6/28/93 – Mon.

First: last night I (we) stayed at Doc’s Knob Shelter, and I successfully completed my 26.8 mile day today & am staying at Pine Swamp Branch Shelter tonight. I’ve caught up with Gandalf, who is also here tonight, as well as a guy named Matt who is sort of northbound until the end of July. Jack (a.k.a. “Wild-Man Jack,” “The Mushroom Man,” “Rasputin,” or (his “official” name) “The Wayward Traveler”), showed up about 8:45. I haven’t seen him since just outside of Erwin, TN, when I spent some time trying to describe him. I was surprised to have caught him so quickly after the reunion in Georgia. “Captain” and “Jumpy,” whose entries I have been reading, spent an extra day in Pearisburg, so I am now ahead of them yet still have not actually met them.

I was in a kind of funk for most of the day today — a touch of what hikers refer to as the “Virginia Blues,” I think. What with Julie leaving this morning and the uncertainty as to whether I would catch up (or be caught by) any of the hikers whose company I have enjoyed so much so far, Maine was starting to seem like a very distant place. The long hike I was facing didn’t help, either. It was almost as though nature were trying to cheer me up, though. I had the experience of unintentionally “chasing” a young bird down teh trail (it couldn’t fly high enough or far enough to do anything but fly down the trail in front of me) while its mother fussed from the sidelines. I also saw three different deer that weren’t bothered enough by my presence to run off — I got within about 30 ft. of all of them as I walked downt he trail. I also flushed six or seven quail, so, nature-wise, it was a pretty good day.

I am still in a bit of a funk, however. My focus is now to get to Harper’s Ferry as fast as is reasonably (I proved today that big mileage does not mean missing out on the nature experience), both so I can see Julie again and so I can possibly hook up with Buck. Gandalf is getting off in Harper’s Ferry, so I’d like to think there is somebody else I like that I might be bumping into occasionally, if not every night.

It’s been a long day, and I want to read a little E.B. White before retiring.

Article idea: Trail names — significance and anecdotes about

5/26/93 – Wed.

I hiked with Srider all day today. I had wanted to take an “easy” day, and he is notorious for going slow. The truth is, he hikes at a pretty decent pace, but he takes long breaks and burns out in the middle of the afternoon. The wisdom of his from the day was: “It doesn’t matter what you do (in life), as long as you do it.” He is forty years old, reasonably financially secure, looks like he’s in his early thirties, and loves life. He has done a lot of stuff, is pretty intelligent, and is fun to walk with. We were talking about half of the time were walking, which was nice.

Ron, John, Christy, Justin, Strider, and I are staying in the shelter tonight. We’ve been laughing a lot. Tomorrow I am tentatively going to have a long day and maybe catch Bearanoid. He had a bear cross the trail 20′ in front of him, and then Christy and Justin saw it, too. Strider and I have yet to see a bear, but the Smokies is [sic] supposedly the best place in the world to see black bears (Strider showed it to me in a magazine).

Although I got here tonight at about the same time I got to the Fontana Hilton, but thought I was much more efficient once I got to the shelter. Last night, I had hints of civilization all around, and I got flustered. There were so many places to set things down and so many things to do (shower, telephone, e.g.), that It took me twice as long to do anything. Tonight it was just me and my pack, and I still have daylight to write in.

We just saw a deer run by. Ain’t the wilderness grand? Another one just came up and wandered around about fifteen feet from the shelter. I’ve seen a lot of deer, but I think the sight of one will always be exciting. in One Man’s Meat, E.B.W. wrote an essay about deer and the fact that everyone wanted him to kill one. He sounded a lot like Bob Lyren in his reasoning as to why he didn’t shoot them. Time perspective: he mentioned that Disney was going to make Bambi into a movie.

E.B. White is awesome.

As always, I miss Julie terribly, and I find myself talking about her a lot. I am still a bit too far away to start counting the days to when I see her again.

Things still to see: a black bear, a good sunset

It seems as though I completely failed to mention that I was in The Great Smokey Mountains National Park at this point.

5/24/93 – Mon.

First time to miss any days of entries here. As an excuse I can only point to the Doug Stone song, “I Was Too Busy Being in Love.” Julie did meet me in Wesser, and we had a wonderful two days together. Words really cannot express what a wonderful feeling it is to wake up with her nestled up against me. We were both fairly emotional once we were alone together, and I honestly felt that I never wanted to end the embrace. I would be lost without her (pardon the cliche), and returning to the trail was an awfully bittersweet thing. We drove up to Fontana Dam to stash a 6-pack of beer for Bearanoid at the shelter. He had continued on at Wesser, rather than taking a break. I guess I will soon find out whether or not the beer made it undisturbed until he got there.

