Date: 2011-06-12
To: Putting the GRRRR in Springer
Miles today: 0.0

Four years ago I was at the beginning of my two week section hike on the AT. I was, to put it mildly, a greenhorn. I had a 55lb 5,500CU backpack and had only been on a few, supervised weekend backpacking trips before. But I was full of excitement and determination. I fell in love not just with backpacking, but with the Appalachian Trail.Two years ago(ish) I was in Pennsylvania in the middle of my thru-hike. Wags and I took a Robert Parrish (double zero) which I actually turned into a triple zero to spend another day with James. On that third zero day, James and I got one of those personal tours of Gettysburg where the tour guide drives your car and caters what he talks about to your particular interests (blue vs. grey-minded, if you will). James and I and the tour guide all squeezed into my little '97 Tercel (the Black Hawk edition that came equipped with a spoiler and a stick shift) that I got when I turned 17 (I had it up until the end of last year when we bought a family car). I absolutely loved getting a play by play of the three-day battle. For days afterwards I remembered the routes the guide told us the Confederates had taken to get to Gettysburg and how the AT followed fairly closely to those routes. I thought about how those soldiers didn't have waterproof lightweight gear or a food sack full of Snickers and Little Debbie's or 99% deet bugspray. How their town stops were much different from mine. I was very much in awe that nearly 150 years before I was walking through those woods on a journey there were thousands of soldiers doing the same thing under different circumstances - it's just so astonishing to me that while forests go through natural succession and disturbances as well as human encroachment, the woods are timeless in a sense. The leaves that shaded me grew on different trees than the ones which shaded those soldiers, but I have no doubt that I share similar childhood memories of the woods with some of those soldiers.The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies. Although I've never seen the Rockies with my own eyes, the pictures I've seen are breath-taking. The Rockies have a dramatic and obvious beauty which the Appalachians shrugged off centuries ago. As such, I've lost count of how many times I've heard Springer Mountain described as anti-climactic. And it is, in a sense. Especially when you compare it to the dangers and rugged beauty of the west or even Katahdin. But Springer, to me, holds something that makes it one of the most beautiful places on earth - it is in Georgia which is a hell of a start. But it is so symbolic of what I've come to find to be more precious than the dramatic and obvious excitements of life. It's a humble beginning, full of promise (much like a baby). It is simple and easy and has no need for showmanship. It's just a plaque with a view of those gorgeous blue mountains that haunt me daily. It is a reminder that while life is milestoned by grand events, the beauty of it lies in the ins and outs of every day; that beauty takes on many forms - some fade with time while others are enhanced; that the subtleness of time going by and how that shapes an individual into an older, wiser and more beautiful soul is what living is all about; that Thoreau had it right - What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.