In Which Nobody Leaves Georgia, Meets Many Sayings, and Commits an Accidental Blinding

It had been just over a week on trail, and today, I was leaving Georgia behind.

Dawn broke lazy and slow at Dicks Creek Gap, Mile 69. I packed up under a sky already sweating, set out, and Georgia, in its usual half-smirking way, threw one more round of PUDS at my feet—pointless ups and downs, like the heartbeat of a drunkard trying to dance.

The weather hovered just north of comfortable. Faster hikers, ghosts with lighter packs and heavier ambitions, breezed past me without a second glance.

North Carolina waited ahead, and the night already muttered promises of storms like curses thrown across the hills.

Georgia had been a fever dream—beautiful, brutal, sometimes merciful—but the dream was ending.

Each step toward the border sharpened the trail’s teeth.

I had pictured a grand divide. An open field, a crack of light in the mountains, a holy threshold where the soul could nod and say yes, the journey changes here.

Instead, the Georgia-North Carolina line was just a slant of steep earth—boulders grinning down on one side, a rolling green tumble on the other, the trail in between.

At the center of it all: a battered tree with a rusted pipe jammed deep into its flesh.

The tree, stubborn as anything that grows wild, was swallowing the pipe year by year, a slow violence of patience.

Tacked just beside the pipe, almost as an afterthought, a small crooked sign:

GA / NC.

That was it.

No trumpets.

No angels peeling back the sky.

Just wood and rust and gravity.

But I didn’t move on.

I got stuck staring at the pipe.

A flagpole?

The spine of some forgotten machine?

 A checkpoint for elves who punch the clock at midnight to dance into North Carolina?

Somewhere between hallucination and humor, I stood there, rooted—until a voice detonated behind me:

“STAND NEXT TO IT! I’LL TAKE YOUR PICTURE!”

I whipped around.

There he was.

Short, stocky, raw as an old boot, wrinkles carved into his face like the reverse of roots sticking out on trail.

His hair jutted out in spiky clumps, dyed a color somewhere between cigarette smoke and bad decisions.

His left eye twitched so fiercely it looked stapled shut; the right bulged wide enough to drink in the whole horizon.

He clutched a staff of twisted wood in his hand—something wild and ancient, like it was ripped from the pages of a myth that never made it to print.

On his back, a shining white Hyperlite pack, a symbol of high rank amongst the purists, pristine and absurd against the wreckage of him.

He slapped the pipe again, barked like a foreman:

“C’MON! GET MOVIN’!”

I fumbled through my fanny pack, fingers stupid with the sudden urgency of it all, trying to find my phone.

He asked:

“WHAT’S YOUR TRAIL NAME?”

I was caught with no phone, no story, no mask to wear.

I just shrugged and mumbled:

“Oh, me? I’m just Nobody.”

I opened my mouth to explain—about the search, the failures, the ghosts I’d been chasing—but he cut me off with a grin so crooked it looked like it hurt to hold:

“Well, Nobody,” he said.

“My name’s Many Sayings.”

He thumped his staff once against the earth like a stamp of approval and jerked his head toward the tree.

I finally coaxed the camera open and stepped toward the pipe, feeling the border shift, not just between states, but something harder to name.

Once he had taken my picture, I reciprocated the hospitality and offered to take his.

He retorted that he needed no such degree of foolishness.

I laughed under my breath, slung my pack on, and began to climb.

The trail led upward, carving a few last steep breaths out of Georgia before offering something closer to a clearing—an almost-civilized space where a real border crossing could pretend to exist.

Next to the clearing, a small stream burbled across the rocks, with a pipe jutting out to aid hikers filling their Cnoc bags or battered Smartwater bottles.

I dropped my pack, exhaled hard, and let the cold water slap new life into my hands.

Many Sayings dropped his pack nearby, with much less ceremony.

He drank, muttered a few things about “the sky’s sorrow,” and how the rain was “the old gods’ revenge on the faithless.”

