The Trail giveth and the Trail taketh away.
Hello from Waynesboro, VA!
The last two sections of hiking—Daleville to Glasgow and Glasgow to Waynesboro—have been more challenging, physically and mentally
Unfortunately, two weeks ago I rolled my foot quite badly in the final miles of my day. I was coming out of Daleville with a full pack of food, meaning I had the maximum amount of weight on my back when the foot rolled.
As I tried to fall asleep, I felt the foot throbbing. “Oh shit,” I thought. “That’s not good.”
I made it to Glasgow and got an x-ray, which was negative, thankfully. The hope is that it’s just a sprain of a ligament in the foot. Even so, I needed to take four full days to rest, ice and elevate the foot to get the pain and swelling down. This is what most of those days consisted of:
Photo #1: The cold, hard truth of an ice pack.
Four days at a hiker hostel would have been quite expensive. Lucky for me, the trail taketh away, but it giveth as well. When I arrived in Glasgow, I was picked up by Charlie Rodgers—the hostel manager at Stanimals. A former 2019 thru-hiker and a sort of Appalachian Trail Rodney Dangerfield, Charlie betrayed a thick Boston accent as soon as he opened his mouth. “You hikah’s are all going to Maine. I don’t get it, what’s in Maine?”
Charlie is from the North Shore (Danvers or “Danvahs” to be exact), he spent six years running a nuclear reactor on a submarine (Where? “Sorry pal, that’s classified”), worked for the Boy Scouts of America as a fundraiser for his entire career, which led him to New York City (Bedford Stuyvesant, among other neighborhoods) and eventually to Malvern, Pennsylvania—the town I grew up in.
As it turns out, Charlie’s son went to Great Valley High School (the public school district I grew up in), played soccer with many of my friends and even attended a few high school house parties with yours truly. And here was Charlie Rodgers, retired to Glasgow, Virginia (population 1385) one of the smallest towns on the trail. Small world!
This connection, I suspect, led Charlie to go out of his way to help me. When he picked me up from urgent care and heard the prognosis about my foot, he didn’t even wait for me to ask. “So, you wanna do some work-for-stay?” The trail provides.
Photo #2: Charlie and I outside the hostel. In addition to being very kind, Charlie had a deep arsenal of dead-pan, dad-joke one liners. Every night when he served dessert, for instance: “The ice cream is cold and the brownies are hot. If you wait too long, that reverses.” Or “if you’re a coffee drinker, the coffee will be ready at 6:30.If you’re not a coffee drinker, the coffee will be ready at 6:30.”
Though my injury was very frustrating, my four days in Glasgow offered me an interesting window into the town, much like my stay in Pearisburg. But Glasgow (named by the Scots-Irish colonizers who populated this area of the Appalachians) was a much smaller town than Pearisburg. “Don’t blink or you might miss it!” Charlie quipped as he gave me the tour driving in. “The Food Mart and Deli is neither a food mart nor deli. The bank isn’t a bank it’s a weed store. The Dollar General is over there behind the post-office. The Glasgow Grocery Express is the only grocery store and Scotto’s is the best restaurant in town because it’s the only restaurant in town. They have very reasonable prices, so please don’t tell them that they have very reasonable prices.”
Indeed, that was the entire town and indeed, Scotto’s has very reasonable prices. I frequented it too many times to count in four days:
Photo #3 and Photo #4: Scotto’s in all its reasonably priced glory.
In addition to the curiosities of Glasgow and the entertainment (and kindness) of Charlie, the hikers that passed through the hostel during my work-for-stay were an awesome bunch. Here are a few of them:
Photo #5: AKA is a sound engineer from Winston-Salem, NC who rocks. He and I hiked out of Daleville together and he helped me make it to Glasgow.
Photo #6: HoneyToe and Rosey Eagle—a granddaughter and grandfather duo. Rosey Eagle is 84 and completing his fourth thru-hike of the AT. He’s what’s known as an “old timer.” HoneyToe is…not 84 and hiking a month-long section. They reminded me of my trip abroad with my grandfather Harris when I was 12 and he was 82. Not sure we would’ve done too well together on the AT.
Photo #7: This is Fish, of the husband and wife duo, Fish and Chips. He’s from, you guessed it, England. He and his wife are wonderful people. They tried to thru-hike in 2020, made it to Hot Springs, NC and then had to get off trail with the onset of COVID. When they returned this spring, Fish was dead set on starting over in Georgia and Chips was dead set on not starting over in Georgia. They did not compromise! Chips started in Hot Springs, Fish started in Georgia, but he hiked extremely fast to catch her, which he did a few days before Glasgow. Chips is an ER doctor for the NHS and gave me some very helpful guidance on my foot. Fish is in the army in the UK, served in Afghanistan and had some pretty fascinating insights into the culture of American troops in Afghanistan. He was holed up for a few days in Glasgow waiting for a new pack, which he's opening in this photo. "It's like Christmas morning!" he said giddily.
