My Previous Exposure to Backpacking
Isn’t the first time…
This isn’t the first time I have been backpacking, or that I have hiked on the AT. In fact this will be my third time backpacking, my second time backpacking on the AT. My first exposure to backpacking was during college. I attended a one week summer session with my university’s outdoor adventure department. We travelled down into North Carolina for a 5 day hiking and white water rafting course. It was right before my very first semester in college. Money was tight, so I wasn’t able to go backpacking around Europe like I had always wanted, but at least I was backpacking. I had heard stories of my mom and dad white water rafting, and I figured it was going to be an adventure either way.
The trek down to TN was like a romanticized novel I read more than a few times before. I love the drive from Indiana to Tennessee, because it always made me feel like I was going home. There is the bridge over the Ohio River. If you go the Louisville Route, it is just a normal Truss bridge, like you built in Tech Ed in middle school out of balsa wood, and if you go the Cincinnati way, there is a double decker bridge and a big egg shaped building of their downtown to look at. We went the Louisville route, then shot around Lexington with only a quick pit stop to have dinner, where I ate frog legs for the first time in my life (at a restaurant that was later closed due to health code violations). Spoiler alert they taste like the chicken they got fried with. Then it was down further south, across the border into TN, and into the area where I was born. I can’t remember if we went over the mountain, or through the tunnel, memory is fickle that way sometimes. We hit Johnson City at sundown, and I remember thinking that I should just get off here. Have them drop me off here with my backpack and I would walk the rest of the way to Kingsport. Looking back I think I was just scared. College was ahead of me, and the first big decision of my life loomed like it does, what do I want to do with my life?
Beyond that, my journey was entirely new to me, I had never travelled farther south in TN that I could recall than just Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. But as we travelled farther and farther, the cities got smaller and the towns turned into one stoplight, barely on the map kind of places. It was dark before we reached the Dragon’s Tail at Deals Gap. I was already sick to my stomach sitting in the middle seat with at least 8 other people and our 2 guides. All our gear was attached to the u-haul in the back. We switched seats, I shoved a wad of spearmint gum in my mouth and we drove the 11 miles and 318 curves in silence. I remember getting to the Cheoah Dam, and needing another break.
The rest of the trip I remember in brief moments like being in the piney forests of the Nantahala at sunrise, with the entire area blanketed in clouds caught by the mountains and falling asleep under the stars in a makeshift tarp tent. There were so many stars… and I remember something shifting inside me, and a dream was born, to hike the whole trail (whatever that meant). But the backpacking, the actual hiking, I don’t remember a thing.
My first memories of backpacking…
My first memories of backpacking, actually backpacking, were not what you would think. They were a beautiful nightmare, something that I was totally not prepared for, and neither was the group I was with. It had been about a year since my adventure in NC, I had declared my major, and had all of these grand ideas of what my future would hold. I had fallen in love, and lost my virginity to a boy I thought was my soulmate, only to find out that was, well, not the case. I had been texting him obsessively, and kicking myself when he would never respond. It was … not a healthy place. The summer catalog of classes had a listing for an Anthropology Field School in Wyoming and Montana, with a promise of backpacking in the Wild Wild West, and I still had the borrowed backpack from my Aunt. What better way to clear my head then to be out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, with nobody that I knew, and no cell signal.
I told my parents I didn’t want to bring my cell phone. They didn’t really understand, not that I cared to really tell them why either. They were being protective, and wanted me to be able to contact them, even if I was not going to be able to charge it while out in the field. Promising to take it with me for emergencies (I shoved that thing so deep in my pack, that it would never see the light of day, or so I hoped), but that I would send them postcards instead of calling or texting.
