This morning I received the best news I’ve had in a month. My buddy John is willing to drive over an hour out of his way, so I can catch an AOC backpacking trip next weekend. The latter part of his text nearly moved me to tears:

“The Trail provides brother. Even when we aren’t on it anymore.”

The reason this gesture had such impact, is because the past few weeks have felt like an absolute shit-slog. The sinusoidal nature of my mother’s condition day to day has gotten the best of me at times. One of the very few things I have complete control over however, is my demeanor towards her. I refuse to be anything less than kind and patient. It tires a man most, that which requires him to act like one.

It’s difficult to speak in a calm voice at 3am, when she’s getting up yet again, and usually when I’m just falling asleep once more. Still in need of an escort to the restroom, and really everywhere else in the house, my sister Kelly and I have traded off sleeping next to the baby monitor. Kelly has taken most of the shifts, and for that I am grateful.

Coming home from a long trail is challenging in ways only those who have done it can fully comprehend. Coming home in the middle of this transition in my mother’s health has been a shock. Thirteen days in the hospital, three flash pulmonary edemas, which are scary enough as a bystander, and her ever-present lack of hunger. From an acute kidney failure diagnoses on day one, to needing to be monitored every three months to make the final call on dialysis; everything feels in flux. This is nothing to say of her countenance, which ranges the whole of human emotion.

Before the stroke in March, I watched my mother cry twice in thirty-three years. It’s nearly a daily occurrence now.

The only real reprieve I’ve felt from this has been an evening at the Heron House. Sitting with my Sangha after a five month absence was beautiful. I received six hugs before I made it into the meditation hall. The support, the words of my teacher that night both gave me the space to let go and just cry quietly. Lisa taught on gratitude, and touched on how much of it we owe our parents. Apropos.

Amid the chaos, I’ve been reading Viktor Frankl, and watching Jordan Peterson excerpts. During one morning meeting, my last boss explained that inspiring rhetoric should be treated like a shower, that is, it should be repeated daily. Rinsing away negativity with the the truth of men who have endured difficult things; this is always a comfort to me.

My favorite maxim for action during difficult times comes from Amy Dresner:

“Stability does not create discipline, discipline creates stability.”

The only way to make a situation better is to start improving a few small things, repeatedly. For me in this moment, that means consistent sleep, going for a run or walk everyday, and getting ample time on the cushion to meditate. I can at least make two of those three happen, and life will be much improved.

A good woodsy distraction is welcome too. I haven’t seen some of the friends on this upcoming trip in years. It will be great to remedy that!

Also in the past three weeks, I’ve managed to visit my nephews school to talk about my hike. Sage started building out his camper van, and we both still wear our Melanzana hoodies on the daily. Jelly is moving to Roanoke, and will be hiking the Virginia Triple Crown with a mutual friend of ours, Crotchidile. Myra (Wonder), a great friend and backpacking mentor of mine, just finished her 2,650 mile PCT thru hike!

I’m nestled next to a third floor window, on a small couch which folds into a twin bed.  I’ve lived most of this week out of my “city” backpack, a Patagonia Refugio.  It’s filled with all manner of oddities which I haven’t required in months.  Items like a stick of deodorant, underwear, a belt, and my glasses; the not-so-essential essentials of daily life.  My Facebook and Instagram feeds have been filled with the post-hike ramblings of my friends, and I suppose it’s time to add my own observations.

When I hiked in 2016, the only experienced former hiker I knew was a guy named Lost.  Lost had “hit and quit” that AT twice before, starting at Springer each time.  I met him five-hundred miles into his third attempt, which would be his final and successful one.  He provided my first insights into what post-trail life would be like, because he had been there twice before.

He related the gut-dropping disappointment of having to go back to work after so much freedom.  He explained the pain of failing to realize a dream, and then the drudgery of working to realize someone else’s.  As we continued he north, he also told me that he’d be going back to work the day after summiting Katahdin.  This seemed odd at the time, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense.  If all hikers could go back to a job, any job,  immediately following their adventure, post-trail depression would be far less common.  Money is far less important than purpose during the transition back into civilization.

