Category: Thru-Hiker

The Love Of My Life

It was almost dark when a south-bound back-packer hustled into Thunder Hill Shelter in Virginia, just ahead of a gathering storm. There were four or five NoBos — north bound thru hikers headed for Maine  – already in the shelter,  laying out their pads and sleeping bags, getting ready for the night,  so thankful we were out of the weather.  At 72, I was the oldest, by a lot.

The new guy glanced at the younger men and then asked me: “Are you Lucky?”

I said I was.

And he said, “There a woman, a SoBo, who wants to meet you.”

***

He told me that he had stayed at a shelter a couple of days earlier with this woman and three friends I had hiked a lot of miles with at different times — California and The Hiking Vikings. He said they told her all about me and she wanted to meet me. She wasn’t far behind him, he said, headed south. I was hiking north so I’d probably meet her the next day.

California
California: He helped oversell me.

I did meet her the next day, a young woman in her early 60’s. She had a pretty smile. I suspected right away that California and the Hiking Vikings had completely oversold me.

She was a flip flopper, which the Appalachian Trail Conservancy encourages to reduce stress on the trail. She had hiked about 300 miles, from Harpers Ferry, near the mid-point, on her way to Springer Mountain, Georgia, the southern terminus. She said she planned fly to Maine on July 4 and then hike south to Harpers Ferry. So we would meet again, probably in what they call the 100-mile wilderness in Maine.

The Hiking Vikings
The [Famous] Hiking Vikings: They liked practical jokes.
We talked a few minutes, until I said something about my wife mailing me a resupply package and she said:  “You’re married?!”  

My friends had left out that salient fact.

Anyway, I hiked on to the next shelter, Matt’s Creek, near the James River, took a break there and checked the shelter journal.  That’s the most dependable way to get news from hiker friends who are ahead of you.  There, to my surprise, I found that the woman had written that she hoped to meet the love of her life.

And she ended by asking, “Are you the love of my life, Lucky?”

I responded in the journal:  “Alas, I am not. I married the love of my life 51 years ago.”

Postscript:  The Vikings, and California, had not put her up to the “love of my life” thing but they had commended me to her and thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

Weeks later I was hiking alone — The Hiking Vikings were an hour or two ahead of me — when I came across a woman young enough to my granddaughter. She had pitched her tent near the trail and when I passed by she asked:

“Are you Lucky?”

Yes, I said.

She smiled and asked, “Are you the love of my life?” Obviously, she had met the Vikings.

Coming Tuesday:  Feeling Sorry For The Enemy

A Diet That Works

One of my resolutions for 2018 is — this won’t surprise anyone who sees me from time to time — lose weight.   I’ve gained some, OK, a lot, since I finished hiking the Appalachian in July 2015.

That’s one of the things I liked best about hiking every day, month after month.  You could eat as much as you wanted of anything you wanted and still not gain weight.  In fact, you lost weight.

After those first few weeks, hiking out of Georgia into the North Carolina mountains, I was always hungry. We all were. Thru-hikers burn up to 6,000 calories a day, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. We couldn’t carry enough food to replace that many calories but brother, sister, we tried to make up for it when we got somewhere where we could eat.

Here are a couple examples of what I’m talking about:

Near Wallingford, VT, the Hiking Vikings, Bruin, and I walked an extra mile to have breakfast at Qu’s Whistle Stop.  It wasn’t an eat-all-you can place but it was hiker friendly — they served generous portions. I ate two eggs; sausage; hash browns; toast and jelly; two pancakes with maple syrup; orange juice; and plenty of coffee.

Breakfast desert
Breakfast dessert

And a banana split.

Two weeks later, I arrived at an eat-all-you-can restaurant right beside on the trail, at Pinkham Notch in New Hampshire.  And I ate all I could: two scrambled eggs, two servings of hash browns, a blueberry muffin, a sausage patty, 10 pieces of bacon, two glasses of orange juice, two glasses of apple juice, a bowl of fruit, and three cups of coffee. Oh, and four pancakes.

Even so, when I arrived in Monson, ME, the last town before Mt. Katahdin and the end of the hike, I was down 32 pounds, to an even 170.  I hadn’t had much to eat for several days, trying to make it to Monson without getting off the trail to resupply, and delaying the end of my hike.

On July 7th, the day I hiked into Monson, I was down to one piece of hard candy. I got up at 4 a.m. that day, packed, and was on the move at 4:50 a.m. I arrived at Maine 15, the Monson trailhead, at 1:30 p.m., after hiking 17.9 miles. Beside the piece of hard candy, which I had eaten for breakfast, I had traded a SoBo –a south bound thru-hiker — a dozen water purification pills for the three small packs of nuts.

That’s how you lose weight.

April 10, 2015, less than two months into the hike, "36" pants are too big.
April 10, 2015, less than two months into the hike, size 36-pants are too big.

When I started the hike, on Feb. 15, 2015, my belly hung over the top of my size 38-inch waist pants. After four weeks I switched to a pair of size 36s. Later I moved down to size 34s and by the time I finished the hike they were too big.

So how much weight — fat — have I gained?

I’m not going to say yet.  Let’s just say I need to go on a long, long hike.

Coming Monday: Be Good Or Else