Date: 2017-12-11
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This is the third of the fear questions that started with ¢Will you be hiking alone?¢ and continued with ¢Will you be carrying protection?¢. This question deals with fear of people and the next question with fear of animals. Perhaps I should rephrase the latter, fear of other animals, because the there is an implicit understanding in the fear of people question that the woods are infested with hillbillies, hunters, and crazies, who are not quite fully human. You know, not like us. Not our kind of people. Inbred. Banjo-playing. Dangerous. Savages. Lacking opportunity. Unclean. Altogether inferior. Not really our neighbors.  I would never actually respond this way except in imagined conversation. And you, Dear Reader, would never think this way. After all, it was I who put the question in your mouth, so these must really be my thoughts and fears. And it is I who must confront them.When I first started working as a CPA and having my own clients, I was very anxious about how I would deal with them. I am shy, retiring, introverted, and have many symptoms of what today is called autistic spectrum disorder. As a kid, I was just considered odd. I was always happiest when I had one good friend, and I¢m pretty much that way still. I never learned to play with others, especially the rough-and-tumble games that most boys play. I can recall standing at the edge of the playground in elementary school, wondering how the boys knew what to do, and asking myself why no one had ever taught me the rules. There had to be rules, because that¢s part of autism, believing that there are rules for everything. I still avoid things like cocktail parties and especially Christmas parties with blinking lights and dueling carols. I am happiest having a quiet drink at home with Tom or walking in the still woods.  So when I started getting clients, I was worried about how I would ever relate to them. It turned out to be a baseless fear, like most fears, and now that I¢m retired I find I miss the time I spent with clients. My great revelation was realizing that everyone is queer in their own way.  Building a relationship with clients meant discovering their queerness and allowing them to see mine. I worked with many very wealthy clients and found a direct correlation between wealth and quirkiness. Finding common ground defined by differences built a relationship of trust, which is the bedrock of any professional relationship. As a tax CPA, I was asking my clients to strip naked in front of me, revealing all of their finances and hidden assets and liabilities, necessary if I was going to do my best work. They had to trust me.  And that is pretty much the attitude I¢ve brought onto the trail with me.  My 1998 hike that saw 18 consecutive days of rain, started with drought from Harpers Ferry to the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. The streams and springs were mostly dry. About one-quarter mile south of Pen Mar Park on the Maryland side of the Mason-Dixon Line, I came upon a hiker setting up his tent in a small dry wash. He asked if I had any extra water, and I offered him all that I had, since the park was so near. He hadn¢t realized that, and I waited while he packed up his gear, and we walked up the slight hill to the park. The facilities hadn¢t opened yet for the season, but a kind grounds worker gave us access to a utility room with water. There were places to tent just north of the park, but I continued walking down a road. My new friend asked where I was going, and I answered that I had read that there was a pizzeria nearby. I actually had chosen the wrong road and after walking steeply downhill for far too long decided to ask for help. There was a motorcycle repair shop across the street, so I started to go over there, but Even-More-Timid-Than-Me (I can¢t recall his name) said that was dangerous. I replied that I had no intention of walking back up the hill, especially without pizza, and asked the first biker I saw, a large gnarly tattooed gentleman, where the pizzeria was. It wasn¢t close, but when he heard our story, he said he had a van, drove us to the restaurant, waited while they made our pies, and drove us back up to the park. Other experiences since then have convinced me that bikers and hikers have a natural affinity, in that we are both considered as renegades of a sort, on the fringes of society. Timid joined me until the end of his section hike in Duncannon.In the 2003, I hiked the Benton MacKaye Trail from the Ocoee River in Tennessee to Springer Mountain in Georgia. The BMT has since been extended northeast to the Tennessee River and through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The available maps then were the equivalent of crayon lines on construction paper. There were no marked water sources or designated campsites and only one shelter, constructed by a developer in the middle of a subdivision of second homes. Much of the time, navigation was challenging since blazing is not permitted in federally-designated wilderness areas, except for the Appalachian Trail. There were occasional low sign posts, but the signs were invariably missing, since bears like to scratch their backs on them. On the second or third day, I was crossing Big Frog Mountain and came to a brush heap blocking the trail, meaning that the trail had been relocated. To the left I saw a rock cairn and sure enough, there was a newly cut narrow trail switchbacking off the mountain. I followed it and eventually came to a trail intersection with four other paths leading in different directions. There was a sign post, but naturally, no sign. I was literally off the map. I had a feeling that the path to the right was the correct one, since it headed off in the direction of Flat Top Mountain, but hiking alone, that wasn¢t a chance I wanted to take. One of the trails followed a stream heading downstream so I chose that one. The stream quickly became a larger creek and before too long came out at a U.S. Forest Service campground, closed for the season. There was an unpaved forest road heading off in both directions. I mentally tossed a coin and started walking. Not ten minutes later, an old rusty Ford Fiesta that had once been orange came along and pulled up alongside of me. The driver, a man about my age, looked not unlike Snuffy Smith, but with fewer teeth. He asked me where I was trying to go, and I confessed that I didn¢t know since I didn¢t know where I was. He said I looked thirsty and took me behind the car and opened the hatchback. There was a cooler and I had visions of cold beer or even moonshine, but it was filled with cans of cold V-8 Juice. There were also two gunny sacks of chestnuts that he said were wormy, and that his ungrateful kids wouldn¢t eat them. He carried me into Ducktown, Tennessee, where there was a motel. (In the south, you carry people but you tote stuff.) I was able to arrange a shuttle for the next morning to a trail intersection near Flat Top Mountain, where I should have camped the previous night. As Snuffy had told me, there was an isolated grove of mature chestnut trees on that mountain that had thus far escaped the blight.  So much for hillbillies and bikers. Folks is folks. I¢ve found myself confused on other hikes in the south and had to depend on the kindness of strangers, as Tennessee Williams would put it. I¢ve made it a point of showing that my hands were empty and simply asked for help. It didn¢t matter if they were drunk or sober. Not being a threat and respectfully asking for help creates an obligation and establishes relationship.  So to answer the question, no, I¢m not afraid of hillbillies, hunters or crazy people who I might meet on the Appalachian Trail. They are just friends I haven¢t met yet.  That¢s mostly worked out, but not everyone wants to be my friend. There was the crazy gun-waving man in Pennsylvania. And less dramatically, there was a time in Virginia. I was setting up my tent and a gentleman who was staying in the shelter came over and made conversation. At one point, he noticed my wedding band and asked how my wife felt about my being out hiking alone. I responded that my husband was very supportive but that it wasn¢t something he chose to do. That prompted a tirade ending with, ¢I¢m not going to spend the night with a f¢ing faggot,¢ to which I responded with my best Bette Davis clipped speech, ¢Suit yourself.¢ He packed up and hiked on. Some people just don¢t want to be friends.