Date: 2004-04-05
To: In Memoriam
Miles today: 0.0

Today at 2:00 pm I received the following email in my inbox at work. She said in part: "Dave, My name is (her name), I am Tom's wife. I regret to inform you that Tom passed away yesterday. I came home to find him on the couch. The Coroner stated it was a massive heart attack. I hope you will hike your two weeks with him on your mind. He was so looking forward to hiking with you, he talked about it frequently. Your prayers are needed. Thanks, Mrs. Mac" I was stunned. I am stunned. Maybe sitting down tonight to write this entry will help me. Tom introduced himself to me in my guest book in January with the following entry: "Dave, I came across your site while browsing the trailjournals. I have read all your entries and have looked at all your pictures. I live just 9 miles north of Erwin, Tn. I am planning to hike Springer to Erwin starting about April 1. I would love to get more info from you as you have already done the very part that I will do. Will you be picking up in Erwin where you left off last year? If so, when? Would like to meet you in person. Hope to hear from you. God Bless. Tom" I responded with a long message giving him the specifics of my plans so far, which were pretty loose plans, and offered to provide any information and help that I could. He responded back with a cordial reply, telling me a little about himself and his hiking plans and dreams. I liked him right away. Sometimes you can just tell that another person is compatible with you. He freely shared his excitement and offered generously to drive two hours to Marion, Virginia and bring me back to Erwin after my hike. Just so we could meet and talk about hiking, the trail, gear, and related stuff. He said, "I feel as if I already know you from your journals, it's as if I already hiked that part. If I can be of any help to you, let me know." As I reread that email entry today, I can sense the genuine excitement at the thought of his planned hike and anything to do with getting ready for it. We corresponded back and forth via email and the more we did, the more I liked him. During that time I had posted a forum entry on trailjournals.com about taking the trail name "CBiscuit", and I got lots of replies and opinions from the hiking community. (I will fill out the Trail Name section of my journal soon, to tell the story of taking that name). In an email the middle of February, Tom was the first to officially call me CBiscuit. He also had lots of questions about my gear and menu list that is posted in a journal entry at the end of last year's journal, and had many questions about BEARS. I laughed and got the impression that having to sleep outside the shelters in the Smokies might be a real faith experience for him - being on the outside of the fence at a full shelter with the bears wandering around. But he asked honest questions about it and I gave him honest answers. In mid February Tom offered to pick me up at the Johnson City airport, where I was thinking of dropping off a rental car, and shuttle me to Erwin Tennessee, and then to pick me up in Marion Virginia and take me all the way to Knoxville for a rental car there for the ride home. He didn't want anything in return. He just wanted to spend time with a fellow hiker. About mid March I sensed that Tom was having trouble with his plans for his hike. He had intended to start at Springer on April 1 and hike to Erwin. But now he was having trouble being specific, and it looked like he'd have to break the trip into smaller pieces. It sounded like his job was getting really busy. He still seemed upbeat, and asked about hiking the first few days of my hike with me. I said sure, and that seemed to please him. Around this time someone posted an entry on the forums titled something like "Faith and Hiking". In it the person was asking general questions of hikers who found that their time in the wilderness enhanced their spiritual walk with God. I posted an entry about my walk with God and my relationship with Him as a born again Christian. At the end of his next email to me Tom stated: "Just a final note, I just read the trail journals on faith and hiking and was very impressed with your reply. I got saved in '97 and still consider myself a "new christian". I feel the closest to the Lord when I am hiking and am so thankful that I know Him." On Wednesday, March 31 I sent Tom an email with my specific plans for hiking and camping the first five days of my hike to see if that would work for him. He usually responded almost right away to something like that, but I ended the week at work last Friday without a reply from him. I was glad, because I thought maybe that meant he was on the trail somewhere north of Springer Mountain, and couldn't get to his emails. I spent the weekend occasionally wondering how his hike was going. When I arrived at work this Monday morning around 6:30, I had an email from Tom from Friday evening at 9:24 pm. He said: "Hi Dave, Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. You talk about things going crazy, if I thought it would be like this each time I wanted to hike, I guess I wouldn't go. All has come to a screeching halt for me. We have had an unexpected death in the family, the day before I was ready to leave. I will be in Florida probably at the Easter weekend to help with taking care of personal property and other such things. Should only be gone a few days. I will be here for you and still plan on hiking some with you. I hope to get in some local trail time before you get here or I would probably hold you back. Unaka mt. is a booger. I do hope you can squeeze in a day for Trail Days. It is really something to see and be a part of. Glad to know that you are getting your plans together. Keep me posted. I will give you some phone numbers to reach me when you get here. (Which he did) Stay in touch,Tom". I could sense some of his frustration and a little disappointment, reading between the