Photo #8: This is Taz. From Barnstable, MA, Taz just finished a six year term in the Air Force. He's a true homie and a tremendous source of positive energy which has been a boon while I've been dealing with this injury. Taz tried to thru-hike 17 years ago and got off in Marion, VA just south of Pearisburg. He got on a few weeks ago from where he left off, like me. He cooks a mean breakfast.
Photo #9: This is Wooly, Acorn and MadHatter. Wooly is Columbian-American and is from Miami. Acorn and MadHatter are from Germany, near Munich. Wooly and I got to chat in Spanish about Medellín and Columbia. Unsurprisingly, I got to chat with Acorn and MadHatter about housing and public transit in Germany, along with collective memory of the Holocaust, how it compares to American memory of slavery and the rise of the far-right AFD party in Germany. Good times!
Photo #10: This is Billionaire, from Portsmouth, NH. Another hiker who attempted last year and is back for another long section. Despite his name, Billionaire is not a billionaire nor is he an ostentatious asshole. Quite the opposite! I talked for hours with billionaire about his work, his critical thoughts on the failures of Silicon Valley and his experiences at Burning Man (he's been 13 times!). I hope to link back up with him in NH when I get to the White Mountains.
Twice now, I've had the extreme good fortune of navigating injuries at great hostels with great people. It's difficult to feel "grateful" for yet another interruption to the hike, but I am very lucky to have ended up in Glasgow with this crew.
Now on to the hiking. Here are some photos of my time on trail over the past two weeks:
Photo #11: Right out of Daleville I hit the 1/3 mark.
Photo #14: Occasionally, the trail runs almost perfectly parallel to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Photo #18: If you look closely at Allen’s hat, you’ll notice it says “VACCINATED.” Allen is a burly man and the day I met him, he had unbuttoned the bottom two buttons of his flannel shirt leaving a large beer belly hanging out. When I told him I liked his hat, he responded in a thick, southern Virginia drawl: “You must work in healthcare son.” I explained that I didn’t, though family and friends did, but I just appreciated that he was vaccinated and willing to say so. “Son, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past two years, it’s that we have some stupid fucking people in this country.” Probably not the exact sentiment I’d express, but okay Allen—power to ya!
Photo #19: Walking across the James River footbridge.
Photo #21: Overlooking the James River, outside of Glasgow.
Photo #22 and Photo #23: A Taz encounter in the wild. Taz recently switched from hiking shorts to a hiking skirt. He rocks it, in my humble opinion.
Photo #24: Almost there! Note the "Glasgow Please" sign in the corner, left by a creative thru-hiker trying to get a hitch into town.
Photo #25: Sorry to make you turn your head! This is the 800 mile marker.
Photo #26 and Photo #27: My old pal Rollie Pollie Ollie or RPO came to bring me some trail magic. We hiked together last year and he went on to finish the trail. RPO hiked in some beer, hot dogs and smores to a campsite. Now he’s headed abroad to walk the Camino in Spain. A true mensch and baller.
Photo #28, #29, #30 and #31: Ruins of the Brown Mountain Creek Community, a village of freed slaves who lived on the Brown Mountain Creek as sharecroppers in the late 19th and early 20th century. The trail runs directly adjacent to the creek and the remnants of the community, which includes the foundations and chimneys of the stone homes. Most of what is known about the community comes from a 1992 oral history with a former resident named Taft Hughes, which you can read in its entirety here. I am thankful to the Forest Service and the Natural Bridge Appalachian Trail Club for honoring this history with two signs at the southern and northern end of the section. However, the signs could benefit from an update as they really fail to explain the exploitation at the core of sharecropping. Nor do they adequately recognize this communities' remarkable self-sustained existence. But alas, as the novelist William Dean Howells wrote, "What the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending." He was referring to our memory of the civil war, but his insight applies just as much to our memory of reconstruction. Sometimes, there is no happy ending to remember; though the struggle and resilience of these residents in the face of brutal circumstances are certainly worth remembering and honoring.
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Photo #33: My pack's base weight (basically, everything but food), log not included.
Photo #35: Per the doctor's orders, elevating my feet at The Priest Shelter.
Photo #36: Speaking of the Priest Shelter, thru-hikers have taken to using the Priest Shelter log book as a "confessional" of sorts. Every shelter has a log book, typically full of short notes about their stay or a hello message to friends a day or two behind them. The log books are a wonderfully analog form of social media for the trail community which I didn't fully appreciate during my hike last year. This year, I have written in almost every shelter log book and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading other hikers' notes. The Priest log book is filled with slightly different notes. Most of them begin with, "Forgive me father for I have sinned..." Unfamiliar territory for me, but I still gave it a shot. Most of my confessions were not very scandalous violations of Leave No Trace, though I don't think it's appropriate to reveal all of them here. As my old friend Schlep texted me when I sent her this photo, "Ah the diary of where people poop and fuck in inappropriate places." Sadly, I can only claim to have participated in one of those activities on trail.
