✕
☰

Family reunion

A.T. festivals keep “trail families” together

by

Town of Damascus photo

E.J. Horrocks photo

E.J. Horrocks photo

Hot Springs Community Learning Center photo

Margaret Hester photo

E.J. “Passover” Horrocks had never been backpacking in her life and had barely a shred of gear in her closet when she showed up at Trailfest in Hot Springs, N.C., a couple years ago. The festival’s culture of camaraderie and adventure called to her.

“I felt left out,” said Horrocks, 24. “I wanted to be part of the A.T. crew.” 

She picked up the phone to dial her longtime friend Alex “Ember” Manfred and popped the question: Do you want to hike with me? 

When Horrocks was 13 she had traveled with her family to the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Va., to support her older cousin who had hiked through. 

“I got to go be part of the parade, and I got to meet a ton of fabulous people,” Horrocks said. Hiking the A.T. “just got tucked away as something I had to do.”

Trail festivals like those in Hot Springs and Damascus dot the length of the Appalachian Trail. Spring on Springer, held in March, kicks off the season in Dahlonega, Ga., 15 miles from the trail’s southern terminus, while mid-December celebrates the trail’s end near Mount Katahdin. More than just another place to buy corndogs and hear some music, these festivals carry all the importance and familiar excitement of a family reunion for hikers who, if so-motivated could, theoretically, stop at nearly every one on their way north. 

Horrocks saw this dynamic in Hot Springs—hikers reuniting with those they’d met out on the trail; colleagues in town just for the weekend; families’ friendly competition along an obstacle course or showing their stuff in a talent show; live music scoring the whole scene—she was determined to one day experience from the inside, as a hiker. 

So she did. 

Horrocks and Manfred stepped off from Springer Mountain in Georgia on March 1, 2013, and Horrocks—she and Manfred hiked together up until Harpers Ferry, West Va.—arrived at Mount Katahdin four-and-a-half months later, July 16. 

“It’s not quite out of my blood. It’s part of my culture now,” Horrocks said. “I talk about it quite a bit.”

A profound awareness

A lot happened during those months on the trail. A hiking family formed as the miles passed, cohesion accelerated by common obstacles of weather and environment and by absence distractions pervading off-trail life. 

“You get to be in majestic, beautiful places, and you don’t have to check your cell phone and you don’t have to have a planner,” Horrocks said. “You just have to worry about food and water. There’s just something so simple and natural about that, and I think everyone should experience that at some point in their lives.”

That’s a message that Jim “Trailvis” Harrison, 45, always is trying to deliver to his students at Emory & Henry College. Harrison and his wife Aliese did their thru-hike in 1997, an adventure that Harrison said “played a tremendous role in my life,” as the Memphis-area couple fell in love with the Appalachians enough to try out Damascus for a semester while Harrison took an adjunct teaching job. Sixteen years later, they’re still in Damascus, living on property that abuts the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area—the Appalachian Trail runs through the front yard. Harrison, originally a writing instructor, now runs an outdoor program at Emory & Henry that began as a little hiking club run out of a corner of his office. Now, it’s possible for students to get college credit for a semester on the A.T. 

It’s important, he believes, for students to have that experience of being out in the elements, forced to be alone with their thoughts, discover who they really are. Those moments of terrifying self-discovery are much of what sticks with him from the trail. 

“The lid comes off your id just a little bit, out there. When you cross a road and the cars that are whizzing by, it hurts your feelings, it’s devastating to your heart,” Harrison said, recognizing in his own eyes a look he’s seen among the wild.

“It brings you to a profound awareness of what a human really is,” he reflected. “We’re animals.” 

It’s a singular experience, agreed Damascus native and class of 1990 thru-hiker Dave Patrick, 71. Patrick grew up half a block from the A.T. and started contemplating a thru hike at an early age. He loved the outdoors and said he “couldn’t think of anything better than being able to spend six months in the woods.” 

But the trip also was hard, unnerving. 

“What happens when you spend a lot of time in the woods, you no longer find yourself somebody observing and looking at it,” he said. “You find that you’re a part of it.” 

Things come unhinged. Patrick, who his friends knew as someone who wasn’t much inclined to either sing or cry, soon found 1950s tunes erupting from his mouth as he hiked. Or, he’d think of something sad and discover tears falling down his face. 

