Four People and Eight Hours to Match an Aaron Judge Homer

My first full week on the trail, I was in awe of the post-Helene readiness for hiking season and the work still to be done in southwest Virginia. The process has been long and arduous, with amazing volunteers getting the job done.

AT Box Score

• Kind People – 25/25
• Unfriendly Wild Critters – 3
• Errors – 1
• Injury Report – Feeling fit, no blisters

I’ve debated what to say about this week’s Unfriendly Wild Critter tally. Although I saw three snakes, two of them lazing across the trail, really showing no interest in moving out of may way (it’s their home, after all), I’d argue that the incessant gnats near Tilson Gap and the outraged Canadian goose on the Holston River were less friendly than those snakes. 

Regarding my unfortunate error this week, I neglected to read the details in FarOut about the Lick Creek bridge before I set off to hike that day. So, when the paper notice on the nearby shelter told me (again) that there was no bridge, I realized I’d made an error. Conventional wisdom says that you need to be really ready to walk through water in Maine, but Helene has changed the game on this part of the Trail. You have a few imperfect options when you have to ford a stream.

• Carry a pair of water shoes – gives good traction, keeps your hiking shoes and socks dry, requires carrying an extra 10 ounces for 5,000,000 steps – NOPE
• Go “au naturel” and carry your shoes/socks across – high slip risk – NOPE
• Hope for a fallen tree to walk across, Lion King style – there were really scary looking options in this case – NOPE
• Charge on through in your shoes and socks – Yep, this was the option I chose, which meant sloshing through the forest uphill for more than a mile afterward

The spot I chose to ford was about mid-calf depth, thirty feet wide and refreshingly cool.

Curiosities From the Trail

Every so often on the AT, you come across an image that makes you chuckle or wonder. People do all sorts of things for humor. In fact, last year’s hiking class painted a brick yellow, called it a Yellow Emergency Hiking Brick and convinced a whole series of folks to carry it toward Maine. That’s four extra pounds in your pack – something most people will avoid.

Recently, I came across a block of cheese wedged into a fallen tree, which seems like a terrible waste of a great snack. Maybe the hiker’s pack was too heavy, maybe they were saving it for later, or maybe it was a bizarre kind of trail magic. 

What a waste of a snack!!

What’s up with the Aaron Judge Reference?

I try to throw in baseball references as often as possible, as a sort of love note to Beancounter, my husband at home. I’m not a Yankees fan, but I know that Judge has hit some massive homers this year, a few hovering around 450 feet. I use this reference to help you envision a particular distance. From home plate to center field is typically a little over 400 feet, so 450 is really out of the park. And when Judge completes this massive feat of physical strength and coordination, it takes him all of a few seconds. Even if we count the time between pitches, when he steps out of the box and takes a deep breath, no doubt soaking up the glory of being bigger, stronger, and richer than most everyone, that all is maybe 30 seconds. Hold those thoughts about 450 feet and a few seconds, while I share the connection back to the Trail. 

I’ve had the good fortune to run into trail crews this week and get the benefit of their work. I stopped to chat with the three folks pictured above. We swapped stories and gratitude, and they reminded me to join a local trail crew once my hike is complete.  The sentence that will stick with me, probably forever, is that members of their group spent eight hours clearing 150 yards of trail in the early days of the aftermath. That is, indeed, sobering considering the few seconds that a baseball takes to travel the same distance.

The more remarkable thing about the feature image is that these folks had already cleared the section of trail that I found them working that morning. In so many instances, one tree fell into its slightly more stable neighbor and they stood locked in a tenuous embrace, waiting for just the right wind to bring them both down onto the trail.

This is what a cleared section looks like with particularly bad blowdowns.

This bridge over Fox Creek took four months to build.

More trees sit ready to collapse in a section already cleared.

Despite all the chaos that still exists in the aftermath of the hurricane, on the Trail as in the real world, if you remind yourself to look for the beauty, you will find it. 

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Help me raise $25,000 for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to honor their 100th year!

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