If Champagne Came in Virtual Bottles...

...now would be the time to break one. I am leaving for Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail (or, as the big boys at Parks and Recreation say, the AT) in less than 48 hours. It is my goal to reach Mt. Katahdin in Maine in something rather more than 2 days. I want to use this site as means of keeping anyone who is interested in my expedition informed of my activities. Those of you who are my friends, i.e. close enough to have given me your email address, will be invited to be members so you can comment on what are bound to be incredibly pretentious, Proustian exercises in autobiography. I also hope to have create a link to some pictures I will take along the way. In anycase, I thought I might initiate this little travelogue a few days early to give everyone some sense of how I am holding up under the anticipatory weight of my own lunacy. Also, I thought I might provide something in the way of a cursory introduction to the Trail, it environs, and how to prepare for hiking it. Finally, I want to relate to you my first real trail adventure, which I experienced in Milford, OH, about 400 miles off the actual AT.

So, for those of you whose ears have not suffered the numerous repetitions of my pre-hike trail and gear talk, here are some general facts and figures regarding the AT. The Appalachian Trail wends its way for 2,164 (or so) miles through fourteen different states. Over 260 shelters, at an average distance of 10 miles apart, dot the trail for those stupid enough to hike it. The Southern Appalachians include Georgia (albino-banjo-pickin'country), North Carolina (moonshin' country), Tennessee (cousin-kissin' country), and Virginia (fightin'-off-revenuers country). This is not to suggest that these activities only occur in the one state; indeed, I have found that the claw-hammer, hooch, inbreeding, and hostility to the federal government are highly correlated with one another. But back to the Trail--there is a short stop in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia that is considered the AT's spiritual mid-point, mainly because it is 1) the headquarters for the Appalachian Trail Council (ATC) and 2) it stands on the Mason-Dixon line. During the Mid-Atlantic section of the trail, you walk through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. If you're lucky and have not been eaten by a bear or Yankee fan in New York, you get to complete the New England Leg of the journey going through Conneticut, Massachussets, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The Appalachian Trail is not like an interstate highway. There are very few McDonald's and Popeye's along the way (McGORP tastes like shit in anycase--I hear that their raisins are 70% soy). It is essentially one long, green tunnel that spikes its way up and down the eastern seaboard. Though you do come across roads pretty much everyday, and towns every week, the AT is a generally isolated corridor of protected wilderness. Walking the whole thing should be pretty fun, eh? What with all the bears, coyotes, giardia, hantaviruses, scurvy, hippies and rain, it's as if we are seeing a picture of heaven.

In fact, the AT was originally concieved in a fit of utopian dreaming by it spiritual founder, Benton McKaye, in 1921. He envisioned a series of alternative communities of ex-proletarians living in work camps, study camps, and other joyfully toilsome camps, all connected by the ridgeways of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Arbeit macht freude, no? Sadly, proles everywhere had to keep their jobs in dingy urban (unfroliche) factories, and the only bits of McKay's vision that have been realized are the ones dealing with conservation and trail linkage. Today, many people live along the Trail and volunteer their valuable time to its upkeep, making sure it's pristine for hobos like me. These people are known as Trail angels and they evidently perform Trail magic (more of which later) for thru-hikers. While I am excited to see these "angels" with my own eyes, I have feelings of ambivalence with regard to the existence of a Trail God , and I suspect that much Trail magic is simply caused by accidental Trail phenomena.

Questions of the Absolute aside, there is definitely what can be called Trail Society. In addition to the Trail angels, the society is, of course, peopled by hikers. There are day hikers, section hikers and (William Safire be damned) thru-hikers. There is quite a bit of communication up and down the Appalachian ridgeway. It is, however, more akin to pre-telegraphic ages--word of mouth and shelter registers record and pass on news--than anything in contemporary society. In Trail society, people mostly go by their Trail names, which operate on the same concept as CB and IM handles. I am not quite sure how one comes across their Trail name; personally, I would prefer to have mine bestowed upon me by other hikers, but I know, for instance, that some woman from Cincinnati who is hiking this year gave herself the name Ladybug. One person I know did not want to bother with the whole trail name business. He went with his first name, which, luckily, is Walker. Some non-hiker friends of mine have suggested that I use the name Spitoon, but I am holding out for something a little more poetic.

