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Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

“Over my bed at home was a poster showing a Pirates-Dodgers game, with Pittsburgh holding the slimmest of leads. The two managers crowded around the chief umpire who was looking skyward, determining whether the first drops of rain was a prelude for more, thereby leading to a Pirates victory. The Pittsburgh manager, scowling, huddled miserably under the impending downpour while the Dodger manager,…

Be The Person Your Dog Thinks You Are

“He looked at me with such a steady gaze, I felt unnerved. I wanted to let him know how much I had suffered from this hike, that I was hungry, cold, weak, wet, and sore. But he had travelled those same miles, so there was no point complaining. I wanted to tell him about the on-again, off-again relationship I had had with my partner, but he would not know about resentment or anger. I wanted to…

A Tunnel of our Own Making

“Some people call The Appalachian Trail “The Long Green Tunnel”; I call it that myself. For most of the time, the view from the Trail, surrounded as it is mostly by trees and bushes, is not different than hiking through the woods near my home. There are beautiful views but most of the Trail looks the same. But the Long Green Tunnel means more than just overhanging bushes and trees; when we…

“If I were the president of a company I would make sure I eat lunch with my fellow employees, not just the top executives, even with the guy who changes the light bulbs in the men’s room. If he does his job well, then he is providing value to the company; if he doesn’t, well guess what I’m doing in the dark. Anyone who works hard and is honest and takes pride in their work deserves our respect…

The Journey We Take

“Climbing as we do, from the bottom to the peak and immediately down the other side, has given me a different perspective about mountains. I had always thought that the top of a mountain is the peak – it is not. A mountain consists of several parts. First, there is the base: gradually rising and leveling to the foot of the mountain. Next the mountain: rising from the floor to the ceiling, that…

Coincidence? I Think Not

“Out of the Southbounders that I could count who had reached Monson, five had to either wear bandages or quit the Trail, one had taken an extended vacation in the vicinity of Monson, and only one, my partner, the Centaur, had escaped unscathed. The amazing thing is that all this had happened crossing a range whose highest peak is only 2600 feet, half the height of Katahdin. A statistician may…

We Don’t Need No Education

“As I walked, I thought about last night. I recognized the pointlessness of searching in the dark. I also realized that calling my father would only worry him since he is 800 miles away. No, I got myself into this and now I must find my own way out. A wave of desperation came over me again. This was far more serious than anything I had ever faced, but it could be boiled down into two parts: the…

I am not bad; Groucho made me that way

“I walked alone all day; although I left first, my hiking partner had passed me and remained out of sight; I had no one with whom to share my thoughts or observations: so I read. Not a problem, really. I must admit that I am a devout follower of Marx who once said, ‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend; inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.’” You can often tell a child from its parents;…

Enough with the Advice, Already

“The Texas guys are well-seasoned hikers who use the skills they learned from when they met in Viet Nam. They pack light and carry cooked rice which they eat hot or cold. They told us not to salt our food because salt is ‘bad for your health’; instead they carry miso paste, the soybean fermented concentrate that has ‘a tenth of the sodium of salt.’

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“After reaching the summit, we walked for about a mile before climbing Baxter Peak, where we touched the sign that marked the start of the Appalachian Trail, making us official. From then on, we walked on the Appalachian Trail, that 2,100 mile footpath that will take us from Maine to Springer Mountain, Georgia.”

We did this before the age of cell phones. As twenty year olds, we were already two…

No Man is an Island

“We started the day walking on the Abol Trail through a woods that began to rise and fall but never fall as much as it rose. Early on, we stood mesmerized by an amazing sight: a blowdown where hundreds of trees had fallen one against the other, like rows of dominos that had fallen over.”

“Blowdowns are not caused by winds, but rather by poor logging practices. The dense thickets of saplings…

Nah, I’ll Walk Back

        “We left Philadelphia yesterday at 7:37 in the morning aboard a 737 Delta flight….

When I had made the plane reservations, the Delta ticket agent asked, ‘Shall I book a return ticket?’

‘Nah, don’t bother,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk back.’”

The Notes from the Trail series starts out with this anecdote, a show of confidence and wit, and the start of a great adventure. After that plane dropped…