Date: 2013-08-26
From: HOME

To: HOME
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

After I said my goodbyes to Mot and watched him ride away, I went back into the hostel and packed up my gear and started walking the 1 1/2 miles to the Katahdin Inn where Gloria was going to meet me. I convinced the clerk to let me into the room early. About 2 PM I got a call from Gloria. She said she was coming into the parking lot and had picked up 2 hikers along the interstate. They were NOBOS that didn't think they would make it so they decided to flip and hitch up to Katahdin and hike South to PA. The were from Ohio and figured they would hike as far as Duncannon and get to the PA Turnpike from there and go straight back into Ohio. They had no idea where to stay or go, so I told them to get back into the truck and we took them into Millinocket to the Appalachian Trail Lodge and dropped them off there.The next day I got a text from Rash that said he was around Monson, ME. So we decided to go home that way and stop in Monson to see if we could find Rash. Instead I found the "The Pride of Madison, Mississippi," Sampson. It was great to talk to him. While we were talking I couldn't help but think back to Georgia and North Carolina when I hiked with a very inexperienced and green hiker named Sampson whose most famous quote was when he told the rangers in Smoky Mountain National Park " Heck, 3 weeks ago I didn't know what a through hiker was". Now he was a very experienced and capable backpacker with over 2000 miles under his belt. (I got a text from Sampson on 8/19. He and his wife climbed Katahdin together and completed his journey). So we talked and I offered some tips on the 100 mile wilderness, but he didn't need my advice, he made it that far quite well, I knew he would finish.Rash hadn't made it to Monson yet, but I got a text and a picture from him on 8/19 also. He had made it to the end of the trail on Katahdin. Someone said he was going to write a book called "Neon Blazes". It would describe the best bars to stop in as you do a through hike. I told him I was waiting on the book. Sometimes I envied his relaxed approach to hiking the trail. Rash knew how to enjoy himself and relax.When I got back to Brockway I came home to a large banner on my deck that said "Welcome Home Punkin Pie" with a large AT logo on it. I think some people were put back a little by my appearance. The long hair and beard made me look much older than my youthful 63 years.The trail was not very nice to me physically. I lost over 25 pounds, my feet grew one full shoe size from a 10 1/2 to 11 1/2, all of my toenails turned black and blue at one point or another, and 4 of them fell off completely, and I was just plain worn out and exhausted. Some of us hikers had planned to put an exclamation point on our hike by continuing to hike from Katahdin to the Canadian boarder. I forgot that 2 weeks before the end. I could feel my weariness each day and it wasn't getting better. I was ready to go home. When I got home, I had some difficulty keeping "city food" as Mot and I called it, inside my body. It just wanted to pass straight through, sometimes very violently. So slowly my body made the adjustments to the new types of food and more of it. And slowly I'm gaining the weight back. On my third day back we had a "Shear The Beard Party" and all the grand kids and my daughters and wife got a chance to cut some off. I had to evict a family of mosquitoes from Maine that had taken up residence in my beard. They promised to assimilate themselves into PA mosquito society without any problems.A lot of people ask me do I miss being out on the trail. I have to answer yes. But it's not the trail itself I miss, even with it's incredible beauty, but the people on the trail. A former thru hiker told me before I left that the AT isn't about walking the trail, it's about the people, and he was right. People with funny sounding names like Larry Boy, Chin Strap, Biscuits and Gravy, Sconnie, Hoosier, Gummi Bear, Ground Pounder, Can't Wait, Fresh Ground, Z, Sparks, Dirty Bird, Joe The Hiker, Nomad, Boo Boo, Mike So Far, Clark Kent, Sampson, Rash, Tarzan, Coffe Pot, Roswell, Carjacker, and so many more I needed a score card to keep track. The common element with all of these people was the "we're all in this boat together" attitude. People stopping and talking to strangers on the trail, asking where are you from, where are you headed, relaying information about the trail, what to look out for, where to stop and where not to stop. A common caring for each other, a community of hikers so to speak. When something happened on the trail it spread through the community very rapidly. Within days of the accident at the hikers parade in Damascus, it was the talk in all the shelters. Or the Neuro virus that was chasing all of us North. We all knew who was sick. and where it had hit last. When someone was short a day on food before making it to a town to re-supply, the other hikers came up with enough to get him or her to that town. We all wanted each other to make it.Thank You: First and foremost I