Enough of this trail history. It is time to move on to a topic, albeit boring, that I know more about: PREPARATION, or as I like to say, the Type B person's finest hour. Essentially, there are two kinds of preparation, mental and physical. The physical can be broken down into two aspects, gear prep and supply prep. I figure I'll go through the physical stuff first, since this is the area that could prove most troublesome for my humanities-oriented mind. I don't know if any of you have ever agonized over buying, say, a prom dress or a used car, but if you experienced anything like the uncertainity and anxiety I had in selecting boots, a tent (do I even need one?), raingear, and other such, then my sympathies go out to you. You see, when you are buying what is to be the entireity of your household for six months and are fairly sure that it needs to be able to survive well through typhoon or atomic blast-like conditions, you want to be deeply convinced that you are getting the best product available. You also want it to weigh next to nothing because you know that you're going to have to hump all the way to fucking Maine. I have never really been into top-shelf material consumption (though I am on solid ground with top-shelf alcoholic consumption), so I had to buy all of this stuff (about $1000 worth) based on other people's recommendations. Now, if you know me, you'll know that ignorance does not suit my image of self. It turns out that it does not suit my sleeping patterns very well either. However, I have made my bed, literally, and, at this point, I have decided to be reluctantly satisfied with my decisions.

Here's a brief list of the more important things I bought: a Northface Cat's Meow Sleeping Bag, a ThermaRest Ultralite 3 sleeping pad, an MSR Whisperlite Stove (which even burns gasoline), an REI Roadster solo tent (nightmares persist on this one), Patagonia Capilene long underwear, shirts, and boxer briefs, Asolo Fugitive GTX boots (I can't begin to describe the ideologically-torn world of boot purchase), a Patagonia R2 Fleece jacket, SmartWool Socks ($$$), and so forth. I would link to a total suggested list, but, once again, we are in murky philosophical waters here. The best available one, if you are interested, appears to me to be the ATC Thru-Hike Preparation Workbook, which can be purchased at the ATC online store.

Onto supplies. Supplies are those pesky things that you run out of. Because you have to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom nearly every day. Obviously, food is the most important and most complicated item on this list, so I will focus the conversation accordingly. While you can ressupply in towns along the way, you cannot count on a well-stocked hiker's grocery in Hiawasse, GA. Most hikers solve this problem with the instrument of the maildrop (which also provides the opportunity to refill on medicines, TP, water purifiers, etc). A maildrop is pretty self-explanatory--you send yourself a package of goods and pick it up when you walk into the town's post office. I have eight scheduled through the Delaware Gap, each consisting of 10-12 days of supplies. This means I will have to fend for myself for about 20 days of food between Saturday and July. No problem. I am very knowledgeable about mushrooms and berries, and I believe that I could kill and eat a fellow hiker or two if it came to that.

So, OK, maildrops. What will do they contain in regard to menu options, you ask? About three weeks ago, I turned the prep focus to diet and food. As I opened to the first chapter of the ATC's Food Planner, I was struck by the first sentence: " You should begin planning and researching logistics a full six months before the hike begins". Ahh, excellent, I thought, I am merely five months and one week behind the recommended schedule. Plenty of time to hastily prepare my death from malnutrition. However, after a spell of mild cardiac arrest, I looked further into the book and was able to find comfort in the fact that its author was a control-obsessed lunatic with a dogmatic sense of open air gourmet. Imagine, if you please, a lady who dehydrates everything from scratch. Many of her recipes call for oregano, thyme, garlic, onion, and chili powder as if, along with your tent, you brought a spice rack. So, no surprise that I have pretty much thrown out the Planner and done some work of my own. Which is to say I went to Bigg's Supermarket and bought all of the rice, pasta, and soup mixes in the store. It was kind of fun. I just went in, found my aisle and shoveled everything into the cart. I'm afraid I also rather drastically reduced their stocks of vacuum-sealed tuna. My meals look pretty repetitive and boring, but I think they will suffice. Here is a sample day: oatmeal at breakfast, energy bar for snack, tuna and bit of cheese for lunch, gorp (that's good old raisins and peanuts--Matt Hanlon remix) for snack, pasta/beans/rice/soup for dinner. I have also invested in some good multi-vitamins.