I didn’t understand half of it, but I nodded along anyway.

The heat of the day had been climbing right alongside us, and the water tasted sweeter than gold.

I sat back, sipping from my bottle, watching as Many Sayings wrestled with his pack like it was an angry badger.

He stumbled, cursed, and finally threw the thing sideways onto the rocks with a grunt.

Spinning back toward me, he barked:

“DAMMIT!

I FORGOT TO WET MY SPONGES!”

I blinked, confused, only now noticing what clung beneath the straps of his shirt:

Sponges.

Dozens of them.

Like a value pack exploded at a car wash and stuck to him by force of will alone.

I raised an eyebrow.

“What’s with the sponges?” I asked.

He straightened up, puffed out his chest, and declared loud enough to frighten the trees:

“They are the skins of the sky’s sorrow, bound to my flesh!

When the heavens weep, I drink their grief!

When the sun strikes, I wear its death against me!”

He slapped one of the sagging sponges with an open palm, making it flap like a dying flag.

He turned toward me, his one open eye locking onto mine, sending a cold shiver down my spine.

Then, without another word, he hoisted his pack and stomped uphill, leaving me blinking after him.

I chose to wait, to let distance bloom between Many and I—whatever he was smoking, I didn’t need it in my story.

The climb that followed the border was no kinder than before. Following the sleeping tree, the trail not only faced north—it ascended directly north.

Steep, relentless, a stairway built by some vengeful titan with a grudge against legs.

I found myself gasping, swearing, slipping, pushing forward out of stubbornness more than hope.

It was near the top that I saw it again—his tent.

A Hyperlite ghost perched just off-trail, half-eaten by brush and shadow.

And outside it, like solemn watchmen, the two sponges lay again, carefully placed.

I passed by without a sound.

Muskrat Creek Shelter was full when I arrived.

Hikers everywhere—sprawling, shouting, swapping stories, filling the air with the chaotic music of trail-weary bodies trying to pretend they weren’t broken.

Debates erupted over cook systems, pack weights, and finally, bear hangs.

I gave a few lessons in the PCT method.

Some paid attention.

Some jury-rigged contraptions so flimsy it was a miracle the trees themselves didn’t laugh them out of the forest.

The night cracked open in a thunderclap.

The sky wept.

The shelter creaked under the weight of bodies, wet gear, and restless dreams.

Morning came, bringing mud, fog, and a strange unease.

Out of the mist stomped Many Sayings, grizzled, furious, a half-wild king surveying a ruined kingdom.

He grunted and cursed under his breath, examining the bear hangs with disdain.

“Amateurs,” he muttered.

“Blind idiots… no respect for the old ways…”

He was halfway across the clearing, waving his staff and listing the sins of modern hikers, when a stick, the toggle, a twig, twiggle, snapped high in the trees.

There was a whistling sound—like the sky inhaling—then a soaked bear bag plummeted from the heavens and struck him square in the good eye.

He howled, spinning in the mud, clutching his face.

“WHOSE BAG WAS THAT?!” he roared.

I stepped forward, sheepish, miserable.

“Mine,” I said.

He staggered back, pointing at me with the fury of a prophet betrayed.

“NOBODY HURT ME!” he screamed.

Other hikers rushed in to assess the situation.

 Their queries fell into confusion—a scene straight out of Abbott and Costello.

 The shelter crowd knew me only as the guy without a trail name, and as Many Sayings continued to bellow that “Nobody” had blinded him, the absurdity blossomed in full.

He continued his sponge-soaked tirade against Nobody, and I took it as my cue to leave.

I grabbed my gear, stopped for a moment to smear a layer of picaridin across my arms and neck,

 and slipped away—hidden behind a small gaggle of day hikers, my scent masked, my sins forgotten.

Many sayings continued “I’ll get Nobody”

Ahead of me, the first hundred miles waited.