & Pappy's house (his mom and dad) in Franklin, North Carolina-- a full 106 miles-- but it didn't quite work out that way. You can read the full account in my Journal here, but suffice to say that the Elements didn't play very fair against him. To be sure, he didn't exactly deal himself the strongest of hands to begin with (note the half-gallons on his hipbelt-- has anybody ever taken milk on a hike???), but still, my dad rules and I don't care what you say.

This is our first night's campsite. We were next to an idyllic brook, and also it was raining. The neon colors of my dad's tent stand for "I am an Ozark Trails. I was bought at Wal-Mart, and I'm about to totally screw with Pastor Ken." Dad's shelter stayed true to its word, as it let more rain in on him and his gear than it kept out. Some might say that his trip took a turn for the worst when everything he had got soaked, but I would say that happened when he bought his tent at Wal-Mart.

And this was the inevitable result-- wet, humbled, and slightly bearded, waiting for the family to pick us up at this McDonalds in Cleveland, Georgia*. Here ended the hopes and dreams of our 106 miles together, but we squeezed everything we could out of the 16 miles we did get, and I'll never forget them.

*I personally had an emotional and rich historical connection with this backwater town of the Southern Blue Ridge mountains, and this triumphal entry was quite moving to me, to say the least.

Speaking of emotional, this part was rough. After we all spent the weekend resting and eating at Granny & Pappy's place in Franklin, my folks brought me back to the exact location from which dad and I had bailed from the Trail and hitched into town. (In other words, no, Mr. Purist, I did not skip a single linear foot of the Trail. Well, except for that one time about 1,500 miles in where I intentionally sabotaged my "purity" by taking the north Trail access from a shelter, thereby skipping about 20 Trail yards, and all just to make myself laugh at the absurdity of doing such a thing.)

So this was the final goodbye, and there couldn't have been a more beautiful day for such a heart-wrenching. No doubt, my emotions of leaving family and civilization for good were mixed heavily with a fear of the unknown that lie ahead. To tell you the truth, for all of the reading and planning I really had no idea of what I was about to get myself into, how it would all turn out, what would become of me, or how I would look now that I was about to come out of the closet of nascent baldness for the first time ever.

Legend has it that as I disappeared from my parents' sight over the mountains and into the woods, my dad, in his classic call-and-response form, called out for me one last time with his "Yo, dude!" It wasn't for weeks that he learned that not only did I hear him, but I was encouraged thoroughly to begin my journey with just such a send-off. "Yo, dude!" indeed.

A self photo during a shelter break. I don't think I really had my hike-legs on yet at this point, as I still had about me a subtle but near-constant feeling of nervousness regarding this whole enterprise.

See, the aforementioned backwater of Cleveland, Georgia, belongs to this County-- or, as it's also called, Town of My Gnarliest Experience Ever: A Summer of Selling Bibles Door-to-Door. For 80+ hours a week. All summer long. I trust that you can do math and see pretty quickly just how much gnarliness that equals-- not so much owing to the hours, but because I was selling stuff door-to-door. It was a really amazing experience, though, and one that I wouldn't trade for much. I learned and cultivated a whole handful of important things, and not the least of which was a Refusal to Quit that most definitely played a crucial role in this hike. And so here I was, 3 years later-- re-conquering the town on foot; minus sales, plus peace. Minus money, plus bears.

First State Line!!! For reasons largely unknown to myself, I had a deep conviction that my hike wouldn't really start until I was out of Georgia. Put another way, I felt embarrassed a couple days before when I met some folks on the Trail who were just out for the day and they were all impressed and saying things like "wow, that's really cool that you're doing the whole Trail!", and I was sheepishly thinking to myself, "maybe so, but I'm only like 20 miles in, so I haven't earned too much credit yet." So perhaps it was that I had a desire for some tangible results.

That need was met by a wooden sign nailed to a tree.

An early Saturday morning descent into Nantahala Falls, North Carolina. This was to be my first true town stop-- one arrived at by my own two feet. (I forewent the traditional stop in Franklin because, as you recall, I had just been there with my family.) I had an ineffable peace and joy about me as I strode into the town because I had just successfully completed my first extended stretch of solo-ness in the woods, and I promptly celebrated with a 20 ounce Pepsi and a phone call home. It woke my mom up, but she couldn't have been happier to hear my voice.

The valley-view was during my ascent out of Nantahala, which was an unrelenting 8-mile climb to Cheoah Bald.

This was my campsite when I got up there. As it turned out, I got totally worked by a storm that materialized in the early morning-- worked such that I went so far as to assume the halfway down the hill on a rubber sleeping pad and far away from all things metal fetal position as an anti-lightning maneuver. It worked, apparently. My stuff and I did manage to get totally soaked in the process, but the drying out was cake since the next day was sunny again-- as if the Elements, with their palms up and shoulders shrugged, were saying "What? What'd we do?"