My strategy this year has been to weigh every financial decision on trail, against post-trail financial freedom.  I had this in mind with every second, or third entree ordered at a restaurant.  I thought about it every time I decided not to stop and pay for a shower, for an additional three to five days.  Yes, I consciously opted for food over showers many times this trip!  Those decisions have payed off, and as a result I do not have to go rushing back to work.  Oddly, I am attracting money into my life pretty easily regardless.

As far as purpose goes, my mother’s medical needs are providing that for now.  She’s been hospitalized again since my last post.  I am uniquely blessed with the time and lack of obligation to be an advocate for her.  My sister Kelly and I have been alternating overnight stays in her hospital room, which features the aforementioned window.

Care taking genuinely freaks me out, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t have kids.  The past week has forced a lot of growth on me in this regard.  Till now, my sisters have had to bear the bulk to this responsibility, usually while I’m in a waiting room being all emotionally paralyzed about it.  As it turns out though, spoon feeding, and hand escorting my mom around isn’t so bad.  If anything, worrying about another person’s food, water, and waste needs is a pretty easy transition for a hiker, because it’s all we think about on trail.  That, and thermo-regulation.  I’m pretty much camping with my mom, and taking her on .2 mile day hikes.  The window at the end of the hall even provides a sunset view.

Internally, during the downtime, I am letting go of a lot of anger.

Years ago as a young teenager, I attended my best friend’s church camp.  One exercise required us to write down two things we wished our parents did better.  Everyone had two of these three answers:

“More Trust”

“More Communication”

“Less arguing”

My answer was unique among them, as I’ve always had a pretty excellent and open relationship with my parents.  This was the only answer I could come up with:

“Better care of health”

It’s the kind of answer you give, when you and your siblings trade advice on how best to keep your parent’s cigarette smoke smell out of your clothing.  It’s the answer you give, when you’ve learned to have all meaningful conversation with your dad before 12pm on a Saturday; because he’ll be drunk soon.  When having your learner’s permit means you’re now a free designated driver.  When you watch your mother spark a cigarette ten minutes after you just watched your dad hurl his cancer-ridden lungs onto the bathroom floor.

It’s the kind of answer you give.

It hurts because, there is a reason I am writing this from a hospital room in the middle of the night.  It hurts because I can’t go camping with my mom for real anymore.

After a decade of my own alcoholism, I do have compassion.  Truly, I do.  My parents didn’t have the resources I’ve been given.  Fuck if it doesn’t hurt though.

So for whatever path comes after this, this is my trail right now.  I’m grateful to be feeling and slowly shedding the burden of this anger.  I’m happy I can be here for my mom, because these feelings have to be healed with love.  I had the same opportunity with my dad, but he passed long before I realized it.

One thing the trail has repeatedly taught me, is just to take things as they come.  Things rarely go as planned, but its taught me to have faith anyway.  Often the results are better than imagined, or you find yourself on a trajectory you could have never foreseen.  I’ve learned too, that the faster you open to the present experience, and learn what it has to offer, the faster it begins to move on and leave you alone.

Stay well out there friends.  Be kind, because everything can change.

 

My sister Katie, and my brother-in-law Craig met me in Hot Springs!  I love the signs they made!

 

I just ordered two paperback titles, quickly and with as little logical impedance as possible. I am now a thru-hiker, and post-trail we are a nearly destitute breed. I do remember reading a quote of H.P. Lovecraft years ago, in which he argued the validity of eating less to afford books. I console myself with such eccentrics.

The first purchase was Bernard Moitessier’s Vagabond des mers du sud or rather the English version; Sailing on the Reefs. I heard about this man through the documentary Hold Fast. Mentally I’ve bookmarked him as someone I need to know more about.

Similarly, I made the second purchase based on a single quote from Rainer Maria Rilke. It’s one I’ve incorporated into a previous blog post.