“My friends would say I went crazy,” he said. 

Tent city mystique 

Which perhaps is why the A.T. seems to beget new families. That shared experience of hiking the trail together, undergoing the same athletic challenge of carrying a backpack over 2,179.1 miles of ridgeline, of dealing with those same unsettling moments of quiet, that same perspective on “the real world” versus the natural world—it creates a closeness that’s hard to match. 

But after reaching Katahdin (or Springer), hikers return to their scattered hometowns, leaving their trail family behind. Often, these friends-turned-family don’t exchange contact information or even know each other by anything other than their trail names, monikers bestowed somewhere along the way.

Horrocks went to Trail Days in Damascus in 2014, the year after her hike. Though she said it “got a lot more wild than I expected,” it was “the best family reunion of my life.” She’d hiked most of the trail with the same set of hikers, and the group had grown much closer than their home states, spread from Texas to Massachusetts, Colorado to North Carolina.

“It’s really cool that that can bring us back together and to know that every year we can go back and see that,” Horrocks said. “There’s no way I would get to see all of them if it wasn’t for the festival.”

Damascus has been holding its festival for nearly 30 years—the first was held to commemorate the Appalachian Trail’s 50th anniversary. 

“It’s amazing how well the thing has worked, considering we don’t have a town big enough to have a professional staff to do economic development,” said Tim Williams, vice mayor of the town and head of the Trail Days committee. 

Though Damascus has a population just a hair over 800, Trail Days brings in an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people every year. Always held the weekend after Mother’s Day—May 14-17 in 2015—the festival draws in craft and food vendors, some of who have been to every festival, as well as professionals such as doctors, veterinarians and gear repairers to help out the hikers, pro bono. 

“I remember the mystique of a campground filled with tents and knowing that any number of people that I might know might inhabit them, but also getting to meet the people that I didn’t yet know,” recounted Leanna “Moonshadow” Joyner, 37, who hiked the trail in 2003. 

Before stepping off from Springer, Joyner had been working for a leadership organization in Washington, D.C., and was preparing to buy a condo in the city. But instead of taking the plunge, she chose a different path. She quit her job, geared up and hiked the A.T. Today, she’s based in Asheville as the trail resources manager for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. 

“I guess discovering who and what all these people are is a feeling that I can recall,” she said. “It was very free-spirited in the sense that there was a bonfire and drumming and that kind of communal experience that happens when you’re around a fire.”

Elements of that communal experience, and even the majority of festival amenities—free food, free gear repair, discounted accommodations—often are available at trail towns throughout the year. Trail towns tend to pride themselves on their capacity to give hikers a hearty welcome. 

That’s certainly what Harrison found the first time he and Patrick met. At the time, Harrison was a thru-hiker and Patrick several years into owning Mount Rogers Outfitters, a business he started after completing his own hike. 

“Mount Rogers Outfitters, they had lost money on us,” Harrison recalled. “They fixed our gear and took us places. We didn’t spend any money in there. They gave us stuff.”

Generally, hikers are too busy making miles to jaunt off the trail to hit every festival along the way. That’s just not something that hikers tend to do. 

“There’s a forward momentum that must be maintained if you’re going to successfully complete the trail in one season,” Joyner said. “It’s possible, but I think it would be a challenge and they would have to be a super-efficient, fast hiker to hit all of them.” 

The Dahlonega festival kicks off the season in March, followed by April Fool’s Trail Days in Franklin, N.C., and Hiker Haze Weekend at Fontana Village Resort in Graham County, N.C. Next comes the A.T. Founder’s Bridge Festival at Nantahala Outdoor Center near Bryson City, N.C, Trailfest in Hot Springs, N.C., and Damascus’ Trail Days in May. Even more festivals dot the trail as it heads north. 

Capitalizing on the A.T.

More towns are holding A.T. festivals than ever. A lot of that has to do with the increasing number of designated Appalachian Trail Communities; having a festival can help fulfill designation requirements. The Fontana festival, for instance, is only in its second year, the Dahlonega festival is in its fifth year and the Franklin festival is entering its seventh. 

