Virginia Views

Hello friends and family, 

I am checking in from a small town in southern Virginia called Daleville. My first "carry" ended yesterday, lasting 8 days and covering 105 miles from Woods Hole Hostel in Pearisburg to the Howard Johnson Express in Daleville (far less homey than the beautiful grounds of Woods Hole). 

 Virginia is often discussed as a mentally challenging state for thru-hikers who complain of the "Virginia Blues." This idea confused me last year and after 105 new miles covered, I remain confused why Virginia's section of the trail would lead to melancholy. 

The section I just completed was beautiful country that includes three of the state's most iconic backcountry sites--Dragon's Tooth, McAfee's Knob and Tinker Cliffs, the Triple Crown as they're known (more on that later). Suffice to say, this section was a warm welcome back to the trail. Here are some of the sites from my last week:

 

Photo #1: Incredible friend and former road-trip companion Skyler Mueller giving me a ride down to Pearisburg to start my trip.

Photo #2: We arrived to an April snow storm at Woods Hole—a much different look than my early summer stint there last year. 

Photo #3: Mildly terrified that I did not bring enough winter gear for this hike.

Photo #4: Sunrise at Woods Hole the morning of my departure.

Photo #5: Neville and I in front of the original Chestnut cabin (built in the 1880s) that her grandparents discovered in 1939. Once the trail was built 0.5 miles away, her grandparents eventually turned the cabin into a hiker hostel which Neville took over 14 years ago. One of the most generous people I’ve met on trail, Neville took me in last year when I was dealing with the worst of my pain. I stayed for the month of May and came to fall in love with not only Woods Hole, but the town of Pearisburg as well.

Photo #6: Me and Olga, an old friend from last year who just happened to be back at Woods Hole helping Neville with the beginning of hiker season. Olga’s one of the sweetest and funniest folks I’ve encountered. He’s retired from the military and was at Woods Hole last year for a 10-day Vippasana meditation course (Neville runs a small meditation center on her farm as well). After he finished the course, Olga and I worked together at the hostel before he hiked on to Katahdin.

Photo #7: A final view of Pearisburg from Angel’s Rest, the mountain that overlooks the town. I love the song “Our Town” by Iris Dement—her beautiful lament as she says goodbye to the small town she grew up in. I couldn’t stop singing it as I hiked down the mountain.



Photo #8: After I came down the mountain, I saw a part of Pearisburg that I didn’t encounter last year—the Celanese plant on the outskirts of town. Some cursory online research shows that Celanese is one of the world’s largest producers of cellulose acetate, primarily used to make cigarette filters. The plant—which has a strong odor that is…well, not exactly ambrosial—is directly adjacent to the trail. If you look at the bottom of the photo you can see a white blaze on the ground marking the path of the trail. Stumbling across it, I was reminded of my reflections from last year on the extractive nature of so many industries in Appalachia. The plant sits right on the New River, a major source of drinking water for the people of southern Virginia and West Virginia. Celanese is a global, Fortune 500 company that is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Something tells me that their share holders might not view the water quality of the New River Valley as their highest priority.


Photo #9: In fact, the first water source after Celanese (about a quarter mile from the plant) is no longer potable. I’ve never seen a sign like this anywhere else on trail.


Photo #10: This is Grandmaster, who I met on my second day back on trail. He’s hiking the trail with his dad, Thunderdome. Grandmaster loves chess and even carries a lightweight chessboard with him on trail. I’ve taken to calling him Magnus, for the current chess world champion Magnus Carlsen. In addition to a chessboard, Grabdmaster carries an Alpha Smart 3000 word processor from the early 90s so that he can write a novel! He said he’s always wanted to write a novel and figured that it would be a good use of his downtime for six months on trail. It weighs over two pounds, which is quite a lot of extra weight to carry for 2200 miles. But he makes good use of it—without fail, he whips it out every night at camp as people are cooking or talking around the campfire.


Photo #11: I am eager to read the finished product at the end of the trail and secretly hoping that I am the inspiration for a character.



Photo #12: The Keffer Oak is over 300 years old and it’s right on the trail. It’s the oldest and largest tree in the southern half of the AT, rising to 104 feet.


Photo #13: More Keffer.

Photo #14: Walking by the Keffer Oak took me right back to the feelings I had reading The Overstory. It also reminded me, not unlike the Celanese plant, of my reflections last year about my own family history and it’s connection to Oak Trees. The Harris Lumber Company made a fortune logging old growth Oaks in Appalachia.

Photo #15: A beautiful view from a mile of ridge line hiking.

Photo #16: The ridge eventually leads to the Eastern Continental Divide.

Photo #17: Mile-marker 700.

Photo #18: Morning views from the ridge leading to Dragon’s Tooth.

Photo #19: More views from the same ridge.

Photo #20: Dragon’s Tooth is a geological formation that juts out of the ridge on Cove Mountain. At it’s edge, the formation becomes very sharp and offers an amazing view of the valley below for those who climb to the top.

Photo #21: On top of Dragon’s Tooth. I had climbed it once before with my friend Skyler, who went to school nearby at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. But on that hike, I was too spooked to climb to the top.

