Mount Pleasant Church of God – Days Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine

Day 6: Thursday, February 29, 2024 — Low Gap Shelter to Tray Mountain Shelter

On Thursday, February 29th, 2024, I rose to find the night’s below-freezing weather plus the previous day’s rain had locked all my things in ice. Shaking the crystals off my tent in a slow effort to pack and get going served as a harsh reminder I forgot to bring gloves. I would have crashed in the shelter the night before, but found the six-to-eight-man space packed tightly with more than ten. They were a lively pile, and I enjoyed chatting with them briefly from the mouth of the shelter before setting up tent where I could find an open space. For the weather, there were far more campers around than I anticipated.

Our bubble wouldn’t last though. Most of the people I met before opted for a nero (a “near-zero” day, during which one hikes to or from a place where they spent most of the day resting) away from the rain and went to stay in hostels nearby. Starting with $750, I kept myself aware of my budget. I couldn’t start splurging now just because of the weather.

I reminded myself of one of the most important ideas to me during my hike: this isn’t like regular life outside—if I don’t want to go a day, I can stop and wait. If one can bear slowing down, walking is never so difficult. I hiked fifteen miles that day, the longest I had so far, past the Blue Mountain Shelter and Unicoi Gap to the Tray Mountain Shelter, and decided to zero there the next day. I ate lunch (two tortillas, one with peanut butter and honey, another with tuna Z. gave to me) with a nice Christian man who boosted my spirits, but I forgot his name and don’t believe I ever saw him again. My pack was still overweight, and my legs fresh, but I made it with plenty of time before dark.

Two men called Snowbear and Spartan had a beautiful campfire started when I arrived; coming up on a shelter with a fire already lit would become a recurring delight in my trail life. I boiled two packets of ramen over the fire, and an older gentleman called Tea Party prepared his own and ate with me. The four of us bedded down before the sun set fully. Tea Party was reading something by the soft red glow of his head lamp, but the rest of us didn’t think twice about it. We slept well to the howling wind and the beginnings of the next day’s melancholy.

Day 7: Friday, Mar 01, 2024 — Zero at Tray Mountain Shelter

The bitter cold rain came, blowing sideways, but Snowbear and Spartan rose soon after sunup and carried on. My idea of zeroing in the shelter appealed not only to Tea Party, but also to three section-hiking brothers, going by Jim-Bob, John-Boy, and Jason, who I had passed the day before tented just up the trail. Tea Party remained quiet and to himself most of the day, but the three brothers were as entertaining as their names might indicate. Jim-Bob came across crass and street-smart, while John-Boy was nerdy, precise, and professional, and Jason said little more than asking about lunch and dinner when the time came. I enjoyed Jim-Bob’s life stories, from getting robbed while hitchhiking to catching STDs from flight attendants, and John-Boy’s analysis of political and technical realities back home. I struggled to journal, with my hands being too cold, but got the words down.

Day 8: Saturday, Mar 02, 2024 — Tray Mountain Shelter to Around the Bend Hostel

I hiked out of Tray Mountain Shelter by 8:00 a.m. and saw the sun rise over the crest of a parallel mountain, glimmering on the icy trees, and became overwhelmed by the grace of God. From Dicks Creek Gap, I caught Gordon, the owner of Hostel Around the Bend, just as he came to pick up Lone Star and another hiker. I rode with them the half-mile down trail into the hostel, where I found other hikers sheltering for the night. Gordon was entirely welcoming and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers that night for all the guests there. This was the first time I had enjoyed a hotdog in years—only a week on the trail and all foods were good enough for me. I showered, resupplied from the hostel’s shop, and sang while playing a guitar in the common space until late in the evening, making a sweet end to a hard first week, playing hymns with lovely folks who expressed some appreciation until I tired out and went out to the bunkhouse.

Back in January, after I had first decided to hike the trail, I had felt a conviction from my God; my original plan didn’t include the church at all, but I felt I ought to aim to make it in at least whenever I found it convenient for me. And this week, Hiawasee was just down the road. At this point, I knew nothing about hostels, and certainly hadn’t built up the gall to stick out a thumb. I didn’t know how I’d make it to a church the next morning, but I trusted God would deliver me there if He wanted, whenever He wanted to. 

