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.
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.
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