North Read online

  Who knew how many moonshined-up truck drivers were down here? Was he one in a million, or did most trail-adjacent Southerners enjoy pulling handguns on thru-hikers and making them drink from jugs of fiery liquor?

  As I ran, my thoughts started to spin up and distract me.

  Everywhere I looked seemed like a great place to stash a body. Sharp turns, dark roads, deserted hollows, forested hills, deep trenches, long gashes in the earth that no one had looked in for centuries, if ever. All these places were populated by my imagination with fresh corpses and their murderers.

  But when the anxious spell passed, I realized that I could relate to the men and women down here. Peel away a few choice decals, furl up a flag or two, and they weren’t that different from the folks I’d grown up around in rural Minnesota. Long, hard stares from dead-end-road inhabitants and a “Don’t Tread on Me” mentality existed everywhere in this country. And most of them would probably have politely helped a damsel in distress with a flat tire. At least that’s what I told myself.

  I know now, with a little less on my mind and a little more distance from these events, that most of the people we ran into were almost certainly good, kind, hospitable people who were far more likely to lend a hand than bite one off. In fact, that part of the trail is particularly known among AT hikers for its Southern hospitality. Aside from the crazy local guide who seemed to be tracking Jenny and old Trav’s chauffeur, the locals in the South were wonderful, especially at some of the cafés near the trail where JLu politely asked if they would cook my home fries in oil, not butter or lard.

  Still. Night ten, we huddled up extra-close as we grabbed a few hours of sleep in Castle Black at Dennis Cove Road.

  It was clear that we wouldn’t be able to run together in the morning every day like we’d planned to. The big problem was Castle Black—who would drive it, who would be there with our belongings if the two of us ran. When it was just JLu and me out on the trail, she was often tethered to that fortress.

  So we developed new traditions, one of which—making border crossings together—became a favorite. On day eleven, we were poised to leave Tennessee and enter Virginia. Right across the border was another milestone: the town of Damascus, a classic trail town that treated hikers well.

  But fate intervened on the trail to Damascus. It arrived in the form of a text message, a shock in its own right, considering how rare cell service was on that section of the trail. As soon as I recognized the message’s sender, I stopped dead in my tracks. I had no idea what it might contain, but I knew it would be worth a read.

  If u get this and maybe u have thought of it but the northbound record is still easily in reach keep rolling great to follow progress u r doing great.

  Karl “Speedgoat” Meltzer had made his first appearance on my journey north. And it was classic Speedgoat. Behind that veneer of support was the implication that I might—might—still be able to get the other record, the one for a northbounder (NoBo). The challenge, like a chiropractic manipulation, snapped my head back on straight. I disagreed. I could still get the overall FKT. Which I told him.

  Thanks dude! NoBo?!? I’ve still got the SoBo in sights. Putting in 50 today. Should be in Damascus by dark. Quad is coming around. I’ll walk the record if I need to!:)

  Cool just keep ur head in it youll be fine when palmer went north he walked the first 1000 miles did not run a step

  Cool, thanks dude! Good beta. I’m able to run a bit today so we’ll see. Jenny will touch base to see if you want to still come out. Can get you a ticket.

  im still game im working an aid st this wknd have jenny call me Monday keep movin

  Here’s the thing: if anyone had come across me hiking and hobbling toward Damascus and asked what I thought my chances were for the FKT, I would have been…more than cautious. I wouldn’t have advised putting a single cent on me, despite El Coyote’s advice “never bet against the Champ.”

  But Speedgoat challenging me from somewhere far away? Implying it was already game over? I knew the AT speed record was his baby and I’m sure he was concerned I might scoop it from him. Was he trying to mess with me, or was he just serving reality straight up like the emotionless old Goat always did?

  His glib prediction set my jaw.

  I would still get the FKT. Southbound, northbound, whatever- and however-bound. I would claw and crawl all day, every day, to Katahdin if I had to.

  I had needed some ego fire starter, and I had desperately needed hope. The Speedgoat gave me both.

  That evening as darkness consumed the woods, I backtracked half a mile with Jenny so that together we could touch the sign welcoming us to Virginia.

  * * *

  Jurker was still gimpy. He was moving slowly, but at least he was making progress north, and that was all I cared about. Friends back home were texting me things like Hope he gets back to putting in fifty-mile days soon, but I wasn’t sure that would happen. His injuries weren’t healing as quickly as he was used to, but such is the curse of aging. Or maybe it was the curse of the AT speed record and the insane daily mileage.

  However, things were getting easier for me. I had finally gotten into a groove. I’d established some systems and routines for Castle Black and had a handle on crewing this juggernaut trail. The bugs and humidity didn’t even faze me; I was adapting.

  I hadn’t grown up in an outdoorsy family, but I always felt safe in the mountains. In Seattle, I would drive up to the Cascades after work and run an eighteen-mile loop by myself. I’d often finish past dark. A lot of my runs back then were done in the evening rain, alone with my thoughts and my music. I figured that if I came across other people out there, they’d be my people: runners, hikers, and creatives just needing some fresh air or looking to clear their minds. Before Jurker, I’d never dated a runner; I was used to running alone.