“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

His words resonated to a very deep chord within myself, which sounded after a failed relationship. A romance, which seriously damaged my desire for future interconnectedness at all. It was this quote which reminded me of the truth that such bonds are the yoke of human existence.

Why books over web searches? Why longer works over succinct secondhand articles? Intimacy of conversation.

Books are the most direct line we often have from one mind to another. Especially when the author is no longer inhabiting a human body. Beyond the depths of the first few chapters, which are often bulwarks set to filter out the unworthy, we find the speaker’s true message. A transmission passed only to those willing to weather dozens of preparatory passages.

To believe that audiobooks suffice in place of visual reading is delusional. There is an additional layer of mastery offered to those who set aside the time and attention required of pages, be they physical or digital.

This was proven to me recently by re-listening to my Audible library while hiking. There were gaps in information, which simply wouldn’t have occurred after reading a hardcopy. Instead of memories filled with the authors words, I recalled images of driving my work truck. Still, audiobooks are better than nothing.

I finished the trail on the 29th. A bear caused me to spend my final night in a fire tower. There will be more explanation of my final days in North Carolina to come. Yes, also the last miles in Maine too. As I write this, I am in a foreign place in the middle of the night. I am here to address the increasingly less foreign reality, of hospitalization in my mother’s life.

I am grasping at what peace the woods provided, while it is still upon me. Life wasted no time in testing my new mile-hewn resolve. It chose to ambush me before I could even make it home.

The reality is that what strength I’ve gained in the past five months, time has manifested equally in frailty on the part of my mother. The change is shocking.

Love is the most difficult task indeed. As if failed romances could ever even compare with the sorrow of watching a parent’s physical form fail. To watch it alter so cruelly that it changes even the perception of who she is. I’m at a loss.

Thankfully, both of my sisters are here. Having had exposure to this months ahead of me, they’re in a clearer mental space about it. After writing this, maybe I am too. For now, rest.

This morning I am embarking on the last 69.1 miles of my trip. This section from Erwin, TN to Hot Springs, NC should take three and a half days. I’ll be staying at Laughing Heart Hostel Tuesday evening, where I am hoping to have more conversation with “Solo” who is one of the caretakers.

When Jelly and I finished up our section earlier this year, it was Solo who first greeted us at Hot Springs. Initially, I wasn’t sure the guy was “all there.” He was carving a wooden owl on the porch, and spoke painfully slowly. That was only until we happened upon the correct subject, however.

Jelly and I were waiting on our laundry, and Solo proceeded to tell us about his most recent trip to the arctic circle, where he has been studying indigenous populations for years. As it turns out, he is a cultural anthropologist. He disappeared for a moment and came back with an adze that his uncle had crafted for him. The handle is a caribou antler, which Solo had found during his travels.

In further conversation I learned that Steve, from the Hiker Hut in Rangely, ME, often stays at Laughing Heart for a few weeks before he heads to India each year. Steve was the one who attempted to change my trail name to “Buddha Boy.” I’m hoping to run into both of these characters again.

Throughout the southern leg of this trip, I have been considering a thru hike of the Benton Mackaye Trail, which also ends at Springer Mountain. This is a 288 mile trail, which very well represents the Appalachian Trail of forty years ago. Far less people, far less infrastructure, but it shares many of the same mountains and wilderness areas as the AT.

Last night I downloaded a very outdated guide for the trail, as well as the current Guthooks module for it. Yes, I turned the the dark side… The updated thru hiker guide for the trail is out of stock, likely pending a revision, as the trail changes year to year. Having hiked about half of the BMT, I noticed several discrepancies in the 2011 guidebook.

Ultimately, I’ve decided it best to spend some time with paper maps and do some real mission planning at home. The Smoky’s are really the only section I am worried about. Even with Guthooks, which has zero resupply information, I cannot make basic judgements. Essential information like how much food to carry, remains cryptic and unclear. The permitting system in the Smoky’s also requires that all campsites be reserved in advance.

