Walk South And See What Happens

Mica and I decided to part ways after my niece’s wedding, and then I spent the wedding weekend in Northern Virginia watching Hurricane Helene drown the Southern Appalachians on Tiktok. My FYP was an endless scroll of devastation from trail towns like Damascus, Virginia, Erwin, Tennessee, and Asheville, North Carolina. That distinctive mixture of grief and helplessness cut with a nauseating undertone of voyeurism as I witnessed yet another climate change fueled catastrophe in the form of disjointed cell phone videos might stand as the defining emotional experience of 2020s media. But this time I was also watching the floodwaters submerge towns I was supposed to be visiting in the next few weeks. 

Everyone at the wedding who had been following the news asked me what I was going to do, and the only answer I had was the only answer I’ve ever had on this trip: walk south and see what happens. 

I crossed the Potomac on the railroad bridge and walked through Harper’s Ferry in the chilly mist that I would later learn was a continuation of nearly two weeks of constant rain and gloom. The Shenandoah River was at flood stage, pale brown like chocolate milk and high enough to wash over trees and shrubs growing on rocks that are usually well above water. I looked up at the fog that swallowed the hillside just a few hundred feet above me. It felt strange to be alone. Even though Mica and I have mostly been hiking separately for the last few weeks, he was still always there. He was at camp in the morning and the evening, and I knew during the day that he was walking the same path as me, and we would compare experiences later. The trail felt empty in a way it hadn’t before. 

The weather was also aggressively gloomy and depressing. The sun was a distant memory and fat droplets of agglomerated mist plopped from the trees to slide greasily down the back of my neck. The whole scene was giving big-R Romantic Nathaniel Hawthorne “nature reflecting the emotions of the protagonist” vibes, and frankly it felt manipulative. I crushed a few dozen invasive spotted lanternflies about it, put on a Fugazi/Wu-Tang Clan mashup album as counter-programming, and started climbing. 

That day was all thick fog and drips, then it rained all night. While my tent kept me mostly dry, no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute humidity. It rained all of the next day too, and after a brief road walk along the four lanes of Leesburg Pike into a stiff rain blasted sideways at me by passing semi trucks, I called it a short day and stopped at Bear’s Den hostel just off the trail near Bluemont, Virginia. All day I had been dreaming about how nice it would be to sit in front of a cozy fireplace, while knowing how unlikely I was to find such a thing. But Bear’s Den turned out to be a wonderland where a mere $40 got me a dry bunk, laundry, a very good frozen pizza, a pint of ice cream, the company of three delightful dogs, and—incredibly—a roaring fireplace surrounded by comfortable chairs.

I also met some new SOBOs, whose trail names I’ve been seeing ahead of us in the shelter registers for months. Most of the other hikers at Bear’s Den opted to zero there for another day and try to wait out the rain, but in the morning I felt fully refreshed and revived so I headed back out into what proved to be another extremely gloomy day, but one at least without much real rain. Little Orphan Annie at the weather desk continued to promise that the sun would come out tomorrow. But after another night of steady rain, the morning crept in on soggy cat feet, the same thick wet gloom looking over shelter and forest, refusing to move on.

When I left Harpers Ferry, I knew that several trail towns south of Shenandoah were badly damaged by the storm, but the status of the trail itself was still a question mark. Tuesday the Appalachian Trail Conservancy sent out an email to all registered thru-hikers which read in part:

Rockfish Gap is the southern end of Shenandoah National Park, about 110 miles beyond Front Royal. The ATC doesn’t have any legal authority to close anything, but most of the state and federal parks and forests between Shenandoah and Georgia have been closed by their managing authorities, and a statement this forceful from the ATC carries the ethical weight of a closure to me. For the first time, I realized that I only have eight or nine more days of southbound trail to hike. I can still make it past the Bryson Threshold, but just barely. But while my southbound hike was suddenly almost over, compared to the loss of lives, livelihoods, and homes throughout the southern Appalachians it felt irrelevant. I had walked south to see what happened. This was one thing that happened, and mostly it wasn’t happening to me.

At 3:45 on Wednesday, after fifteen more soggy miles, I stood in the mud at the Route 522 trailhead, waiting for what the sign at the information kiosk promised was a free trolley to Front Royal that would arrive at 4:15. At 3:50 it started raining again. There was nowhere to sit down that wasn’t sticky mud, so I stood in the rain in my soggy rain jacket and ate some potato chips.

No trolley at 4:15.

Comments in the Far Out app said sometimes it was late. 

No trolley at 4:30. 

My phone had one bar of very intermittent internet service and raindrops on the touchscreen made it almost impossible to use. 

No trolley at 4:45.

I missed Mica. His superpower is figuring out public transit, and he probably would have known this wait was futile an hour ago. His phone would also somehow have full internet service and he’d have already found us a ride into town. There was no one else at the trailhead and it was still raining. Finally at 5:00, with three breaks to wipe my phone screen dry, I managed to summon myself a Lyft to the motel, but it felt like a defeat. 

If you go out walking for a few months, you’re bound to learn something about yourself. Back in New York, Mica is keeping his own trail journal, which you’re welcome to read, and he’s having a great time so far. I can’t speak for him, but from my perspective it seems like he’s learning that he can go out on his own in the world and be confident and happy. 

For my part, I’ve spent a lot of time alone in the wilderness in my life, hiking the Maine woods, climbing mountains in the cold winter stillness, sea kayaking for days among the islands of Casco Bay. But in all that time alone, I’ve never felt lonely the way I do now. Throughout my life, the outdoors has given me the space to figure out who I am and what I’m capable of as a person. I don’t know if I would have been able to understand that so clearly if I weren’t watching Mica head off on his own version of the same journey. But now I feel like maybe I know what there is to know about myself, alone. Maybe what I have left to learn has more to do with other people. And this is ok. It feels right. 

I’ll go back to the trailhead tomorrow and enjoy these last eight or nine days southbound through Shenandoah National Park by myself. After that, I don’t know. I could go back to Harper’s Ferry and hike north, eventually to cross paths with Mica traveling the same section south. I could go all the way home and load the dog into my camper-converted Chevy Suburban and head out on the road to support Mica, and see what the trail is like from that perspective. It will probably depend on how the next week goes.

So I guess my real plan is still the same as it’s always been: walk south and see what happens.