As I mentioned earlier, preparing for the Trail has its psychic requirements, too. As to what they are, I can hardly tell you. More than anything else, it seems to me that the Trail requires a lack of fundamental good sense. Or at least a very cogent set of reasons for voluntarily undertaking the kind of unneccessary hardships that the hike entails. I suppose mental preparedness is signified by mental clarity, such that a series of questions about the Trail could be easily answered. For instance, why would anyone sleep in a rodent-infested shelter when they could sleep in a Manhattan apartment where the rodents are mostly under control? Why walk when you can drive? And, what about showers, don't you like bathing? Yes, the prospective thru-hiker had better have some damn good answers for people when they ask such questions. The toughest (and by extension, most important) question is: Why do you want to walk the Trail?

I don't really have an answer to this question (or any question outside bathing one). I find it funny when people ask me the Question, and while I ramble through my vague reply, they try to fill in that one great reason that trumps everything else for me. "Oh" they say, "you're trying to find yourself" or "you've always dreamed about going on a grand adventure, now is your chance". Sometimes fill-in-the-Jeff tries to reach a little bit deeper--"you're trying to do something independently of your friends for once" or "you're trying to escape from the bad habits and stress of post-adolescent city life". However, I like it most when people just shake their heads, and say, "You're doing what now?"

Almost all of the reasons do play a part in my mind. I am going to make myself after a fashion (not find--there's nothing there). I have always dreamed about grand adventures. I do need to do something independently for a change. I do need to escape from the bad habits and stress of post-adolescent city life. I'm doing what now?

There is this one fantasy I have about the Trail that I cannot help but regard with a bit of a skeptical, giggling eye. It is a vision of walking, foot after foot after foot; it is a idea of myself in perpetual motion, oblivious to anything but the walking, following the pull of an nearly imaginary, absurd lodestone somewhere in the middle of Maine. I am convinced in the belief that this walking, after the first few weeks, requires a tyrannical sense of purpose, a whetting of the knife-self to sublime sharpness. And it's not really so important that I get to Katahadin (the northern terminus), so much as I get anywhere under the mantle of that single-minded purpose. I spoke about needing clarity in one's causes earlier, but I think that clarity is more my desired result for the hike than its source. I am (un)luckily afflicted with a preternatural restlessness, and I feel like the Trail may be, for me, its spiritual realization.

I don't mean to represent myself as having doom and gloom, sturm und drang expectations for the Trail. It turns out that I am someone who relishes 90% of the pleasures that are not too-hot-for-TV and nearly 60% of the pleasures that are. I am incredibly, wildly excited for this walk. I am also scared out of my wits. Because after all, what the hell am I doing?! I don't like rain. I don't like walking uphill with 40 pounds on my back. I don't like bears outside the circus and I don't like mosquitoes outside hell. I don't like sleeping on the ground and I don't like shitting in the woods and I wish I could just get there so I could stop thinking about what it may be like because I've been thinking about it for the last three goddamn months So I may or may not be ready for the Trail...

But I think I am ready to start walking.

On a closing note, I want to leave you all with an episode that I've decided marks the start of my expedition. For I, Jeffrey Greggs, do solemnly attest to witnessing an act of Trail magic, on this very afternoon of April 7, 2004. I was at my local outdoor shop, picking up a few last-minute odds and ends. As I was standing in line for the cash register, a lady in her late middle age struck up a conversation with me. She asked me why I was buying so much moleskin (blister pads). I explained to her that I was going to try to hike the AT and told her I was stocking up for future maildrops. She asked me how far I was going, and I replied that I would go as far as money and will power would carry me. Then we chatted about her daughter, a hiker who lives in North Carolina, and her own school days in Virginia. Anycase, she left, and, after paying, I followed suit. As I was walking to my car, she came up to me with money in her hand (something like $15), told me to take it, and apologized for how little it was. Of course, I profusely thanked her and asked her several times for her address so I could send her a note from the trail, but all she would tell me was that her name was Joan and that she hoped I'd have a great time.

What a fucking racket I've got going (for someone uses the word "knife-self" with increasing frequency).

Until we meet again,
Jeffrey