I remember the drive out, we had a caravan of three, one truck, and two vans. I was in the truck with the lead grad student, navigating out to our site. The truck had oversized wheels, so the speedometer was nowhere near correct, and I was in charge of answering the phone if we got too fast. We took 74 west, to Davenport IA, then 80 west. We camped out that night, but I honestly don’t remember much about that night, just that the drive was flat and bright and hot. The next day we got on 90 west, and took off again across the great Plaines, we stopped at the the Devil’s Tower in WY, before arriving in Cody for the start of our first full 10 day stretch in the wilderness of Wyoming.
But this was not backpacking like before, we had a camp ground near the site, and a field to set our tents up in. There was no concept of Leave No Trace, once the tents were pitched, they stayed, creating these perfectly square patches of dead grass, about a dozen of them. There was a a black stallion in the field next door that the Ranger had warned us about. He had been kicked out of his herd by another stallion, and was all on his own. We weren’t supposed to feed him, but we did anyway.
At the end of the first stretch, we stopped by Bighorn Lake, and went cliff diving near the Horseshoe Bend Marina. Now, I am not scared of heights, I had been an Opera House Electrician, so the height wasn’t what stopped me. It waws knowing that at a certain point you stop jumping, and you start falling. I must have stood on that cliff looking over for about two hours, arguing with myself. Finally, somebody told us it was time to go, and everybody started to walk away. It really was now or never, so I took a deep breath. I jumped, then I fell. It was more time than I thought it would be, enough time to suck in another quick gulp of air, before I hit the water.
It was cool, and murky. I started to swim, my heart racing. Where was the surface? I couldn’t see anything. A sharp second of panic, then a hard thud on my head, it felt like wood. I drifted for a moment, before remembering where I was and realizing that I had been swimming down, not up. By the time I surfaced, I knew I was crying, my head hurt. I looked around and saw that I had drifted about 25 feet from where I hit the water, and down stream was the log that had hit me. Still crying, gulping for air, I swam back to the cliff, holding on for dear life. It took me a minute to partially compose myself, and start the 30 foot climb back to the top. Everybody was already loaded into the cars, ready to go. They could tell I had been crying, but didn’t say anything to me. When we got back to the camp, I went into my tent to just lay down and be away from everybody else. Turns out cliff diving was not my thing.
After those ten days in the field, we went back to town, where I decided to mail my post cards during a tornado. Luckily a nice couple demanded I hitchhike in their truck back to the Ponderosa campgrounds. My first ever hitchhiking. Luckily everybody in the town knew who our instructor was, and knew the minute they saw my city ass walking to the post office in a tornado that I was one of Laura’s girls.
I spend the next ten days in the field mapping more tipi rings, and hanging out by the campfire at night. We all liked to watch the stars, because out there, at night, you can even see the milky way. If you let the fire die low enough, you can start to see the colors of the night sky too, pretty pinks, and dark purples. It is like floating along in a beautiful random tapestry of the universe. One afternoon a group of us went for a hike. While everybody else hiked back around 7pm, I continued on. I wasn’t thinking about the forest ranger, I wasn’t thinking about how he had warned us that in the time we had spent in town a mountain lioness and her cubs had been spotted int he area. I was only thinking of the stars.
Around dusk though, she stepped out into the path about 50 feet ahead of me, and all I could think was oh shit. The group had been watching Yellowstone, some series that I took little interest in until right then. In the first episode, some totally inexperienced, boy tags along on an expedition into the wilderness, and by the end of the episode, he was being handed a needle and some vodka to sow a dude’s scalp back on after a bear attack. I backed away slowly, debating on whether I would rather see it coming or not. I walked away fast, but smooth, with purpose. A few hundred feet later, I turned over my shoulder, and she was gone, and my worry became a nonissue.