want to thank my wife Gloria for supporting me from the first time I mentioned that I would like to hike the AT. Her knowledge of how things work on the trail and hiking helped make it easier to relax on the trail knowing that she understood exactly what I needed whenever I called her. Second, my daughters Angela and Lisa for all the tech support. Before I left I purchased an android phone to upload my journals and pictures. This was probably the most difficult part of my hike. I, the technically challenged, had to learn how to use it. They would receive panic calls from me because I couldn't upload, or something wasn't working, or "my phone is talking to me, what did I do"? Calmly they would walk me through the problem and get me straightened out. And my son Joe for the supportive text and voice messages that always made me smile.Also, all the trail angels. My first taste of Trail Magic came at Unicoi Gap, GA where a church group had hot dogs and hamburgers, granola bars, crackers, and pop. (soda to all of you East of the Susquehanna River) Then it was Mark and Wendy, Sit A Bit, Steve LaBombard, Mike and Terri Stasiowski, Perry and Stephanie Fielding, Nomad, Fresh Ground, Ground Pounders 6 nieces, the community of Hot Springs, NC that invited me to dinner, and so many more that I can't remember them all, went out of their way to help Mot and me. They picked us up when we hitch hiked and drove us to town, drove us to the grocery store, drove us to the laundromats, left pop, cookies, and snacks along the trail for us. Sometimes a cooler full of fruit, or a bag full of Snickers bars hanging from a tree branch, or a cooler full of lukewarm pop that tasted as if it was ice cold to us.   These things buoyed our spirits and let us know that we were not alone and that someone cared about us. I hope to pay back to the trail in the same manner in the future.Thank you to everyone that made entries in my guest book. This was an unending source of moral support for me. I constantly went back through them and read and re-read them.Finally I want to thank my friend and hiking partner Mot. I first met Mot on Easter Sunday at the Roan High Knob shelter and he instantly put me at ease with his relaxed "Where y'all from".   Mot's picture should be in Webster's Dictionary beside the word Gentleman because that is what he is in every way. His calm, relaxing and positive attitude kept me on an even keel when things weren't going right.   He always told me that he didn't think he would have made it on the trail without meeting and hiking with me. I feel it was the other way around. For mile after mile he regaled me with stories about growing up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina, college life, medicine, and life in general. Some he told 2 or 3 times, but I never minded because he kept my mind off of the trail for a while and made me smile. Mot could never see me smile because he always wanted me to go first every day on the trail. I think I was his entertainment. He would watch me wipe the cobwebs and spider webs off of my face every morning, and count the number of times I fell each day. Whenever he was offered the lead position he would tell me the I was doing a "right fine job" leading us. His sense of direction was uncanny. He could always tell me which direction we were headed. Those times when we got off of the trail to a shelter or vista and I put us back on the trail going the wrong direction, he would calmly correct me with a "Punkin, I do believe we're headed South."Mot loved to talk to any and every hiker we passed or met in a shelter.   His first question was always "Where y'all from"? and if they said any state that was in close proximity to South Carolina, I winced, because there goes 15 minutes of hiking time while Mot explained to them that he had a relative that knew someone, that lived in a town near the town where they were from. But I never really minded, because like I said, that was what the trail was about, the people. So my friend Mot, Thank You for being my hiking partner.I've been asked several times since getting back, would you do it again. Yes, without hesitation. But Mot made a good point about that. He said it would probably be like being a teenager again, it just wouldn't be as much fun the second time around. But I would do it any way. Somewhere I once saw a quote that said it all about the AT. "The journey is the destination".Somewhere down is Georgia I heard the song "Wabash Cannonball "and the music stuck in my head for months. So I started making up my own lyrics to that song that were about the AT. Sometimes I had as many as 6 or 7 verses. But I never wrote them down and usually forgot them. But the first verse I came up with was the last verse and it sums everything up for me:Now when I'm getting older and hang up my hiking shoesI know of one sure thing to cure me of my bluesFor when I'm feeling poorly, or I begin to ailI'll think about my good times on the Appalachian TrailI'll think about my good times on the Appalachian Trail. Happy TrailsMark "Punkin Pie" MarchioriSomewhere in Brockway, PA