Early in my newspaper career, when I was fresh out of college, I worked side by side with a reporter in his mid-30’s who just plain old didn’t like me. He covered Charlotte city government; I had the county government beat. Our tiny office, which we shared with the cop shop reporter, was in the basement of City Hall in Charlotte.
I liked him OK, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with me. So I stopped speaking, too. Our desks weren’t more than six feet apart but sometimes we’d go all day without saying a word to each other.
Finally, after deadline one afternoon, I asked him why he disliked me. And he told me.
“It’s just your whole attitude,” he said. “You remind me of the way I used to be when I was your age. You think you’re going to be somebody in this business, you think you’re going to be publisher of The New York Times.”
He said he had finally realized that he was never going anywhere, that he would always be what he was, a beat reporter.
“You’re not going anywhere either, but you don’t know that yet,” he said. “And it irritates me.”
Postscript: A year or two later he was promoted to city editor of The Charlotte News. After that he wrote a political column published in small newspapers across the state. And then he left the newspaper business, at age 48, to become an antique dealer.
Three years ago I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia through 14 states to Mt. Katahdin in Maine — 2,189.2 miles.
And that doesn’t include the miles I hiked backwards.
Backwards?
Oh, yes, three times. Getting turned around and hiking backwards is a lot easier to do than you might think.
The most common way hikers get turned around is coming out of a shelter in the morning after a big breakfast of, say, pop tarts.
Standing Indian Shelter is 70 yards from the trail.
Shelters are often located on a side trail one or two tenths of a mile off the A.T. Hikers get up, pack up, eat up, hike back to the trail and, sometimes, turn the wrong way.
But that’s not how I did it.
The first time I got turned around it was because I missed a turn, the same turn, twice. The date of this mishap is interesting. It was Friday, the 13th of March, a cold, windy, rainy, miserable day. An especially bad day to have to spend almost two extra hours on the trail. But it could have been worse, would have been worse had it not been for two gravestones.
This is what I wrote in my blog:
“I missed a left-hand turn at a T–intersection. And kept walking downhill on a nice, even trail.”
Th A.T. is marked with white blazes.
“Didn’t I notice the absence of the white blazes that mark the AT?”
“Well, yes. But, sometimes, the blazes are really close together and, sometimes, it seemed to me, they could be a quarter a mile or more apart. So I kept going. I was trapped by one of my own rules: ‘In for a dime, in for a dollar.'”
I didn’t give up until I got to the bottom of the hill and saw an orange sign with black letters that said: “No trespassing.”
I turn around, climbed back up the hill, missed the turn again, and headed right back where I came from.
Graves of Union soldiers William and David Shelton.
I kept walking until I came up on gravestones I remembered passing earlier that same morning. Kind of hard to forget gravestones, with plastic flowers, standing alone in the middle of nowhere.
***
Another time it really wasn’t my fault.
I came down a slope and the trail seemed to disappear. Did it go left? Right? Straight ahead? Your guess would have been as good as mine.
I walked a little way this way, a little way that way, looking for a white blaze marking the trail. You’ve heard the expression, haven’t you, about somebody not knowing up from down? Well, before long I didn’t know north from south. And when I finally found a white blaze I took off — heading back the way I had come.
Once you’re turned around you could hike half way back to Georgia without realizing it. Remember, you’re hiking through a forest. And — I don’t know whether you know this or not —but one bunch of trees looks pretty much like another bunch of trees.
Mother Nature and her son, Between.
Lucky for me in 15 minutes or so I ran into two German hikers I knew, Mother Nature and her 18-year-old son, Between.
Between was in front and I asked him, “Why are you hiking south?”
He replied, “I’m not hiking south.”
***
I don’t know how my third southbound misadventure started but I’ll never forget how it ended.
I was hiking along when I saw a privy right beside the trail. I was surprised. I thought, “Well, what do you know. Another trailside privy. That’s only the second one I’ve seen since I left Georgia. I used one this morning just like that one”.
Oh, NO! Oh, yes. It was the same one.
NOTE 1
Why didn’t I use a compass, and just keep going north? Because the trail to Maine doesn’t always go north. The A.T. winds around a lot, often for no reason I could discern. Sometimes you have to walk south to go north. That’s why a compass can’t tell you, for drop dead certain, which way you’re headed.
NOTE 2
The Shelton’s, an uncle and his nephew, lived in Madison County, North Carolina, but joined the Union army during the Civil War. When they came home during the war to attend a family gathering they were ambushed and killed by Confederate solders.
NOTE 3
Earlier this year I wrote about trying get a permit to hike the John Muir Trail, which I think is the most beautiful trail in America. See The Hike Of A Lifetime Lottery. Viking, Nine!, Iceman and I lost, for 42 days in a row. But no matter. Iceman and I are going anyway. We’re just going to show up, stand in line for however long it takes, and get what they call a “walk up” permit.
Got in some practice last week. Viking, a new friend named Grit, and I hiked a 103-mile section of the A.T. in Virginia. It went well. Didn’t hike backwards a single time.