This is trail in the Great Smokey Mountains. You might've heard of them. Actually, for all the hype I was a bit disappointed... they were more like the "OK Smokey Mountains" to me. Word is that I would've caught snow in the Smokeys had I started my hike a week earlier-- which I hadn't, so I didn't.

You may have noticed that I had a small obsession with photographing all things sign.

Max Patch! I've dreamed of hiking across Max Patch ever since I saw a picturesque, y'know, picture of the bald in an old AT calendar. I think it was March. So here I was! And if I recall correctly, it was just after a ridiculous "blue-blazing hobo hiker-trash" sponsored hiker-feed at the gap preceding it, so the little nap I took up top wasn't without warrant. Sketch was hiking with me. You'll meet him in a minute.

If my memory serves, all of these were in close proximity to Unaka Mountain, which I loved. It was a thoroughly magical place-- a dense, foggy, and still peak that was full of otherworldly charm. The one of me under my tarp was when Loser, Sketch, and I were all staying at the same shelter, and also the night that we all met Gazelle for the first time. I was entirely yet baselessly convinced that Gazelle and Loser were going to end up together, but I was wrong. Only a year or so later, Gazelle and Sketch got married. A love birthed by the AT experience... isn't that wonderful?

The legendary Overmountain Shelter. As you can see, it's an old barn that at some point was converted to a rather capacious AT shelter. Word is that it can house a hundred sleepy hikers, but at that point the snoring would be enough to drive you batty, so fortunately for me our day's crew wasn't pushing those limits. The word is also that People Under the Stairs was filmed here as well, but I was too tired to be creeped out. That's yours truly leaning slightly against the rail and no doubt dreaming of what I'd order were there a Pizza hut at hand (large pepperoni).

I don't think you need a caption to tell you that these longhorns were totally rad. As you can see, these dudes didn't give a hoot about me or my hike cus they were too busy kicking it-- eating grass and just generally chilling.

Those steps up top are called a "stile," which is defined thusly:

1. a series of steps or rungs by means of which a person may pass over a wall or fence that remains a barrier to sheep or cattle.
2. a turnstile.

Also, a) they vary in their complexity and challenge, b) they are ubiquitous along the southern AT, and c) they are a lot more fun than they were meant to be. After you cross this one you walk a little further along that cute path and then back into the woods. The bottom photo (of Sketch) reminds me of one of my chief frustrations of the Trail, one that's so silly as to be embarrassing: especially in the morning as I was just starting my walk for the day, I would get sooo mad when I had to hike through overhanging brush because invariably it would be wet with dew and it would soak my legs and shorts. Utterly absurd, I know, but it's true.

Textbook stile-crossing technique. (Actually, you might even want to print these photos and take them with you on your next hike, for reference.) With the grace of an Asian figure skater and the shiny, toned legs of Richard Simmons.

Before and after the waterfall swept Sketch away to his violent death.

Just kidding... that wasn't Sketch.

Wish you could've been here for this one. What happened was, right as I was coming out of the woods and I began approaching the top of what I thought was a bald, a burly storm just up and started brewing out of nowhere. And I mean just up and started brewing out of nowhere. The sky went from sky blue to black in no more than 30 seconds, and before I could even say "31-Mississippi" I was getting nailed with pea-sized hail and being buffeted by a mighty wind and rain.

So, doing some quick math in my head (I was never good at Algebra, so it was real basic math-- like, additions and subtractions) I decided that it'd be better to press on ahead and over "the" bald and to the safety of the next shelter rather than descend back down into the woods and wait the storm out, where I would no doubt be safer from the imminent lightning. Thus determined, I picked up my pace and hurried up the hillside only to find that "the bald" was actually "the mile-long range of balds." This new fact seriously complicated my math, so instead of doing it I just ran. With lightning bolts crashing all around the Highest Point Anywhere and with Metal Poles in His Hands (me), I sprinted across that Baldest Mile fully exposed to the wrath of God. But since He and I were on such good terms, my sprinting had turned to skipping and my curses into joyful hymn-singing. (Isn't there a postmillennial prophecy about that somewhere?)

Another sign and hitching a ride, though I don't think I actually ever got one that day. Thanks for nothing, Tennessee.

Up top is Sketch, sketching a sketch. (You are familiar with the "trail name" tradition on the AT, right? If not, that's ok. Here it is: when you thru-hike the Trail you either assume or are given a name that for some reason or another suits you-- a personality trait, a funny quirk, an embarrasing event at a shelter, etc. This name stays with you for life so far as the Trail is concerned, so don't blow it and get stuck with a lame one.) Below that is one of the sketches sketched by Sketch. It's a beautiful sketch, isn't it? Thus the name. Probably the only hiker to ever bring watercolors on a thru-hike, Sketch faithfully captured the scene at countless stops on the Trail as a main element of his journal and as an occasional treat in the shelter logbooks.

The larger context of these three photos was our overnight stay at the Kincorra hostel in TN. Shortly after these shots we all ate way too much at the local Chinese buffet, and we celebrated that by promptly buying gallons of ice cream at the grocery store next door. That's yours burly on the left, showing just enough leg.