“A lot of local folks don’t realize that it [the A.T.] is there and that you can walk from Georgia to Maine, so part of it is making sure that they are aware what a great resource it is for physical and spiritual well-being,” said Bill van Horn, Franklin festival coordinator. He completed a section hike of the A.T. in 2013. 

By publicizing the trail and the opportunities it brings, towns help their citizens use and appreciate the A.T. 

But there’s also an economic component, and it’s a big one.

Damascus was a product of the logging industry and, later, textiles. But by the 1980s both industries had fallen by the wayside, and the tiny mountain town was struggling. 

Then, two things happened. The Virginia Creeper Trail, a 34.3-mile trail that runs from the top of Whitetop Mountain through Damascus and into Abingdon along the route of an old railroad track, was completed in 1984. And in 1986, the inaugural Trail Days festival started drawing crowds. 

“It’s had a big positive impact on the town of Damascus,” Williams said. “Without that, I don’t know what we would do.”

Besides the direct economic benefit from sales of campsites, vendor space and the like—Williams estimates the town comes out about $20,000 ahead on that—there’s the revenue from food and lodging tax, the extra sales that local businesses rake in and the hard-to-quantify benefit of people who’ve had a good time at Trail Days returning either to try out the Creeper Trail, stay in town for a weekend or, even, to live. 

“Our bed and breakfasts are always busy,” Williams said. “A lot of times they’ll get booked the next year for Trail Days before they even leave.”

The Hot Springs festival is also growing, having passed to new management under the Hot Springs Community Learning Center three years ago. Attendance is up from a couple hundred to as much as a thousand, hikers past and current accounting for about one-third of that number. The festival now has a greater emphasis on children’s activities and events to make it clear that both hikers and non-hikers are welcome to take part. 

“We started coming up with ways to incorporate some diversity and make activities so we can do things with the kids and the hikers can share some of their experiences,” said Debbie DeLisle, event coordinator. 

The goal is for it to be a community event, and integrating activities helps achieve that. But having more non-hikers there also makes it easier for the event to pay for itself, because DeLisle has no desire to gouge the hikers. Services for them are pretty much free, but it’s the other visitors who engage in the silent auction fundraiser and spend the money at vendor stations and around town. 

Franklin, meanwhile, is taking its April Fool’s Trail Day festival in a different direction this year. Rather than heighten the activity around a few select days, as Franklin has done in the past, the town’s Appalachian Trail Committee will this year spread the activity out from the first day of spring on March 20 to Earth Day on April 22. 

“Because of Franklin’s involvement with the thru-hikers coming into town, a number of businesses have started their own little thing for the hikers,” Van Horn said. “Instead of putting our resources toward a town festival on that one particular Saturday, the committee decided that we were going to use our resources and support these other events.”

At the April Fool Hiker’s Bash, held March 27-28, Nantahala Hiking Club will hold a picnic lunch for hikers at the Lazy Hiker Brewing Company and Sapphire Inn and Three Eagles Outfitter will host celebrations for the 2015 thru-hikers. But other events surrounding the weekend, including a month of free hiker breakfasts at a local church, a series of A.T.-related programs at the library spanning five weeks this year rather than two and celebrations at a variety of local businesses. 

A trail that keeps going

In some ways, one never truly finishes hiking the A.T. The experience stays, as does the desire for its realness to continue. The trail leaves its mark on everyday life in mysterious ways. 

For Joyner, it took on the shape of a move to the mountains and a career promoting the wonder of the A.T. For Harrison, it was the desire to live out his life among the mountain people he’d learned to love, and to pass on the A.T. bug to the next generation. For Patrick, it sprung from the epiphany he had on the trail that Damascus could really use an outdoor outfitter’s store, so he’s been running one since 1991. 

For Horrocks, it was that desire to disconnect from the distractions of the networked life, and instead just be. 

“My voicemail’s been full for years,” she said. “Since the A.T. I actually filled it up because I didn’t want people to call me on the A.T.”

But the A.T. itself never stops calling. 

“It’s all about relationships,” said Harrison. “The path to the Appalachian Trail, the people you meet, the relationships you form in the backcountry. You have genuine relationships with both place and people. There are no distractions. You are immersed in that world.”

Celebrate the A.T.