lines. I was thinking what to say to Tom to cheer him up as the day wore on today, and then at 2:00 the email from Tom's wife popped into my email inbox. What can I say or do? My entire correspondence with Tom was via my guest book and email. I never talked with him in person, though before I heard of his death this afternoon I was making plans to call him tonight so we could talk more directly. I hoped that would cheer him up a little. I was looking forward to hearing his voice and cementing our friendship further. I never saw a picture of Tom or his wife. I never shook his hand while looking him in the eye, man to man. I never had a meal with him as we had planned. (I suggested that we could stop at a restaurant for a steak and he replied that was his favorite.) I never got to hike a step with him on the trail or enjoy a view from some high ridge together, or a remote campsite. We enjoyed getting to know each other from afar, sharing a love for the trail and a common bond of our relationship with God. I don't know how to comfort his wife or other family members, and I feel a real sense of personal loss. I feel greatly enriched for having the chance to be a part of Tom's last few weeks on earth. I carry a sense of closeness, and yet a distance that we never got the chance to finally close up. I felt that Tom and I would have become brothers in the true sense of the word. The Bible says, "There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother", and I think Tom and I would have had that kind of relationship. But that was not to be. At a time like this my relationship with God comes into greater focus. I believe in a personal God, who is interested in me and in a person-to-person relationship with me and other men. I can't think of God as some remote "higher power", "man upstairs" or stately old gentleman who has no interest in the follies of man for Himself, but winks knowingly with a helpless smile as He watches us dabble in things that take our focus away from Him, who He is, and what He wants from us. I have no time for that. He will never be some feel-good sensation for me, whether in an emotional religious experience in a church or some mystical personification of this planet as a living entity, but with no real personality or real ability to communicate with me. God is real and a real person, and He is not impotent. If He were, I would have no time for Him. However, a God worth knowing is a God who is fully capable of communicating with us about His laws, His purpose for us and His requirements of us. He is impotent if He cannot define Himself to us exactly as He wishes, do so in a manner that we can understand, and see to it that we get His message fully and clearly. He cannot be defined and redefined by us to be what we think He should be, especially so we can avoid having to deal with His clear call of our responsibility to Him. He has spoken to us in His word and through His Son. Why would we think that He is somehow unable to communicate exactly as He intends to about this, and still have some claim to being God? When Tom says he got saved back in '97, that means he understood at a point in time exactly what God was communicating to him about his need, and Tom accepted that provision from God and became "saved" - born again by faith in Jesus Christ. That's the central requirement, and you can tear away all the bricks and mortar and all the other fluff to get to the real issue at that point. And hiding behind some claim of disenchantment with established churches, or a faith-killing past experience with some hypocritical church member will not suffice as an excuse before Him. Churches are made up of people, and I have never found a perfect one. I have never met a human being that was not a hypocrite on some level or at some point in time. Where else would be a better place for these people (us) than in a church where they (we) can hear from God and come to an understanding of where we fall short and then respond to Him by responding to His Son who welcomes us with open arms? Tom said he was saved back in '97. That in itself is phenomenal, since those who keep statistics say that people willing to listen to God and respond to Him diminish greatly after they reach their mid 20's. But Tom did, according to his own volunteered testimony to me. I don't know why I got to know Tom, if it could not turn out to go further than we did in our friendship. But I do know that Tom is with his God - his real God, in a real place - and I will meet them both one day myself. I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy, and you will not find me dabbling in some religious experience. I believe solidly in God and His Son, real living beings, and this has been the guiding center of my life since my time of getting saved, back on April 8, 1973. I apologize for the intensity of my words here, but maybe God will allow my words to make a difference in someone's life. As I read back over this entry, I feel somewhat like I have officiated at Tom¢s electronic graveside service. Maybe that¢s what God wanted me to do. Maybe that's what I needed to do. That¢s about all I can do at this point. I realize the risks I take as I describe my friendship with Tom. He could be some famous trail icon, well known by many in the local area or more broadly in the hiking community, and I could embarrass myself in presenting him almost anonymously here. Maybe Tom was not the great guy I have described. I have sat at more than one funeral service and listened to a preacher being more generous in his description of the deceased than I could have been, knowing the shortcomings of the man and his life. This is a unique experience for me ¢ describing a man only in very positive terms, in that I can truly say I never heard of or knew anything bad about him. But I suspect the real Tom is the one I have gotten to know for this brief time. That¢s how I will remember him. I hope he is well remembered by many others.