Book Excerpt: Going to Maine by Comedian Sally Chaffin Brooks

In 2003, comedian Sally Chaffin Brooks’ childhood best friend, Erin, convinced her to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. A woefully out-of-shape Sally quickly realizes she may not actually be prepared for the realities of thru-hiking— brutal weather, wrong turns, and painful blisters have her wanting to quit almost as soon as she starts. But out of loyalty to Erin, Sally sticks it out

As she and Erin trek from Georgia to Maine, they collect a ragtag band of hikers and together stumble from one hilarious (and sometimes scary) predicament to another. By the time they reach Shenandoah National Park, they have teamed up with another pair of best friend hikers, who go by the trail names, Pilgrim and Sug, and are attempting to hike their first 30-mile day.

The following is an excerpt from her memoir, Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail.

Erin (left) and the author

The night before, Pilgrim had made it seem like an adventure. He’d broken the day into three parts—we’d hike 9 miles in the morning to Skyland, a Shenandoah restaurant on the trail where we’d have an early lunch, and then 18 more to a picnic area with vending machines and toilets where we’d stop for dinner, and then an easy 6 to the shelter. I found the prospect easier to consider when it was presented that way. I’d only think about the section in front of me and then pretend like the next one was a new day. But even though we easily finished the first leg, we arrived at another Shenandoah restaurant not yet open for the season.

“Okay, let’s just go,” Erin said, always the one ready to face the task head on, while I usually dragged my feet.

“No,” Pilgrim said firmly. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“Dude. It’s closed. Let’s go.”

Pilgrim didn’t budge, head down, looking through the thru-hikers guide. We stood there in the parking lot, packs on, waiting for him to make a move. Finally, he said, “Okay, the book says that if we hike 4 more miles there is road crossing, and then 11 miles down the road is an all-you-can-eat buffet. We’re going to get a ride down there and have lunch.”

It made no sense. Once we got to the road crossing, we’d have 20 miles still to hike, but none of us questioned him. Within an hour, we’d done the four miles and Erin had talked a young couple finishing up a day hike into driving us to the restaurant. And then, at the restaurant, we lingered, acting like we had nowhere to be. By the time we’d found a ride back up to the trail, it was 2pm. Erin sat up front talking to the older gentleman she’d found to drive us, while Sug, Pilgrim, and I sat squeezed in the backseat grumbling to each other about how full we were.

“Why are all these cars parked along the side of the road?” Erin asked.

The man replied, “Oh, those are truffle hunters.”

“Ah,” Erin murmured and caught my eye in the rearview mirror. I shrugged.

“It’s big business up here, people looking for wild truffles,” the man continued, “it’s illegal to do it on federal land, but they still do.”

Back at the trail, I was strapping on my pack and I felt Sug looking at me. “You thought he was talking about chocolate, didn’t you?”

“What? No…” I said, laughing along with the others, realizing I didn’t get it, but not wanting to ask what we were laughing about. It reminded me of the time when Erin and I were in high school, hanging out in our friend Amy’s kitchen. Erin picked up a meat tenderizer and announced, “This is what we beat the meat with at my house!” Amy and I laughed, and Erin continued, “You know, pound the ground,” causing Amy and I to literally roll on the floor with laughter. Finally, a clueless Erin asked, “Wait. Why is this so funny?” which only made us laugh harder.

Erin

Even though it was late in the day, I felt good about the rest of the hike. In my mind, we only had fourteen miles until we reached our dinner stop. The four of us hiked together, laughing and taking pictures as Sug hand fed one of the thousands of deer in the park a leaf. I didn’t even think about the remaining miles until around 6pm, when the sun started to go down, and the temperature dropped, and we were still over two miles from our dinner stop.

It was at 7pm, with the four of us huddled between two vending machines, eating candy bars and drinking sodas, watching the rain fall in the dark, when I finally asked, “Ummmm… how are we going to see the trail?”

“Headlamps!” Sug answered, flicking his on and shining it in my eye to illustrate his point.

We lingered until 8pm, waiting for the rain to stop (which it did, turning first to a fine mist and then to a thick fog), the 28 miles we’d already hiked and the late night finally wearing on our muscles. We started hiking and quickly realized that in the dense darkness, our headlamps were almost useless. Pilgrim’s light was the brightest, so he led, the rest of us following along so closely that I could touch Erin’s pack in front of me. The hiking was tortuously slow, our moods swinging from slap happy song singing (“Night hiking, deserves a quiet night.”) to deeply depressed silence. It was during one of these silences that I ran into Erin’s pack, not realizing the three in front of me had stopped.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Erin repeated in a low voice. I followed the weak beam of her light over to the right.

“HOLY SHIT!” I was looking at hundreds of eyes looking back at me, shining in the darkness.

“It’s deer,” Sug told us in an unsure voice.

“Go, go, go!” I urged, not wanting to find out who we were sharing the woods with.

It was almost midnight when we finally reached the shelter, finding that it was almost full with a group of sleeping high school kids. We silently unpacked and squeezed our sleeping bags into the space.

“Hey,” Pilgrim whispered, “we have something for you guys…for finishing your first 30 mile day.”

And then he and Sug each pulled out a bottle of beer from their packs and handed it to Erin and I.

“No way,” Erin said, sounding as touched as I was. “This is the best.”

It was such a sweet gesture, and a perfect end to an epic day. Had I not been so tired, I might have cried. Instead, I took a sip of the beer and passed the bottle to Sug.

“Oooooooh!” I whispered. “Like a mushroom truffle!”

Get the Book

About the Author

Sally Chaffin Brooks is a writer, stand-up comedian, and podcaster. A reformed lawyer, Sally has released two chart-topping comedy albums (Brooks Was Here, Street Bird) and co-hosts the comedy podcasts The Ridiculist and Dumb Love. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son, and heads to the mountains as often as possible. Going to Maine is her first book.

All images courtesy of Sally Chaffin Brooks. Featured image courtesy of Running Wild Press.