voice to himself. Halfway up the third big hill, the 3,400-foot-high Black Mountain, I stood and waited a long while, and thought about going back, but eventually turned and struggled on. I had enough small agonies of my own.
Seven miles seems so little, but it’s not, believe me. With a pack, even for fit people it is not easy. You know what it’s like when you’re at a zoo or an amusement park with a small child who won’t walk another step? You hoist him lightly onto your shoulders and for a while—for a couple of minutes—it’s actually kind of fun to have him up there, pretending like you’re going to tip him off or cruising his head towards some low projection before veering off (all being well) at the last instant. But then it starts to get uncomfortable. You feel a twinge in your neck, a tightening between your shoulder blades, and the sensation seeps and spreads until it is decidedly uncomfortable, and you announce to little Jimmy that you’re going to have to put him down for a while.
Of course, Jimmy bawls and won’t go another step, and your partner gives you that disdainful, I-should-have-married-the-quarterback look because you haven’t gone 400 yards. But, hey, it hurts. Hurts a lot. Believe me, I understand.
OK, now imagine
two
little Jimmies in a pack on your pack, or, better still, something inert but weighty, something that doesn’t want to be lifted, that makes it abundantly clear to you as soon as you pick it up that what it wants is to sit heavily on the ground—say, a bag of cement or a box of medical textbooks—in any case, forty pounds of profound heaviness. Imagine the jerk of the packgoing on, like the pull of a down elevator. Imagine walking with that weight for hours, for days, and not along level asphalt paths with benches and refreshment booths at thoughtful intervals but over a rough trail, full of sharp rocks and unyielding roots and staggering ascents that transfer enormous amounts of strain to your pale, shaking thighs. Now tilt your head back until your neck is taut, and fix your gaze on a point two miles away. That’s your first climb. It’s 4,682 steep feet to the top, and there are lots more like it. Don’t tell me that seven miles is not far. Oh, and here’s the other thing. You don’t
have
to do this. You’re not in the army. You can quit right now. Go home. See your family. Sleep in a bed.
Or, alternatively, you poor, sad shmuck, you can walk 2,169 miles through mountains and wilderness to Maine. And so I trudged along for hours, in a private little world of weariness and woe, up and over imposing hills, through an endless cocktail party of trees, all the time thinking: “I must have done seven miles by now,
surely.”
But always the wandering trail ran on.
At 3:30, I climbed some steps carved into granite and found myself on a spacious rock overlook: the summit of Springer Mountain. I shed my pack and slumped heavily against a tree, astounded by the scale of my tiredness. The view was lovely—the rolling swell of the Cohutta Mountains, brushed with a bluish haze the color of cigarette smoke, running away to a far-off horizon. The sun was already low in the sky. I rested for perhaps ten minutes, then got up and had a look around. There was a bronze plaque screwed into a boulder announcing the start of the Appalachian Trail, and nearby on a post was a wooden box containing a Bic pen on a length of string and a standard spiral notebook, its pages curled from the damp air. The notebook was the trail register (I had somehow expected it to be leather bound and funereal) and it was filled with eager entries, nearly all written in a youthful hand. There were perhaps twenty-five pages of entries since the first of January—eight entries on this day alone. Most were hurried and cheery—“March 2nd. Well, here we are and man it’s
cold!
See y’all on Katahdin! Jaimie and Spud”—but about a third were longer and more carefully reflective, with messages along the
Seven miles seems so little, but it’s not, believe me. With a pack, even for fit people it is not easy. You know what it’s like when you’re at a zoo or an amusement park with a small child who won’t walk another step? You hoist him lightly onto your shoulders and for a while—for a couple of minutes—it’s actually kind of fun to have him up there, pretending like you’re going to tip him off or cruising his head towards some low projection before veering off (all being well) at the last instant. But then it starts to get uncomfortable. You feel a twinge in your neck, a tightening between your shoulder blades, and the sensation seeps and spreads until it is decidedly uncomfortable, and you announce to little Jimmy that you’re going to have to put him down for a while.
Of course, Jimmy bawls and won’t go another step, and your partner gives you that disdainful, I-should-have-married-the-quarterback look because you haven’t gone 400 yards. But, hey, it hurts. Hurts a lot. Believe me, I understand.
OK, now imagine
two
little Jimmies in a pack on your pack, or, better still, something inert but weighty, something that doesn’t want to be lifted, that makes it abundantly clear to you as soon as you pick it up that what it wants is to sit heavily on the ground—say, a bag of cement or a box of medical textbooks—in any case, forty pounds of profound heaviness. Imagine the jerk of the packgoing on, like the pull of a down elevator. Imagine walking with that weight for hours, for days, and not along level asphalt paths with benches and refreshment booths at thoughtful intervals but over a rough trail, full of sharp rocks and unyielding roots and staggering ascents that transfer enormous amounts of strain to your pale, shaking thighs. Now tilt your head back until your neck is taut, and fix your gaze on a point two miles away. That’s your first climb. It’s 4,682 steep feet to the top, and there are lots more like it. Don’t tell me that seven miles is not far. Oh, and here’s the other thing. You don’t
have
to do this. You’re not in the army. You can quit right now. Go home. See your family. Sleep in a bed.
Or, alternatively, you poor, sad shmuck, you can walk 2,169 miles through mountains and wilderness to Maine. And so I trudged along for hours, in a private little world of weariness and woe, up and over imposing hills, through an endless cocktail party of trees, all the time thinking: “I must have done seven miles by now,
surely.”
But always the wandering trail ran on.
At 3:30, I climbed some steps carved into granite and found myself on a spacious rock overlook: the summit of Springer Mountain. I shed my pack and slumped heavily against a tree, astounded by the scale of my tiredness. The view was lovely—the rolling swell of the Cohutta Mountains, brushed with a bluish haze the color of cigarette smoke, running away to a far-off horizon. The sun was already low in the sky. I rested for perhaps ten minutes, then got up and had a look around. There was a bronze plaque screwed into a boulder announcing the start of the Appalachian Trail, and nearby on a post was a wooden box containing a Bic pen on a length of string and a standard spiral notebook, its pages curled from the damp air. The notebook was the trail register (I had somehow expected it to be leather bound and funereal) and it was filled with eager entries, nearly all written in a youthful hand. There were perhaps twenty-five pages of entries since the first of January—eight entries on this day alone. Most were hurried and cheery—“March 2nd. Well, here we are and man it’s
cold!
See y’all on Katahdin! Jaimie and Spud”—but about a third were longer and more carefully reflective, with messages along the
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