Day 9: Sunday, Mar 03, 2024 — Around the Bend Hostel to Plum Orchard Shelter

Proper mattresses, even the cheap ones hostels lay out, plummeted to inferiority when compared to my sleeping pad. My body always sinks too far down in the middle, like the bed’s a wavy hammock, but I lie flat on a pad. In the morning, Gordon decided on his own, after I had already eaten a great breakfast, that I would beat the hostel’s waffle-eating record, previously set at a weak four. So I started the morning off filled beyond pleasure with scrambled eggs, sausage, grits, strawberries, and five waffles. 

I never bothered asking Gordon about a ride to a church nearby, so I have no idea how he found out I wanted to go, but he invited me to hop into the shuttle while he took others back to the gap—said he would drive me to a little Baptist church down the road, and that he was sure others would be there already, regardless of what time the service started. Things went exactly that way, until he pulled into the church parking lot and saw no cars. I told him I’d be fine waiting there, but Gordon felt a duty to drop me somewhere that gave him a good vibe. We talked in the car briefly about his relationship with God; Gordon was the first of many quasi-Christians to tell me the forest is church enough for him. False teachers in his childhood church seriously hurt him and some of his family. Considering most “churches” in the modern day only schedule copy-paste Holy Spirit experiences and some social get-togethers at best, his critiques hold merit. The heavens declare the glory of God, and there are plenty of lessons to be learned from the trees, birds, and bears, but we cannot learn from the woods’ lack of fellowshipping saints the same way we can from true brothers. 

Our conversation ended abruptly as Gordon dropped me with my pack at the steps of Hiawasee’s Mount Pleasant Church of God. He had just begun to drive away, and I to sit on the steps, when a pastor of the church opened the door with a confused look. From the window of his SUV, Gordon shouted explanations: “I run the Hostel Around the Bend up the road! He’s a thru-hiker who wanted to come to church today! Make him play some worship songs for you!” The pastor, an older man, couldn’t muster much of a response, but smiled and waved as Gordon left, then invited me into the building, showed me where to leave my pack, and invited me to sit in the sanctuary until the service started. 

The Sunday School service was sweet, simple, typical of any small church morning lesson—a man named Matt with some Irish or Scottish brogue taught from Hebrews 11 about the importance of faith and how faith may manifest itself in practice: that faith can be persevering in obedience through one’s doubt. Matt went through the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, Biblical figure by figure, pointing out and explaining that God wants men and women of such faith to do these things; He wants someone who will build a boat where it’s never rained, who will give up Egyptian royalty to be afflicted with His people, or who trusts God’s salvation so much he won’t skip a day of prayer to avoid a death sentence. 

I wrote down one quote of his that stuck out to me:

“It really doesn’t matter what else. I’m just going with God. I don’t have a better idea.”

In the worship service, several women sang with earnest voices and a clarity that told me they cared more for the words than the melody. In my book, they were excellent singers, regardless of their tune. It shouldn’t ever be about the musical precision and emotional appeal. Most of us worship leaders have become fatally distracted.

The preaching pastor (I never caught his name) delivered a sermon that offered a great wealth to me, provoking a Word that continues to well from my soul now. He was fiery, shouting in a raspy voice that indicated to me he made a habit of it. Oftentimes one can’t tell whether a preacher is performative, or whether his life reflects the same passion his sermons do. Regardless, I believe the promise of Romans 8:28, that God works all things for my good.

The pastor spoke on the parable of the sower with incredible understanding and with the urgency it deserves. Here are my notes from the sermon:

“Plow deep in me, O LORD, to remove anything that might hinder Your work.”

“We need to pray our people, our kids, are good soil.”

When good soil is made available, LOTS of things want to grow there.

The best soil for the Word of Christ is also the best for sin.

Those who were great servants of Satan become great servants of God.

“The Holy Ghost is the best weeder I know of… better than any Round-Up, even though folks are trying to sue Him too.”

“If you weeded your flower gardens last year, you gotta weed it again this year.”

