April 11^th:

Today was a good day. Cosmo and I woke early, both weary and sore from the 20 mile day before, with a plan for some R&R. At about the midpoint of our hike for the day was a logging trail by the name of Hog Camp Gap. It was rarely used and distended, but a woman named Marsha from a nearby hostel was one of the few who frequently braved the road to shuttle hikers from the trailhead. She arrived in a jumped-up land rover that looked custom built for the mountainous terrain and we hopped in.

Then, in exhilarating and reckless fashion, she took us the bouncy mile to our destination: a quaint homestead complete with a pond and vegetable garden hidden away from the world. It was, as I would later tell  the owner, an elderly woman named  “Oma,” a place that brought to mind Thoreau’s Walden.

Open to hikers from Tuesday through Saturday, Three Springs was closed to overnighters on Sundays and Mondays, so the caretakers could enjoy some limited free time. Oma graciously offered us whatever we needed outside of bed for the night despite the circumstances. That she so readily sacrificed her own time to see to our needs should give a distinct impression of her character.

After Cosmo and I showered, did laundry, and resupplied we bought large pizzas moved outside to relax in Oma’s shady, screened-in porch. A cool breeze rolled down from the mountainside, setting her windchimes ringing and soothing my countless sunburns. From where I sat I could see curtains of sunlight rippling across the pond.

 It was nice.

And made nicer still when Oma came out to join us, a totem of the hospitality that is so quickly disappearing from our fast moving world. The three of us soon settled in to smooth, easy conversation. She asked us where we came from, what we were doing on the trail, our inspirations, and through it all listened with an older woman’s knowing smiles. We, in our turn, learned her story too, which emerged in bits and pieces.

She was a transplant from Virginia Beach. Never much liked the traffic or the noise or the F-16’s that constantly flew training maneuvers overhead. She didn’t like having her conversations disrupted by “the sound of freedom,” as she called it, so she found a little plot of land in the Virginia foothills and now here she was.

When I mentioned the impossibility of living a life without regrets, and not for lack of trying, she said she only had one, one big one. I waited, expecting a tacit silence or a joke about forgetting this morning’s coffee, but got neither. Instead she told me that what kept her up at night, and made her eyes watery even now, was remembering how she smacked her old dog who couldn’t control her bowels. Once. One, single time. Back in 1981.

I’ve done a lot worse in a much shorter amount of time. I don’t know how to absolve an angel of her imagined sins. I kept quiet.

Talking with her was almost therapeutic. It was conversation underpinned with mindfulness and was, in a sense, bound up only with good things.

Before long though it was time to go.

Cosmo and I said goodbye to our host and promised to send a postcard from the northern end of the hike when we got there. And then Oma was behind us too, like the 100 or so miles I’d come already. But just as each step and segment of the trail leaves an impression, so too does each person you meet.

Hikers have a name for people who give them help, food, and encouragement while they’re on the trail: trail angel.  Now I’ve been privileged enough to meet a real one.

Livin the good life

Nomad