Admittedly, I am trail weary and ready to get home. Additionally, being unemployed for ten months is taking a toll as well. While the BMT is short, I don’t have as much money to throw at it as I’d like. Money for things like overpriced resupply points, of which there are bound to be a few. Also, funds for shuttles, and other unplanned eventualities, is much thinner than I find comfortable.

I’ll save the BMT for another time. I also have my eyes on the Long Trail, which is the bigger prize in my opinion. I’ll get both of these trails planned and funded. Then, should I find myself between jobs again, I’ll knock them out. Two sub-300 mile trails are much easier to make time for than a six-month thru-hike.

Currently, I find myself missing my desk, my French press, and my zafu. Small comforts, which bring me so much joy. I miss my family, which will soon be gathered for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday.

My hope is to help shuttle some SoBo friends to the airport in a few weeks. Maybe I’ll be able to give them a place to stay for a night after summiting Springer? Either way, I’d like to stay connected to the trail, and help the others as I have been helped.

Now to pack and get moving!

I woke at Laurel Fork Shelter this morning, which puts me 146.9 miles from Hot Springs, NC.

I resupplied in Hampton, TN last night, and didn’t make it out of town until 8:30pm. The road walk back to the trail is sketchy enough in the day time, and down right dangerous at night. I decided to walk against the flow of traffic, and utilize my headlamps flashing red light for the first time.

I was up till 2am writing, attempting to capture some of the big take away lessons of the past 2,045 miles. I’m still too close to the situation to see things accurately. Though I am making notes along the way.

When I arrived home after my last long hike, I realized that the lessons I learned were seeds, not fruit-bearing mature ideas. Some time in the fertile environment of family and friends, will no doubt germinate the new crop I am bringing home this year.

For now, I continue in solitude. It’s absolutely bizarre to be on this path without so much as a hiking partner for over 600 miles. It has pushed me inward, and given me the freedom to expand beyond my perceived limits. I am a much stronger, tougher hiker for it.

The deep pit of gut-wrenching loneliness has only reared its head once this trip. Thankfully, the trail threw enough shit at me, that actions towards survival eliminated any time for self-pity. The sun is out now, and I am cruising across this ridge line.

I’m ready to be home, and ready to start a new chapter in my life. I miss my friends and family dearly.

I rolled into the Wapiti Shelter around 6:30pm yesterday, after being rained on for a few hours. The forecast had the rain starting at noon, but three hours was plenty.

Thoroughly soaked and cold, I set about the usual nightly camp tasks. I fired up my homemade cat food can stove, now on its seventh year of service, and placed the pot of water on top. Then I stretched out my sleeping pad and began the twenty-two breaths necessary to inflate it. Four months ago, the task required twenty-nine breaths. I blew air into my inflatable pillow, and spread out my custom 950 fill down quilt.

I hung my rain jacket on a nearby nail, and pulled my beautifully dry fleece on, right over my soaked shirt. Instead of putting on wet clothes every rainy morning, these days I try to bodyheat-dry them before bed. Putting dry insulating layers over wet ones seems counterintuitive, but it works for Navy Seals, and with enough cheese in my belly, it works for me as well.

I stirred cous cous into my cookpot, along with the parmesan packet, a healthy portion of sharp cheddar, and coconut oil. The oil I found in a 12oz squeeze pouch, with a screw cap. It is perfect for backpacking, and coconut oil is more versatile than olive oil. In addition to helping bump up my caloric intake at dinner, it makes a great oral rinse, and it is great on burns and wounds. I’ve also been adding it to my morning coffee.

The shelters have been empty these days, and I’ve found comfort in performing these tasks with music in the background, or a podcast playing on my phone speakers. It makes the small three-sided cabins a little less lonely, and a bit more cozy. After dinner and stowing my food, I fell into a deep sleep. My slightly damp body finally warmed up in my sleeping bag.

