April 8 – Cornelius to Black Rock overlook. Next came yet another steep climb to the top of Apple Orchard Mountain, the highest point on the trail for nearly 800 miles. Then on and on past Thunder Hill Shelter and Petite’s Gap, over Highcock Knob and past Marble Spring, a groundwater source that is hardly more than a bog, until finally a stop on a ridge of bare, old trees, aptly named Hickory Stand. 14.7 miles.

  The next day we all woke late, ate at the same pace, and left a trio. They didn’t give me the boot, or make a mad dash when I purposely lagged behind, so I guessed the trifecta idea was alright with them. This is how things happen on the trail: like falls in with like.

It’s not strange. Nearly everyone on the trail is here in some way to escape. I’ve met plenty already who were intent on getting away from bad jobs, helio-parents, the breakneck speed of modern society, hell even a few on the run from ex-wives. All of us feel a drive to get away. Odd that in the land of the free there are so many searching for an escape.
There are those trying to get away from the culture too. There’s something about strip malls and big screen televisions and Ipads clutched in the hands of eight year olds that’s unsettling. It’s all about “things” these days. And among those of us out here there are a few who are desperate to reacquaint themselves with the bare essentials. People who aren’t searching for fulfillment on Amazon’s bargain page, but on quiet mountainsides and in open conversations with strangers. We’re all looking for things that can’t be bought, things that aren’t “things.”

Like peace of mind. Wonder. Independence. Internal purpose, not external. Building a better self, not a better product for a better payoff so we can have a better car and a bigger house.

Some do hike just to hike, it’s true. But many of us are looking for long trails, quiet nights, and those qualities I mentioned before, gifts that don’t come wrapped in packages, intangibles we can only give ourselves.

Torch and Tinder were part of that tribe. I was, too. And so we fell in together.

They were both from western PA. One a dropout turned drummer, the other a general science major turned computer programmer turned solar panel technician. Both were between jobs, disillusioned with routine, and ready for something new.

We got along well.

I happily suspended my own inner monologue, the only voice I’d heard for the past two days, in favor of listening to these two new personas. We talked about everything from music to cell replication to evolution and specialization in the modern world. 14 miles becomes a very short distance when you’ve got good company.

With the sun dropping low, we made camp near a stand of gnarled hickory trees. They, of course, immediately made another fire. Then, suspecting rightly that our band would drift apart the next day, we delayed sleep for nearly two hours, huddling instead around the fire, talking, joking, laughing. Rick and Morty witticisms were flung back and forth, as well as boasts of the great quantities of food and beer we’d eat tomorrow in town.

That we were heading to separate towns, they to Glasgow and I to Buena Vista, was the only somber undercurrent.

But goodbyes are inevitable when one is walking 2,000 miles over some months. The point of the trail isn’t to sit still, it’s to go somewhere new each day. They knew this, and so did I. In the morning we would all be heading in our own different directions. The certainty of this only made the value of the moment more clear.
We ended that second night much the same as the first: in a silence that spoke more than words.

(Ben, Torch, the sage atop Apple orchard Mountain, surveying the land as far as as the eye can see.)

 (John, Tinder, with a candid of a moss-adorned rock. Nature man capturing the local flora.)
Cheers from the nomad