I walked straight back to camp, it was dark. I got to the latrines, and locked myself inside to relieve myself. It was strange, there was a little black dot midway up my thigh. I thought it was dirt, but when I tried to brush it away, it wouldn’t move. No worries, I can go to the cabin where the professors are, it has electricity, I will figure out what this was. I walk in, and ask to use the bathroom to wash up. They are all watching that series, and pretty much ignore me. I flip on the light, pull down my pants, and find out it was a tick. I grab the rubbing alcohol, and the tweezers and remove, no worries. As I go to pull up my pants, I see another one, on my pants this time, and I realize I should probably get some help. I pull my pants back up, and peak out of the bathroom. Everyone is packing up, heading back out to their tents. I ask for help with something, private in the bathroom, and the entire room just kind of stops, shocked faces all around.
To my utter mortification the pretties grad student I had ever seen decides to help. Great, way to go, she is gonna see my pale white ass and it won’t be in the fun kind of way. We go into the bathroom, and I tell her I need her to check me for ticks, she agrees, and the pants come off… fast forward 45 minutes and 31 ticks later. Guys, I was not prepared for that, hats off to that grad student, because neither was she. She saw parts of me that went way past third date and second base. We agreed to just stop picking, and bag it all up. The boots were clean at least, and she ran out to my tent to grab me the freshest pair of clothes she could find. I remember pouring out the baggie of ticks that we did find into the fire and hearing their little bodies pop like tiny firecrackers on a tiny 4th of July.
That night the cell phone came out. I opened and closed the top watching it light up and seeing that there was no signal. I wanted to desperately to call, but the universe was going to help me cut this obsession cold turkey whether I wanted to go along or whether I came kicking and screaming.
After another four days in town, drying my clothes like 4 times imagining little tick bodies exploding, we were on the road into Montana. There was a portion of the forest that had burned down in a wildfire a few years before. It was a prime area for an archaeological survey. The hike out was about 11 miles, and we had a train of mules following a few hours behind with a lot of our gear. I had my backpack. I started in the front of the group, by midday I was at the back huffing and puffing. The professor at the back of the group was encouraging me onward, using his Garmin to locate us on the map. One more ridge and we are there he kept saying. I kept telling him I had to stop and eat, I was getting low. It wasn’t just one more ridge, it was like 7. It wasn’t just one more hour, it was 3.
I got to the field, and I collapsed, sobbing and crying uncontrollably. He tried to help me up, but my legs kept giving out, and I was shaking. Realizing, that maybe, just maybe I should have stepped off the trail and eat something hours ago. He tried to give me a cliff bar, but I couldn’t swallow it. I managed to get out an orange, and he helped me to peel it. I sucked the juice out of every pore in that orange like my life depended on it. He gave me his orange, and when that wasn’t enough, he got oranges from the others, and brought them to me. By now the mules had arrived, and I was able to scurry out of their way.
I fell asleep before my tent was even out of my pack, and slept for hours, until it was dinnertime. I ate again, and finished setting up my tent, before I fell asleep again. A discussion was had that night, and I was placed in a different group, one with mandatory cookie breaks, and less miles to hike. The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning though, before sunrise to the rustle of what I thought was the kitchen crew getting ready. Unzipping my tent, I saw a herd of Elk in the field moving slowly as they grazed towards the far side of the field before disappearing into the misty tree line.
We had two injuries that caused members of our group to head to town early, the second returned to complete the lest four days. One had an abscess on her spine from the rubbing of a pack that had not been properly fitted. The other from a dog bite when the dog slipped while crossing a fallen log across a swiftly flowing creek. She reached down to grab the panicking dog, who grabbed onto the only thing she could, the girl’s nose, with the only think she could, her mouth. We all still maintain that Beulah was the sweetest of dogs, and what happened was not her fault. When we hiked back, we met them in town, and picked up prescriptions on the way back to Indiana. By that time we were all sick of each other, and chewing each other out over practically nothing. When I arrived on campus, and saw my mother standing near the sample gates waiting for me, I grabbed my pack and ran. I never even grabbed my boots, not that I was devastated by their wandering off.
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Comments 1
That was quite an enjoyable read though quite a few unpleasant things happened to you. You were a good storyteller of those events, though! Good luck on your 2025 AT hike. Can’t wait to hear about it!