The rain continued all night and into the afternoon. With so few days left in the trip, and so many good resupply options in the coming miles, I couldn’t justify leaving the shelter in a downpour. I had literally no reason to rush. I could do a full zero here and eat a whole day’s worth of food if I wanted to. As it happened, I slept until 9am

A section hiker named Short Break stopped by, and laughed to find me still in the shelter at 10:30am. Other than the usual morning relief, I never left my bag. He caught me mid-sentence. Another hiker had left a trail journal and a guidebook here, and I was nearly on the last entry. I put the journal aside and welcomed him into the space.

Short Break was soaked head to toe, but intent on making it to a new hostel about eight miles away. Weary Feet offered the comforts of both burgers and warm showers, a winning combo after hiking through a rainy day. I had seen a couple of their advertisements posted on the trail.

He assembled a few sandwiches in the shelter and we discussed Woodshole Hostel, where he stayed the night before. Then I mentioned the journal, and sure enough he found an entry on Guthooks from the owner. He read off the phone number to me, and I added it to my phone contacts. From reading the journal I could barely discern anything about its owner. Only direction of travel, southbound, was clear.

Guthooks is a paid app I still refuse to use. In this drought, some of my fellow hikers think I am running a major risk by refusing to use the water reports Guthooks provides. They’re a bunch of pussies though, usually the same people who carry Spot devices out here. In my mind, taking a .4 side trail and finding the water source is dry, is part of a thru hike. Not having all the answers and information is a blessing. Finding out is called “experience!” Otherwise I’d just sit at home and be content only to read books about this trail.

Similarly, my real beef with Guthooks, other than the $80 price tag, is the comments feature. I do not care about another person’s opinion of shelters, hostels, or resupply out here. If I want to know, I ask other hikes directly. The comments section undermines so many potential conversations. I’m old school, and ditching my hardcopy guidebook was difficult enough this year!

Regardless, it did put me in contact with the owner of the journal. I’ll be leaving it, and the guidebook at a country store tomorrow. A family member of theirs is visiting, and will pick the items up by car.

Short Break was getting cold, so he headed on. Somewhere around 1:30pm the rain stopped, and I decided to make some miles. The 14.5 to Jenny Knob Shelter went by amazingly fast. I rolled in here at 7:30pm. The hike was relatively dry, though now it’s pouring again. On the way I saw small flowing streams for the first time in weeks. All of my water has had to be collected from puddles lately. What a nice change!

I finished up a five hour Jocko Willink Podcast episode over dinner, and shot a few texts back and forth with Jelly. I’m very satisfied with the day. Tomorrow I am aiming for a 23 mile jaunt to the Jenkins Shelter. The day after that, I will be sub 300 miles to the finish! For now, I’ll let the drops on this steel roof lull me to sleep.

I have roughly twenty days left on trail. I’ll be leaving Pearisburg in a few minutes, to tackle the last 360.9 miles to Hot Springs.

Last night I stayed at Angel’s Rest hostel, and looked at a large wall map of the trail. The piece I have left is minuscule compared to the whole, and that feels wonderful!

I met Right Foot, a man who became injured during an 800 mile section hike. Instead of heading home, he decided to stay and work as a caretaker at the hostel.

“To give back to the trail a little bit too, it’s given me a lot more over the years.”

Right Foot has 4400+ trail miles on the AT alone. He’s a retired firefighter and paramedic, who once participated in an impromptu rescue of an AMC employee in the White Mountains. He and three NYC firefighters volunteered to cross Washington during a bad storm at 10pm, to extract a woman with appendicitis who works at the Madison Hut.

I can tell you from experience that the traverse from Lakes of the Clouds Hut, to Madison, is one of the worst on the whole trail. At night, in the rain, with winds well over fifty miles per hour, it’s downright dangerous. Maybe he’s given back more than he realizes?

We talked for hours about sailing, finances, navigating Labrador’s 24ft tides, and his son’s career as an aircraft mechanic. My ears perked on that latter subject, and I think that will be my next career path. I have a friend who builds C-130’s for a living, and I suddenly have many questions for him!

The skies are dark, and the forecast calls for two solid days of rain. I am stoked! Cooler weather, and water to drink! I’ll take being perpetually wet over the stress of dried out water sources.