Month: May 2019

The Whale

In the early 1990’s, when I was an investigative reporter working for The News & Observer in Raleigh, I was given a glass whale about the size of a small banana in recognition of the work I had done.

Get it? I had done “a whale of a job.” It was only a trinket but it’s the thought that counts, right?

The whale
The whale

I figured my whale had come from one of those stores you see in every beach town, the kind that sells towels emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag, tiny bikinis, and t-shirts that say “Topsail Island.”

But when I showed it to my wife, Donna, she noticed a sticker on the bottom of the whale that said: “Baccarat.” My whale was crystal.

Later on I showed it to my mother-in-law, Nell Kiser Hyland, and told her about mistaking it for a trinket. I think she figured that whale was wasted on me, and she asked me to give it to her.

Nell Kiser Hyland
Nell Kiser Hyland

Nell, a really good woman with whom I never had a cross word, had never asked me for anything, so I wanted to give it to her. But I couldn’t. I had already promised our oldest son, Bo, that he could have it when I conked.

But Nell wouldn’t let that idea go and, finally, I said, OK, you can borrow the whale, and keep it until you die. And then I want it back.

She put that whale in her purse right then and there and took it home with her.

Several years passed and I became an editor. One morning, before I came to my senses and went back to reporting, I was in a meeting with other editors who were trying to figure out how to motivate reporters. Someone mentioned the whale-of-a-job whales and asked: How much did those whales cost? I sat up straight, mentally speaking, because that’s something I wanted to know myself. And when I heard the answer I almost fell out of my chair.

And then, believe it or not, I forgot. Oh, cut me some slack. Who remembers every little thing that happened decades ago.

A few days ago I decided to write about the whale and I emailed Frank Daniels III, who was executive editor of The N&O from 1990 to 1996, and asked him how much the paper had paid for the whale-of-a-job whales.

“I paid for them, not the company,” Frank III replied.  “Back then they cost $195 each if I recall correctly, which I thought was too expensive to charge the company.”

I got mine in 1991 or ’92, so how much do you think my whale cost, adjusted for inflation?

At least $350.

And why am I writing about this now?  Nell, who was 97 years old, died last week and the whale, on loan for more than 25 years, has come back home.

NOTE: Frank III also told me, “I gave myself one after I left the newsroom to remind me of what we accomplished, sits on my bookshelf still.”

Coming Monday: Baptists By Chance

Hikers Worry More About Ticks Than Crime

NOTE: I wrote this opinion piece for WRAL.Com, the web site of WRAL-TV in Raleigh.  WRAL.Com posted it yesterday.

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An Appalachian Trail hiker was murdered earlier this month and a second hiker escaped death by playing dead after they were attacked in the middle of the night by a mentally disturbed man with a knife.

That murder was a tragedy but it was also a rarity, only the 11th murder on the A.T. in the last 45 years, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which manages and conserves the trail. During that period, beginning in 1974, tens of millions of people have hiked part of the trail and thousands have hiked all of it, from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin, Maine.

Thetrek.co, a hiker-oriented blog, has posted an interesting analysis comparing the murder rate for the United States as a whole to the murder rate on the trail and concluded that the U.S. murder rate is more than 800 times higher.

This season about 3,000 hikers are trying to walk all 2,192 miles of the A.T., through 14 states, and they have worries. But what they worry about may surprise you. Backpackers are a lot more concerned about ticks and the diseases they carry, including Lyme disease, than they are about being assaulted or killed. Or mauled by a bear or bitten by a rattlesnake.

Their concern is well founded.

“The greatest risk to your health and safety while hiking the Appalachian Trail is contracting a tick-borne disease,” the Conservancy says.

Lucky at Mt. Katahdin in Maine, July 14, 2015
Lucky at Mt. Katahdin in Maine, July 14, 2015

I thru-hiked the A.T. in 2015 and the main concerns of hikers I met, after ticks, were:

—Injury. There are so many ways to trip and fall – you encounter a lot of ice, snow, mud, roots, rocks– and, just like that, your hike could be over.

—Illness. Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea from drinking bad water or from failing to wash or sanitize your hands. Hikers almost always filter the water they drink and they don’t shake hands, they bump fists because no one wants the other person’s germs.

—Failure. Three fourths of the thru-hikers don’t finish, according to the Conservancy. On average it takes almost six months and, every day, hikers are tired or wet or cold or hungry or hurt and on really, really bad days, they’re all five things at the same time.

The hiking community is not like the communities where you and I live, it’s more like family. I just returned last week from a three and a half day, 60-mile section hike of the A.T. in Virginia. I was hiking south so my friends and I encountered scores of hikers headed for Maine and almost all of them, strangers, greeted us. Some wanted to stop and talk.

Temper
Temper

Hikers introduce themselves when they arrive at a shelter, three-sided huts, usually with a privy and a spring nearby. Most have trail names and that are easy to remember: “Iceman” carried ice to an injured girl and she named him; “Temper” had worked in a candy factory where she tempered chocolate; “Between” was 17 years old, between high school and college. My trail name is “Lucky” because I was fortunate to have the health to attempt a thru-hike and a wife who said Yes.

Most thru-hikers I met, including women, began their hikes alone. But after the first day or two, they are not alone – they are part of the hiker community that looks out for one another. They also take precautions:

– A few hikers regularly “stealth camp” in the woods. Almost everyone is forced to occasionally but, mostly, hikers stay together at night in or near one of about 250 shelters along the trail. A lot of them won’t stay at a shelter or camp close to a road – they’re concerned about town people who might park at the trail head and come looking for trouble.

–When they sense danger –another hiker who is acting strangely – they will pack up and move on. I’ve done that twice.

–Some carry pepper spray for bears. Or men.

–They warn other hikers they meet on the trail, or they leave warnings in shelter log books, about bears near a shelter or, maybe, a snake in the shelter. Or another hiker who has set off their alarm bell.

–Women usually adopt a gender-neutral trail name, like Eddy or Red Feather, so when they sign a shelter log book their sex is not obvious.

I don’t carry a pistol nor have I ever seen or heard about another hiker who was armed. I think they would be ostracized. Other hikers would fear them and, literally, walk away. And there’s another good reason for leaving your pistol at home – a loaded Glock pistol weighs almost 30 ounces.  And, in case you don’t know, the three most important things about backpacking are pack weight, pack weight, and pack weight.

Coming Friday: The Whale

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