  But even so, with Horty and El Coyote gone and Jurker out on the trail almost all day, I had a lot more alone time than I needed. I missed my friends back home. My meet-ups with Jurker became my only social hour. We would sit on the floor of Castle Black for thirty minutes, eat lunch, and catch up on news headlines—he always wanted to hear about what was going on in the outside world. It was hard for him to leave the van and our sliver of normalcy, and it was hard for me to kick him out and send him back into the woods, leaving me with endless errands and my only friends, a Bluetooth speaker and an electric fan. They kept me company like Tom Hanks’s Wilson in Cast Away.

  All those hours on the trail allowed Jurker’s mind to wander a little too much. One afternoon, after I’d spent the day chasing down frozen fruit for his smoothies, he appeared out of the woods, approached Castle Black, and said, “Hey, can you call Norm and ask him to mow our lawn? And then can you e-mail our electrician? I think he overcharged us for the solar-panel installation on the van.”

  Okay, in all my spare time I’ll be sure to do those things. Right after I get gas, drain the water from the cooler, refill it with ice, wash the dishes, drive to the next spot, make dinner, and wait without cell service for your sorry ass.

  Then, as he sipped his smoothie, he said, “This is good, thank you. But you know what sounds really good? Thai food.” I laughed to keep myself from strangling him. I realized that he had no idea about my reality. His perception of what I did while he was inching his way up the trail was nothing like what actually happened.

  On the morning we left Damascus, local trail runners J.J. and Beth offered to crew for Scott, which I was nervous about. I didn’t really trust strangers to crew for him; our entire trip relied on the crew being where it was supposed to be when he got there. But Jurker was so excited. “Enjoy your morning off!” he said to me as the three of them left. It was a nice idea, but I think he thought I was going to sleep in, eat breakfast in a restaurant, maybe even catch up with friends, check out the town some. Instead, I did two loads of laundry, cleaned and organized the van, called Norm about our lawn (we were ticketed for it being overgrown), and got groceries and gas. Then I made my wa
y up to Grayson Highlands State Park. Horty had told me I had to go there and check out the wild ponies.

  I waited a long time near the ponies, lying on the grass and watching them graze. Then I started to worry, so I hiked up the trail. I went two miles before I finally saw them. Jurker was moving so slowly that I felt bad for his gracious local companion Beth. I guess I could have slept in after all.

  Even though I was most comfortable in the mountains, I wasn’t actually in the mountains. It would be one thing if I was out on the trail; I knew I could outrun or out-karate-chop any assailant. I’d heard too many stories from friends whose cars had been broken into at trailhead parking lots. Trailheads are magnets for petty thieves. I felt safer in the trees. But I was stuck in a well-marked van on the side of a dirt road or in a tiny parking area. I had so much to get done at each meeting spot that when my chores were finished, all I wanted to do was take a nap, and I just had to hope that nobody would try to break in. Sketchy cars occasionally pulled up and strangers tried to talk to me, and I started to resent Jurker for being so slow, for leaving me stranded out there alone.

  I had never spent any time in the South, so I had no sense of place, no connection to the community. I’d heard stories of murders on the AT not too far north from where we were, and while everybody knew where Scott was at all times, I didn’t have a GPS tracker on me. I could end up in some ditch and nobody would find me for days or ever.

  On day eleven, as Jurker was running, I was having a particularly hard time finding the road that would take me to our next meeting spot. When I finally found the little trailhead lot, I was surprised to see several cars already there—but that meant there’d be hikers around, which made things safer.

  I parked Castle Black, got out, and opened the back doors to look for Jurker’s headlamp. I knew he was going to come in late and he didn’t have his headlamp, so I was planning on running back with the light to meet him. As I walked around the van, I felt the creepy sensation of eyes on me. I scanned the parking lot full of cars and saw a dirty white sedan with somebody sitting in the driver’s seat. The door was partly open.

  I tried not to look, but he was full-on staring at me. The dust on the windshield obscured my view of him, but from what I could tell, he didn’t look like a hiker—he could have passed for Jerry Garcia’s feral brother. I looked around and saw that all the other cars were unoccupied. It was just the two of us in that trailhead parking lot. I got back in the van and locked the doors.

  Now I was in a pickle. If I ran down the trail to bring Jurker his headlamp, the Grateful Gawker might break into our home on wheels and find a lot of nice comforts. But if I stayed, who knew what might happen to me? I glanced over at my side mirror and, yup, there he was. Still staring.

  I weighed my options. I decided that Jurker needed me and that this guy looked too fat to actually run after me. So I jumped out of the van, slammed the door, locked it, and ran as fast as I could up the trail. I kept looking behind to see if he was following me. Once I’d gone some distance, I stopped to see if I could hear him breaking a window or anything like that. Nothing. So far.

  I was less than a mile down the trail when I saw Jurker—a huge relief. Big Thump was gonna thump down on Shakedown Strut.

  “Jurker! There’s a creepy guy in the parking lot sitting in his car, and he kept staring at me and casing Castle Black.” I was out of breath and distracted, but I noticed that Jurker was moving well and at a good pace. “I felt like he might mess with me or the van.”

