What’s Next

There’s a reality competition show called Alone that I’m lightly obsessed with. If you’ve seen it you already know why, but if not, the way it works is every season the show picks ten survivalist / bushcrafter / primitive skills types and drops each of them off alone on a patch of wilderness in some remote location like Vancouver Island, B.C. or Patagonia, generally in the late summer. They are allowed to choose ten survival items from a list—things like a tarp, fishing line and hooks, snare wire, a machete, and so forth. Each of them can bring only these items, a standard set of clothing, and a huge box of camera equipment to film themselves as they attempt to survive, completely alone, longer than the other nine competitors. Each of them also has a satellite phone and at any time they can hit the button and tell the producers they’re done, or “tap out” as the show insistently puts it. A contestant who taps out is extracted by boat or helicopter (or, in one case, some sort of multi-wheel tundra crawler) as quickly as possible and whisked back to base camp where they can eat food and drink clean water and obtain the medical care they usually need.

The show’s eleventh season aired this year, and I haven’t seen it yet because I’ve been hiking, but I’ve watched the other ten seasons. And over ten seasons, I can’t help but notice some patterns. For example, tough military dudes always do very badly, I suspect because they’ve never had to be alone for any length of time, solitude not being a major element of military life. Canadians also tend to fare badly, and I don’t really know why considering it’s a Canadian production. 

But the pattern that’s relevant to us today is what my wife and I call: ”I’ve learned all I needed to learn out here.” This is when a guy (and it’s always a guy) is doing really well in the game early on. He’s got a great shelter, usually a good food supply, he’s pretty much mastered the necessary elements of surviving on his plot. Then somewhere toward the mid-game, usually around day 30 or 40, he’ll do one of two things: carve a game, like a chess set or what have you, or make a musical instrument. In especially dire cases it might be both. 

This is the beginning of the end for him, because both of these actions are a manifestation of loneliness. What fun is a game with no one to play against? Where is the joy in playing music for the birds and the trees? “We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened,” says the Player in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. After this, we’ll start to get a lot of lingering shots of the guy staring morosely into his fire. And then by the end of the episode, despite being warm, dry, moderately well-fed, and relatively healthy, there he is hitting the sat-phone button and telling the producers he’s tapping out.

When they extract a contestant they alway do a little “how come?” interview, and this is where he says it: “I’m doing ok. I’m finding enough food and this little log cabin I built is very cozy. I just feel like… I’ve learned everything I came here to learn.” Maybe he even believes it? But the fact is he’s voluntarily giving up half a million dollars in prize money because he’s lonely. On our side of the screen it’s always extremely obvious, because no one goes on this show purely for a personal voyage of discovery. Being a survivalist doesn’t pay well, and ultimately they’re all there for the money. 

So when my wife and fellow Alone fanatic read my first post from Virginia, she spotted it immediately. “Sounds like maybe you’ve learned all you have to learn out there, huh?” she asked me archly. I think I argued that I wasn’t talking about this hike specifically, just my general trend of doing things with other people more often, but the fact is she wasn’t wrong. Even after watching this happen to someone for ten seasons in a row, my treacherous brain was trying it out. Maybe you don’t need to hike anymore? it whispered, so quietly that I couldn’t quite hear it. Maybe you’ve… learned all that you needed to learn out here? it practically leered.

Of course that’s always wrong. The nature of learning is finding out what you don’t know you don’t know. I hate that I can’t write that without summoning the ghost of Donald Rumsfeld but regrettably, you do gotta hand it to him in this one instance. 

The point is I’m not quitting. I don’t know what I still have to learn, and I want to find out. The faithless Alone contestant in my soul has been flushed out and euthanized by the glare of recognition. I also, after that first few drizzly Virginia days, had a glorious week of perfect weather and beautiful trail through Shenandoah, which went a long way toward rekindling the joy of thru-hiking in me.  

However, my original plan of skipping the mid-Atlantic and completing the southern half of the trail is kind of out of the question. On Friday I reached Rockfish Gap. As of today there are about 300 more miles of trail open south of here in Virginia, albeit with the potential for reduced services and trail damage. After that it’s still a patchwork of open and closed sections, including about 320 miles in southwest Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee that seem likely to be closed well into next year, at best.  

I have put enough time and energy into this trail that I know I want to finish hiking the whole thing. It doesn’t need to be in a single year, but I’d rather do the south in one big section then a patchwork of little ones. Rockfish Gap to Springer Mountain is about 865 miles. That feels like a good amount to me—enough that I’ll earn back my trail legs before I’m finished with it, and the logistics will just involve getting myself to Charlottesville, which is pretty easy. Ideally I would love to tackle this early next fall, but that will depend on how the recovery goes. 

Meanwhile I still have 427 miles of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York looming over me, and (weather permitting) two and a half free months with no demands other than hiking them and writing to you about it. I’ve had two full days off down here near Rockfish Gap to rest, resupply my food, and pick up some warmer clothes. Tomorrow I’ll head back up to Harper’s Ferry and become a Nobo for the next month or so. 

Mica is still making good time southbound in Pennsylvania, and we will cross paths there at some point. I considered rejoining him southbound, but I’m afraid we’d just find ourselves with the same problems that convinced us to separate in the first place. He’s reeling off 19+ mile days routinely, and I’m still more comfortable around 15. So I think we’ll continue on our separate, if no longer parallel, tracks. I don’t know how far he plans to go southbound; likely just as far as he can. 

I’m expecting the Mid-Atlantic section of trail in October and November to hold some lessons for me about thru-hiking in colder weather, dealing with more limited access to water, and probably something nebulous about sticking to a difficult challenge when it lacks many obvious day-to-day rewards. But I don’t know what I don’t know, so I’ll let you know when I find out.