Luke 8:14 — “… choked by the cares … of life…”

Plant it, be patient, fruit takes time even when the seed is good.

Churches are not buildings. Not denominations. People. Are we going to be a good-soil fruit-bearing church, or choked out by the cares and riches and pleasures of life? You have to decide what kind of soil you’re going to be. You get to decide what kind of soil we are as the Mount Pleasant Church of God.

The older fellow who I met at the door was named Glen. He told me that day at the church they would be having a luncheon and invited me to eat with them—an offer I couldn’t refuse. Before praying over the food, Glen announced my presence there and explained what I was doing; he had heard and understood a lot more from Gordon than I thought, and asked me to play a song or two for them after the meal. I ate wild hog sausage balls, nachos, cheese-filled croissants, pineapple, strawberries, and cake, thinking all the while about how jealous the other hikers would be to hear about this adventure.

Glen brought out a beautiful Martin guitar for me, and I was honored to perform for the congregation and thank them for their hospitality. I played “Wayfaring Stranger” to a great response and took advantage of the opportunity to relay to them the massive evangelism opportunity that lay just down the road where the A.T. crosses 76. “Trail magic,” or “Jesus magic,” when offered by churches, should be a consistent ministry done by every church along the A.T—cooking or buying food for hungry hikers passing through and praying for them, inviting them to church and their homes, loving them as Christ would. There are many lost souls there, walking north because they don’t know anywhere else to go. Afterwards, a couple women would come and ask for more details about how their trail magic would work, what sort of things they could buy, who would come and when. I believe they’ll follow through. I hope they have by now.

Glen’s wife snuck me $50 as a parting gift. She couldn’t have possibly known that it precisely covered the cost of my hostel stay the night before, or how I felt uncomfortable spending that much in the first place. Jehovah Jireh.

The worship drummer, Jordan, drove me in his pickup truck back to Dick’s Creek Gap with three children in the back. He had been a fantastic drummer in the honest, though mediocre, band. We spoke easy. Life is long and difficult, and we would never do any of it right, really, but God is good.

As we pulled up to the trailhead, I recognized my friend Johnny Cash with his dog and a younger hiker named Jacob, who would become a long-lasting friend of mine on the trail and after, along with another I did not know. I bade farewell to Jordan and joined the other three in their talk.

The third hiker I’ll leave unnamed. He considered himself a professional hiker because he posted photography on Instagram and was on vacation from a hardly related office job in environmental consulting. He was a pedantic California archetype, never running out of words to say and never saying much at all. When you responded to something he said, he wouldn’t really hear you, but would carry on from whatever he was saying before. I don’t worry writing this about him—I find it doubtful he cares enough about what anyone else has to say to spend any time reading, unless they are someone widely revered enough to be worthy of his time and not at all below him (unlike me). He thru-hiked the PCT the year before (said we should ask him if we have any questions about his experience), and said he could always tell whether or not somebody was going to make it the whole way of their thru-hike. He was sure another hiker we met would make it, but implied I certainly would not. I suppose he might still consider himself right, because he has no way of knowing I did indeed make it. In 2024, he aimed to hike the whole A.T. in under a hundred days, doing at least 22 miles every day. I thought that was a good idea, guaranteeing he would leave me tomorrow and we would never cross paths again. This hiker was the one and only person I met on the entire trail who I did not find interesting at all.

The Professional hiked on while Jacob and I joined Johnny for a moment in his RV. I asked about Forest—he expected her soon enough. I had met Jacob at the Low Gap Shelter, and we connected on Instagram. We bonded over being some of the few practicing Christians on the trail; further along, I would learn how disappointingly few there would be. I had the opportunity to share my experience at Mount Pleasant that morning with the both of them, and we engaged in a beautiful conversation about churches, the Church, and God. Jacob seemed uplifted by the conversation, and I was delighted to see Johnny Cash. I wish I had known that, for whatever reason, we would not cross paths again for the rest of my journey. Jacob and the pedant went down to the Hostel Around the Bend, and I carried up the trail to the Plum Orchard Shelter, delighted by such a lovely Sunday.