The Magic of the Trail

The thru-hikers are easy to spot. I pick out three of them right away, spread out on a bench outside the outfitter’s store at Nantahala Outdoor Center. Stuffed-to-the gills hiking packs lean against the wall, and the contents of the packages they found waiting at NOC’s maildrop lie scattered on the ground. The recent rain left its mark on their appearance, leaving them just a little grungier, a little more unkempt than even the standard for an outdoors center. 

Back in the “real world,” they all have names, families, professions—or at least professional aspirations—waiting for them. But here, resting just yards from the Appalachian Trail’s crossing over the Nantahala River, they introduce themselves first by their trail names—Youngblood, Gadget, and Slavedriver. True to his name, Youngblood is the most junior, an 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school. Gadget, at 20, isn’t much older, making 42-year-old Slavedriver the oldest of the group. 

I introduce myself as Holly with The Smoky Mountain News, ask if they’d be willing to talk to me for a few minutes about the trail and their experience on it. What have been the high and low points so far? How is it squaring with expectations? Why did they set out to hike 2,189 miles in the first place? 

Of course, they’re happy to chat. The trail affords plenty of opportunity for introspection, and they’re more than willing to share their reflections with a listening ear. I take notes and pictures, documenting how the trail’s been more difficult and more beautiful than any of them expected, how the goodness of people along the way will restore your faith in humanity if nothing else will, how the trail has a way of funneling the complexity of life down to something much simpler: taking the next step, reaching the next view. 

Then I put away the camera and the notebook. I wish them luck, thank them for their time, and drive back to the office. There I will sit down to translate these hikers’ wild experiences into words for lay-out on digital spaces for publication in sheets of newsprint to sit outside of grocery stores and gas stations until the next week’s batch of news arrives. By the time my three subjects reach the trail’s end in Maine—if, that is, they make it that far—the print paper will have all but disappeared from coffee tables and countertops in Western North Carolina. 

As an outdoors reporter in a place where springtime means thru-hiker season in our Appalachian Trail communities, it’s hard to avoid the trail. Its alumni run hiking clubs and nonprofits. Trail-based festivals demand publicity each year. Thru-hikers appear in the stories I write and the trails I hike. They’re everywhere, and that’s OK with me. 

Yes, please, tell me about the moment the balance shifted and you knew that you would in fact make it all the way to Katahdin. The frigid, drizzly night when the stove wouldn’t work and your sleeping bag was damp and you were sure you were going to die. The time you came out of the woods to a text saying your baby nephew had been born, and you kicked yourself for having missed it. The moment when you had that single epiphany, the a-ha moment, that made all the time and pain and effort and expense of the trail worth it. The transition back to society, the differences you discovered in yourself and the ways your path of life shifted. 

But then, more often than not, the conversation ends with a question turned back at me. So, have you ever thought about doing the trail? 

I shrug my shoulders.

As I write this, it’s the middle of winter with snow blanketing the world outside, and I’m pretty sure that the Appalachian Trail is something I’ll never do. I love to hike. I love to camp, and my dog would like nothing better than six months in the woods, that’s for sure. But I’ve got a job and an apartment, and even supposing I were to leave it all behind for half a year, would it be for the A.T., or would some other adventure call louder? 

Despite the view from my window, though, spring isn’t too far away, and with it the green leaves and the thru-hikers and the mystique of a trail that seemingly never ends. So despite my rambling and hemming and hawing, don’t be too surprised if, one of these days, I follow my new friends into the woods and never look back. 

About the author: Waynesville reporter Holly Kays is a forester’s daughter who is happy to live in the land of many trees.