Photo #22: When I got to the top, I sort of regretted tbe decision. This photo is a not-so-successful attempt to give some visual sense of the possible fall off the Tooth.

Photo #23: A panorama taken from the top of Dragon’s Tooth. Once I climbed down, I met Tumbleweed and Fruitfly who asked me if I was “going for the Triple Crown?” I told them I had no idea what that was and they explained that thru-hikers attempt to hike Dragon’s Tooth, McAfee’s Knob and Tinker Cliffs in one day, a total of 23 miles with lots of elevation gain and steep terrain. I am generally quite wary of thru-hiker “challenges.” They tend to involve hiking ridiculous mileage while drinking copious amounts of alcohol (mercifully, for the sake of the trail and the safety of the hikers, this challenge does not involve drinking). In addition to my general skepticism, I had been planning to take it easy on my first carry and hold off on hiking big miles for a few weeks. But my body felt great and more importantly, the forecast for the following day, Monday, was awful: 33 degrees all day with freezing rain and hail. Monday would be my last day before arriving to a hot shower in Daleville, so whatever I hiked on Sunday (in the glorious sunshine) would be miles I wouldn’t have to hike in freezing rain. Weighing all of this, I decided to temporarily scrap my plans to ease back in and go for the Triple Crown.

Photo #24: After I decided to push for the Triple Crown, the day felt pretty rushed because I had to hike quickly. But I did stop a few times to hang in some cow pastures, which the trail cuts through.

Photo #25: Good shit, as they say in the hiker community.

Photo #26: The view from McAfee’s Knob, the second peak of the Triple Crown.

Photo #27: Very glad I hiked this on a clear sunny day and not during a freezing rainstorm.

Photo #28: Enjoying a much-needed break on top of McAfee’s.

Photo #29: At 5:30 pm, I pushed on to Tinker Cliffs which was 5 miles away. I was hoping to get there for the sunset around 7:30 which left me with little time to savor views from the other side of the ridge like this one.

Photo #30: I made it to Tinker Cliffs and completed the Triple Crown in time for a beautiful sunset. Tinker is 0.5 miles of exposed cliff face that overlooks the valley facing south.

Photo #31: The best part about Tinker Cliffs is that on a clear day you can see everything that you’ve hiked for the past 40 miles. In the back right of this photo is Dragon’s Tooth and in the front left is McAfee’s Knob. It was a great feeling to see everything my whole day laid out in front of me. After a day of rushing, I decided I wanted to enjoy my time up there so I cooked dinner on tbe Cliffs as the sunset and then headlamp-hiked the final two miles to camp as it got dark.

Stray thoughts:

One night in camp, some thru-hikers and I were talking about the Yellow Deli, a group that operates delis near the trail in a few locations but is widely believed to be a cult. As the conversation unfolded, Thunderdome made a clever point. “Are we not in the cult of the sacred white rectangle?” I paused for a moment, not understanding.

Ah yes, the sacred white rectangle—how could I not see! We follow this sacred sign wherever it leads us and we experience great fear if we go too far without seeing it. We will follow it up mountains, across rivers and even past cigarette-filter plants. We will quite literally follow it for thousands of miles to Maine. So are we thru-hikers or are we apostles of the almighty white rectangular deity? Hard to say.

Jokes of cult-worship aside, my first week back on trail has left me wondering why I am so drawn to complete this hike. This was not a question I found myself mulling over last year; somehow my reasons for hiking then felt self-evident. But this time around, not so much.

I told a few family members and friends before I left that my 626 miles on trail last year had disabused me of any notion of the Appalachian Trail’s romanticism or mystique. Thru-hiking is not some inherently transformative endeavor nor is it necessarily spiritual (though I’m sure it can be for some). As I said to my friend West, “it’s just walking.” Not to mention, you do a good portion of that walking while wet, cold, sore, tired and hungry.

Given all that, why the hell do this? I genuinely don’t know. And yet there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than thru-hiking. It’s a strange combination of certainty with no explanation or reason for that certainty.

I do have one working hypothesis: “Haiku consciousness.” This is the phrase Michael Pollan used to describe his experience on Mescaline in his newest book “This Is Your Mind On Plants,” which I finished this week on trail. By Haiku consciousness, Pollan refers to a heightened sense of presence and serene attentiveness that is embodied in the literary form of the Haiku (and in the broader culture of Japanese Zen Buddhism).

Aldous Huxley was getting at a similar concept when he wrote of the “is-ness” of the world that he encountered while on Mescaline in his classic text “The Doors of Perception.”

Wherher “Is-ness” or “Haiku consciousness” is the right term, I suspect that this phenomenon is one significant reason I am drawn to thru-hiking. There is a calm, but simaltaneously intense awareness of myself and my surroundings that I experience while hiking. Often this opens up pathways of thought that I would have never stumbled upon during a typical day in the “frontcountry.” It’s hard not to think of this as a form of altered consciousness. Indeed, Pollan argues repeatedly that plants (or drugs, as they’re also known) are just one way to alter conciousness. 

So perhaps that’s one reason I find myself worshipping at the foot of the omniscient white rectangle once again. I’m sure there are other reasons as well and I’m excited to discover them down the trail. I will certainly report back once I do!

Love to all,
Andrew or Rebbe Mo