Two Nights on the AT

Earlier this week I got off of the Appalachian Trail. I've had an interest in the trail for about three years now. A friend and I hiked around 105 miles of it as soon as we graduated from high school. Now every time that I drive by it, I'm reminded of what it was like to be out there and how much I miss it. I have hopes, which may never be realized (kind of like my owning a motorcycle one), of someday through hiking the entire thing. As a result, I take every opportunity that I can to get back out there again.


Getting back on the trail seemed like a fitting way to finish off another year of college. No more papers, exams, or early morning classes for a while. Just whatever you are able to carry with you into the woods. My roommate and I decided that we were going to take a 30 mile, 2 night trip.Not that bad of a hike, but tough enough to make you feel as if you did something. The hiking the first night went fine. We started a little late (7pm), but the weather was perfect, and the coolness of the night kept us from having to take a lot of breaks. As we rolled into camp around 10:30p, I quickly remembered one of the three things that I absolutely detest about backpacking, sleeping. (The other two are brushing my teeth and using a privy. For some reason, you can never get the taste of dried pineapple out of your mouth. As for the privy part, do I really need to go into detail?)


Things were fine the entire night. It wasn't until morning that we began to have problems. From 6-7 in the morning, person after person kept on walking literally inches away from our tent. Normally you might be able to sleep through somebody walking right past you, but not in the woods. Leaves crunch, you're naturally more alert,  and there's only a thin sheet of canvas separating you from what your imagination perceives to be the hill billy version of Freddy. I couldn't imagine why someone would decide to walk so close to our tent. After all, were the woods not big enough for all of us? Everything finally made sense when we got up. Due to it being extremely dark when we finally made it to camp, we could not see where we were setting up the tent. It turned out that we were right on the path to the privy. That sounds that we kept on hearing were the sounds of a dozen bitter hikers, stumbling to shuffle their way around our tent just so that they could use the bathroom.


Things did not get much better the next night. After about a 15 mile day, we finally made it to our shelter around 3:30pm. We set up our tent (well away from the privy this time), talked with some hikers ("Oh, so y'all were the guys."), and decided to eat dinner at 5pm. Dinner was amazing. Various forms of chicken were served as well as, beef stew, tuna soup, and to top it all off, fried spam for dessert (yum). After eating we put the trash by one of the sides of the tent, our first mistake, and went back up to talk with the other hikers. One thing that you must understand about the woods is that you must hang up your food and trash. If you don't you will have an army of bears, skunks, opossum, deer, and various other woodland creatures right at your front door begging to get in (tent door, that is). (One night when I was with my friend from high school, he left a granola bar in his bag. We were up the entire night listening to a hundred different rodents hop around and shake that stupid wrapper all night.)


Anyway, as we were getting ready for bed, we put all of our food and what we thought was all of our trash into a bag and hung it on something called a bear pole. Everything except, of course, the very fragrant remains of our dinner. Not long afterwards we went to sleep. Everything was fine until about 10:30p. It was then that I woke to find the side of the tent parallel to me stretching inwards about a foot like something was pushing it. After pushing the tent three more times, whatever it was finally found what it was after, the pile of yummy delicious goodness that's known as leftover fried spam and tuna soup residue. Unfortunately, that pile of assorted meat parts was right beside my head. Whatever it was that had previously been causing the entire side of the tent to bulge inwards was now poking me in the head.


The first couple of times were kind of scary (ya think?). I quickly got up and hit the tent only to hear something go tromping through the woods and then return 45 seconds later. This routine of me getting bumped, swatting the tent, listening to something go running off into the woods and then return, continued for about 2 hours. Then I fell asleep. It's not that the poking me in the head stopped, but I was so tired that I think I fell asleep between swats. Then around 5am I woke to the sound of an army of vicious little mice chewing. I wasn't getting poked anymore, but the sound of a thousand little rodent mouths gnawing away at garbage right beside my head quickly got annoying, and so I finally did what I should have done all along, flipped my sleeping bag around so that my feet could deal with whatever beast was outside instead.

The source of my frustration

When we woke up we discussed what could have possibly been the source of my sleeplessness. Bears, deer, skunks, and even Sasquatch were discussed (though when I mentioned Sasquatch my roommate was quick to reply that he thought they weren't allowed off the reservation). In the end, I think that I've come to the conclusion that it was just a really big raccoon.


The next day was amazing. A seven mile hike to the top of two mountains, two stream crossings, and getting lost in horse country made for an awesome hike, but I've learned my lesson. From now on, if I'm going to forget to hang up the trash, I'm secretly making someone else sleep beside it.