  Jurker bolted down the trail so fast I could barely keep up, but when we got to the parking lot, the guy was gone. At least for the moment.

  Chapter 7

  Southern Hospitality

  Day Eleven

  I was feeling good. Not based on my injuries, but based on the AT terrain and tread. I was actually running again. I was easing my way down the gentle slope of trail to the parking lot. Daylight was waning but I still had plenty of light—good thing, since I’d forgotten to grab my headlamp at the last meet-up with JLu. I was planning to run another eight miles, which meant I’d finish up around 10:00. A good day, all in all. Back on track. Back on schedule.

  Then I saw someone running toward me. It was JLu and she was waving her arms wildly, like someone flagging down a cop car. When she got near enough, she immediately started telling me what was wrong. It was some creep again. I’d had it. I ran on ahead as fast as I could. When I got to the parking lot, he was gone, and Castle Black was intact. But it didn’t matter—I was pissed and physically drained. I decided to call it a day and forget the next section; I could bang that out in the morning. We’d sleep here tonight. I didn’t want JLu driving around alone that evening and waiting at yet another dirt-road crossing for two hours. She told me she was fine, that I should keep going, but I was done. I decided right then and there to stop sending her to remote and sketchy places alone, day or night. I would start doing longer stretches without support, twenty to twenty-five miles at a time, and we’d meet only at paved-road crossings. No more creepy encounters.

  The next day, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I had been feeling stiff and achy in the mornings, but that day I cranked out the eight-mile section in two hours. I was running, listening to music, carrying a running vest that held food and a hydration bladder with an inline mini–water filter. I felt in my element; I could have been on a long training run in the peaks back home. By the time I got to the next meet-up, at a gas station near an Interstate 81 overpass, I had finished thirty-two miles, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  JLu seemed surprised to see me so early. She had taken a nap in a nearby restaurant parking lot and had just gotten to the gas station.

  “Jurker!” She jumped out of the van to greet me. “Hey, you’re early! You’ll never guess what just happened. I was looking for a place to park when a red beat-up car pulls up to the van. This old dude asks, ‘What time did Scott get in last night?’ I was thinking to myself, Who the hell is this and what is he talking about? I thought maybe he was some superfan who wanted a live update, but he didn’t look like a runner or even somebody who owned a computer. Then I took a closer look at his face. Same scraggly beard, same disheveled look. Different vehicle, but it could only be him. The guy from last night!”

  “No way! Are you sure?” I looked around the parking lot to see if he was still there.

  “Hundred percent. I’m positive. I figured out who he was! The Grateful Gawker in broad daylight looked exactly like that guy who trolls your Facebook page!”

  “Warren Doyle?”

  “Yes!”

  I laughed and sat down on the edge of the van. That guy had been talking trash about me while I was on the trail. The other day I’d caught up to two thru-hikers who were surprised to see me. They said, “We didn’t know you were still out here! Warren Doyle said you were done, that your leg was injured. Said this wasn’t gonna be your year.”

  Of course he told them that. Warren liked to position himself as the gatekeeper of the Appalachian Trail, and for some reason, he had a serious bone to pick with trail runners. He loved to try to pit the hikers against us. During Speedgoat’s record attempts, he’d really laid into him online. It was like he had a personal vendetta against runners on the trail. He proclaimed on his website that “walking the entire Appalachian Trail is not recreation. It is an education and a job.” Okay, Warren, but not everybody wants to walk. Let people choose their own speed.

  Horty had said, “I’ve got my spies on the AT,” and now I knew who he was referring to. But Warren seemed to take spying to another level. He probably was out here making sure that I wasn’t cheating, that I wasn’t faking it. After all, we were just visitors in Warren’s world. He represented one special section of AT obsessives whose earnest love for the place had curdled over the years into a sense of possession. It was palpable online and on the trail. Forget checking to see if I was cheating—he probably had a laundry list of arbitrary trail rules, and he was keeping track of the ones I broke like a self-
appointed AT hall monitor.

  Some people loved him. JLu and I met part of his group and they were having a great time with him. To be fair, you couldn’t ask for a better guide—Warren had hiked the AT more than anyone else (an astonishing eighteen times and counting). And Horty was friends with him, so who knew? But he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Just minutes after JLu’s encounter with Warren, a thru-hiker asked her what the trail was like up ahead. She told him, “I’m not really sure, sorry. But Warren Doyle is right there—you could ask him!” And the hiker rolled his eyes and moved his hand like he was spanking the monkey.

  I appreciated Warren’s monitoring of record attempts and I welcomed the scrutiny, but the manner in which he carried out that monitoring crossed a line. He could have introduced himself to JLu; she would have been happy to answer any questions and show him whatever proof he was looking for.

  It’s one thing to post crap on social media, and it’s another thing to spread rumors on the trail to fellow thru-hikers. But nobody spooks my wife.

  On the climb up near Walker Mountain, as firehoses of water sprayed down from the black clouds and thunder boomed, I spotted a figure covered by an old-school poncho; the only thing visible was a long, grizzled beard with rain rivulets gushing through it. Some might take him for a character in Murder on the Appalachian Trail. There was no mistaking him.