I got back on the trail at about 8:45 this morning. Shawn, a guy I had met in Wesser, said that Troll and Bushwack had left about a half-hour earlier. I spent most of the day expecting to catch up with them, only to realize that I had been misinformed and they were behind me. That, combined with a pretty dry stretch of the trail, left me covering 16 miles today! That included the ascent of Cheoah Bald and some other rather nasty uphills. So, I am using the candle lantern for the first time to make this entry, and I plan to read some of E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat, which Julie bought for me.

I saw a small snake today that (I think) might have been a very young rattler. I also saw a couple of wild turkeys, so perhaps my wildlife-sighting luck is about to change.

I’m camped tonight about 2.5-3.0 miles beyond Stecoah Gap with a couple of guys from Kentucky (Ron and John) and a guy named Dave who had stayed with us at Tray Mountain shelter. Ron is about to enter divinity school (I don’t think he has entered yet), and John is an upholsterer. John’s father went to M.I.T. and helped Henri Heimlich develop the Heimlich Maneuver. John is kind of quiet, but Ron is talkative and funny. They are carrying a lot of stuff (their packs weigh ~75 lbs.). They have an MSR Whisperlite stove like mine, and had to deal with a clogged jet last night without a wrench or a cleaning wire. I gave them my extra cleaning wire and wrench, which Dad would probably think was a reckless thing to do. But Dad is not here, the cleaning tool has two different wires (so if one breaks there is a built-in backup), and I would pretty much have to lose my stove to lose the tools. Also, my Leatherman has a pair of pliers. I ramble.

With a little bit of luck, I will make Fontana early enough tomorrow to get into town before the post office closes and get back out before dark. If I go into town tomorrow instead of Wed., I will be able to call Julie.

I have no idea why I would not have been able to call Julie on Wednesday. All I can imagine was that she was going to be on the road somewhere and unreachable. 1993. Long before everyone had a cell phone!

In college, I took several writing classes. One of the essays we were assigned was “Once More to the Lake.” I was hooked. So far, it’s the most memorable ending to any literary work I have encountered: “As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.” We discussed White’s career in class, which was what got me turned on to The New Yorker. I’ve been a subscriber now for (count, count, count) fourteen years. Hard to believe (a minor chill of death in my groin just counting that up).

Over the next few years, I slowly tracked down and consumed various White writings — The Trumpet of the Swan, The Second Tree from the Corner, Stuart Little, One Man’s Meat. I also became a bit of New Yorker addict. I picked up E. J. Kahn’s memoir a few years after I graduated. I think I found out after reading it that he had died just a few months earlier (May 28, 1994). That gave me the basic New Yorker history — the Harold Ross vision, the stewardship of William Shawn, the days of E.B. White, Katherine Angell (later White), and James Thurber. I developed some sort of low-grade radar for New Yorker trivia. Wallace Shawn — character actor extraordinaire (think The Sicilian in The Princess Bride). Lots of Johns — John Lahr (theater critic and son of Bert Lahr, who was the lion in The Wizard of Oz) to John Updike (the Rabbit series of books — exquisitely describing one man’s middle class, self-disappointed Pennsylvania life) to Jonathan Franzen (award-winning author…who probably didn’t help his top line income by snubbing the listing of one of his books on Oprah’s Book Club).

A few years ago, I got a copy of Scott Elledge’s biography of E.B. White. That armed me with more trivia, but also provided me with insight into one of my current favorite New Yorker writers — Roger Angell. He is E.B. White’s stepson. Son of the independent, proper, brilliant Katherine Sergeant White (profiled by Nancy Franklin years ago in The New Yorker – did I mention I’m a fan of the magazine?).

Roger Angell is, to date, the only professional writer to whom I have ever actually written a letter. He’s a huge baseball fan and the son of Elwyn Brooks “Andy” White. How could I not write the guy? At least, I think I wrote him. I found a Roger Angell living at what seemed like a pretty swank Manhattan address, so that’s where I sent the letter. I never heard back, but I don’t really expect to. I gushed a bit.

And…I realize I don’t know where on earth I’m heading with this, and it’s getting late.