Photo #37: The morning view from half-way up Three Ridges Mountain. It reminded me of the fog I saw while hiking the Lost Coast Trail in Northern California a few months ago.
Photo #38: Three Ridges Mountain is a very tough climb with 3000 feet of elevation gain over only a few miles. On top of that, there are three false summits, hence its name. In this photo, you can see two of those false summits on the left and the summit of the Priest Mountain on the right.
Photo #40: The Rebbe and the Priest walk into the woods....Could've been a half-decent shtick if I had been able to zoom into my family's Passover Seder this year.
Photo #41: Enjoying a sunset on a rock outcropping the night before hiking into Waynesboro, VA.
Photo #42: This is New Shoes, who actually worked with my old hiking pal Wheelz. New Shoes hired Wheelz at the climbing gym she works at and she had told me he was a little bit south of me on trail. We finally crossed paths in Waynesboro.
Photo #43: Waynesboro itself is a beautiful, old town right at the southern terminus of Shenandoah National Park. I spent a good chunk of time strolling around and at one point came across this abandoned building near the center of town.
Photo #44: Turns out its the former headquarters of the Waynesboro News-Virginian, the local paper. As is the case everywhere, the paper used to be quite robust and had a large circulation in the region. Today, not so much.
Photo #45: But it’s still alive and in circulation.
Photo #46: As for Waynesboro today, I can't make any authoritative claims about the culture or politics of this community after having explored it for two days. With that said, it does feel strangely divided between two different moments in time. In the Waynesboro Heritage Museum, the panels present the town's role in defending the Confederacy in an extremely romantic light, celebrating the Confederate colonels who originated in Waynesboro. But across town is the community center, which was once home to a Rosenwald School, the only school open to black children in Waynesboro from the 1920s until 1965, when Virginia's public schools were desegregated. (An interesting side note: the Rosenwald Schools were built by the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Rosenwald was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany who eventually owned and ran Sears, Roebuck and Company. In total, his foundation built 5,500 schools for black youth across the segregated South, 380 of which were in Virginia). Very little attention is paid to this history in town, even though Waynesboro is one of the more racially diverse towns I have visited on trail. Around the corner from the Heritage Museum, an abandoned building has been graffitied with the names of two black men killed by police earlier this year. Next to it, "ACAB," or "All Cops Are Bastards." On the way out of the museum, I noticed a flyer on the front desk. It was advertising a "know-your-rights" training for local tenants and listed the contact information for a community tenant organizer based in Waynesboro. What to make of all of this? I'd be lying if I pretended to have any sharp analysis. But it does strike me that many of the rural and semi-rural communities along the Appalachian Trail do seem to be straddling two worlds, two histories and two political realities. Then again, maybe the neat division I am drawing between these two sides of Waynesboro is not so clear.
Stray Thoughts:
I left off last post with a brief reflection on the altered state of consciousness that I tend to experience while hiking. Unfortunately, these past two weeks have exposed me to a different side of this equation.
Hiking while navigating my foot injury has not led to many moments of “haiku consciousness.” Instead, even the slightest negative stimulus (aka some pain or discomfort) immediately takes me into a spiral of doomsday scenarios and anxious contingency planning. For instance, I have a stress fracture, my hike is over.” Or “you fucking idiot, how did you manage to recover from your bizarre auto-immune disease—which took you off trail the first time—only to roll your foot and end your hike again, 10 days in.” You know, lots of positive talk like that!
To be clear, every day contains moments of joy, some of them captured in the photos above. But the sustained rhythm of walking, losing myself to the trail, occupying my first-level thinking with the mental work of hiking—it’s been all but impossible to get back to that state during these past two weeks.
This is a new challenge for me, one that I frankly didn’t experience last year. The mental work of hiking came very easily to me on trail; in fact, I wouldn’t even describe it as work. If anything, the mental side of my hike last year was my reward for the physical labor.
I wrote last year about a virtuous cycle of self-trust. The trail offers daily opportunities to follow your instincts and make decisions that generally work out quite well, even in challenging circumstances. That daily practice of proving in real time that you can trust yourself is very empowering. And it builds on itself.
I am learning this year that a vicious cycle lies on the other side. Self-doubt can compound as quickly as self-trust and the emotional affects of that cycle can be just as strong. Not giving oneself over to that undertow requires more mental vigilance than I am used to practicing on trail.
It’s a different type of muscle that I’ll have to strengthen, while of course staying equally attentive to my physical well-being.
For now, I’m on to Shenandoah National Park and then Harper’s Ferry, where I’ll likely write my next post in about 10 days.
Much love,
Rebbe Mo//Andrew
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