ICP says there is magic everywhere. Well, true or not, there is certainly magic out on the trail. Hoyle and I(Tanner) have just spent three glorious days in the Mt. Rogers wilderness north of Damascus, Virginia – each passing moment full of myth, merriment and adventure. Tis the ingredients for fortune and glory, kid – fortune and glory.
The night before our trek, we found ourselves in the arms of the most wonderful caretaker to ever walk these Appalachian hills. Wearing a combination of steel-tipped cowboy boots, mesh camouflage pants, a soccer jersey and Ozzy Osbourne tinted sunglasses, we dubbed this gentle anti-government, anti-law enforcement, long-haired, puss-filled and bleeding eye ball character – Crazy Horse. Neil Diamond couldn’t have created a better hero himself. Crazy Horse welcomed us into the Mt. Rogers Outfitter hostel, where after giving us a tattered towel and a blanket, he directed us to a tiny room with what looked like two massage tables for beds. Then he retreated to a wooden cage where he slept on the floor in the middle of a pile of trash and loose debris.
At that same hostel we met our first AT thru-hikers, the Prospector and Survivorman, two kids who had worn themselves out with a strict and regimented trail pace from the beginning of the trail in Springer Mountain, Georgia, and who had both decided to cash it in, get tickets back to their respectable homes and try the AT another day. They were good kids and could not be faulted for their mish-mash attempt at thru-hiking. The AT takes down 9 out of 10 attempted thru-hikers every year. It aint no easy thing. Anyway, we talked gear, swapped stories and ended the night watching one of the most acclaimed AT documentaries ever made – “Trek”. Who knows, maybe it was enough to change their minds and get them back out there. If not, they live on to fight another day.
And then it was Hoyle and I’s turn. Two buns ready for the oven. Two cupcakes eager for the pantry. You get my drift. We headed into the Virginian highlands, with Mt. Rogers always looming in the distance. We were finally moving some miles with our own sturdy hiking footwear. That first night we stayed in an AT shelter near the summit and learned two valuable lessons. 1. The trail to the highest peak in any given state is not always a good hike, and may even be the crappiest hike of that particular trip (Virginia’s highest peak certainly fits this description). 2. There are two kinds of people – those who are generally interesting and who participate in a sort of give and take of valuable life experiences and lessons, and those who just don’t really seem to have anything of significance to pass along. The guy who slept in the shelter with us that first night was of the latter variety. An older guy with a group of teens who decided they didn’t want to stay in the shelter because of that leech was a member of the first variety. We dubbed the leech, Wild Horse, because at one point he described himself as such, relating his life to the wild ponies that live in those mountains. He also tried to tell us that Garth Brooks wrote the song Wild Horses, instead of it really being the Rolling Stones (he had many such things to tell us). He also woke up in the middle of the night screaming because he saw Cedars standing over him and thought he was some sort of wolf or demon. “You don’t belong in here!” and “Get away from me!” are a couple of the lines we heard him shouting in his absolute terror. Keep in mind he had met Cedars hours ago and had hung out with him and us since that meeting. By the time Hoyle and I were awoken by a real group of wild horses in the morning, our friend had already gone, heading on down the lonely trail. It was best that way.
With no timetable and no itinerary, we started off into day 2. Grandiose weather, leisurely hiking, we went from trail to trail, trying different routes that took us to different altitudes and vistas – mountain overlooks, bald patches with scattered boulders as big as houses, blooming rhododendrons, dark fur trees, golden green fern carpets. Towards the end of the day we stumbled upon a fenced-in clearing where sat a husband and wife on the back of their pick-up truck. Little did we know, but we were about to be caught up into the world of “trail angels”, wingless do-gooders who seek out hikers to bestow upon them all sorts of various niceties with no obligations expected on the part of the hikers. These particular two bestowed their niceties in the form of hotdogs and beer and quaint conversation. Those hotdogs were like savory steaks to Hoyle and I, and after tugging three of them down, we wrapped up our dialogue in the grass, popped open another can of natty ice and hit the trail again, full as ticks full on blood.
And then the barking started. It was light out. Morning. Cedars was after something. Like a couple of crab-snails we burped out of our cocoons to find out what all the hustle and bustle was about. There in the grasses around our campsite stood an assortment of fifteen wild ponies, watching Cedars’ manic antics, watching our wide-eyes appear from inside our sleeping bags, and taking it all in stride. The rain had slackened off a bit. The ponies were a curious lot. Short little miniature things with long unkempt manes and pot bellies. Two foals, maybe a week old, watched curiously from their mothers’ sides. Cedars barked and barked until it was evident the horses didn’t care. And then he barked a bit more. They studied us for a while, even let us mingle among them and scratch behind their ears, and then, with a few last barks to see them off, they turned and headed for the heels. So we did too.
The rain came back and we hiked out of those mountains like a couple of wet paper bags – but enjoying every minute of it. Back at the state park, I snuck Cedars into the showers with me. We both got a nice shampooing. Hoyle and I stripped down our gear and packed it away. We were then interrogated by two little girls, twin sisters, inquisitive and cute, about ten years old, who asked us about everything under the sun. We gave them what answers we could. They still had more questions. Always more questions. They won. We were exhausted. They said goodbye to Cedars one last time, Hoyle entered Washington DC into the GPS, we cranked the V8 and with a sweet purr like a congested whistle pig from the engine below, we headed north. Clean as whistles. Through the land of Roanoke and the scattered pine.
MIAGO DRAHF, we say to the naysayers.
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