Appalachian Trail festivals are for current hikers, past hikers and people who want to have a good time and see what the trail is all about. Check out one of these festivals along the southern end of the A.T.

A brewery befriends the A.T.

The magic of the Appalachian Trail has been part of Nantahala Brewing’s story since the company began in 2009. 

The trail gave the brewery its current brewmaster, Greg Geiger, who first encountered Nantahala Brewing during a brief respite from the 500-some mile section he hiked. A flux of thru-hikers visit the brewery each year on their journey to Maine or Georgia, and the local trail crews that maintain the A.T. often stop by for a beer after a day in the woods. 

So, as the fledgling brewery became more established in Bryson City, N.C., co-owner Joe Rowland couldn’t think of a better recipient of the business’s efforts to give back than the trail itself. 

“It’s pretty awesome to be this close to the A.T.,” Rowland said. “There aren’t that many breweries that are this close.”

Now, every year, Friends of the Smokies can count on a donation from Nantahala Brewing to support the Ridgerunners and Caretakers program, operated under the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Ridgerunners in the Smokies typically hike and camp along their designated section of trail for 10 days at a time during trail season, alerting hikers to danger, passing on educational tidbits and helping with litter pickup and trail maintenance. In the Smokies, three ridgerunners care for sections of 20-25 miles each, which in 2014 cost Friends of the Smokies $38,500. 

The ridgerunners don’t do it for the money. 

“It works out to be like a stipend that covers gas and meals and that kind of thing, but it’s not a lot,” said Brent McDaniel, marketing director for Friends of the Smokies. “The ridgerunners really do it because they love that kind of work and the park.”

It wasn’t hard for the folks at Nantahala Brewing to decide that the ridgerunners program was a cause they wanted to support. Geiger’s on-trail experiences alone made a strong case—during his time as a hiker, an A.T. ridgerunner helped him out of a tricky situation with a bear, and as frequent users of the trail, the Nantahala Brewing crew knows the importance of a well-maintained path. 

Aptly enough, the main vehicle of their contribution to the trail is a special release series called Trail Magic Ale. Trail magic is also the name for the random acts of kindness thru-hikers encounter from people along the A.T. The brewery does three Trail Magic releases each year, one in March when the northbound hikers come through, one in June to kick off the summer and one in October to nab the southbound hikers. 

“I’d say, conservatively, there’s probably a couple hundred [thru-hikers] that come through in March and early April,” Rowland said. “For the folks who are hiking south, it really depends a lot of times on the weather.” 

All the proceeds from the Trail Magic Ale releases go to Friends of the Smokies, earmarked for the Ridgerunners program. The brew brings in between $500 and $1,500 per year, Rowland said, but the brewery also donates money raised the Friday night before each release at what it dubs the Rare and Wild Party. 

Throughout the year, people bring six packs from breweries across the country and leave them at Nantahala. The brewery isn’t allowed to sell these donated beers, so instead it holds a sampler of sorts for the people in the taproom the Friday before each Trail Magic Ale release. 

“We just do a tasting with all these different beers, and anyone who wants to donate, they just give a donation to whatever cause we identify for that particular event,” Rowland explained. “Usually it’s just the A.T.”

In all, Nantahala Brewing’s contribution to the Ridgerunner program is about $3,000 per year, McDaniel said, though Rowland said that he “honestly has no clue” what the number is. 

Mostly, he’s just interested in supporting the trail, perhaps partly because of the parallel he sees between the brewery’s story and those lived out by A.T. thru-hikers every year. 

Like the A.T. hikers who take a hiatus from real life to traverse the trail, Rowland said, “we gave up other lives and other places to live in this town of 1,400 people” and pursue a dream in the midst of top-notch natural beauty. 

And like the hikers who return from the trail with a life-changing experience in tow, the last few years have been dramatic ones for the Nantahala Brewing crew. They’ve been invited to Sierra Nevada Brewing’s Beer Camp Across America and won plenty of awards for their beer. In 2014, Rowland was elected president of the Asheville Brewers Alliance—the first ever to come from outside Asheville’s city limits. 

“We’ve met so many amazing people being out here,” Rowland said. “We probably don’t talk about it as often as we should, but the experiences we’ve been able to have as brewers out here in the middle of nowhere is crazy.” 

Back to topbutton