The 2,000 mile subway line

In 1995 my friend Tim and I set off to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail from north to south. We spent the summer months working and saving, meticulously researching every piece of gear that we planned to carry on our backs. We made frequent, semi-compulsive, trips to all every outdoor supply store (a condition we coined the "gearies"). We were driven by the spiritual void of high school and a narrative of adventure that imagined us atop storm savaged peaks, and in pristine wilderness with moose and bears.  The excitement of the adventure lay ahead and like Christmas eve we savored the anticipation. 

Christmas day came in August as stood atop Mt. Katahdin, the northern most terminus of the Appalachian Trail. When we got down we kissed our mothers, pointed our noses south, and started to walk. The trail did not disappoint, we experienced all the weather all the hunger, we air-dried smelly socks, cheered at sunsets and howled at snow squalls, we devoured trail town pizzas and pancakes, and slept in all types of lean-tos and lodges, bivouacked on golf courses, and once under  a church porch. What quickly became clear  was traveling a single a track, a path scratched in the dirt by feet and volunteer trail crews was in some ways more limiting than liberating. We became slaves to the "white blaze," the six inch strip of white paint marking trees, fence posts, rocks, and walls and each day fell into a mantra like existence: wake, oatmeal, stuff sleeping bag, walk eight miles, eat cheese, bread, maybe a snickers bar, walk four miles, unstuff sleeping bag, boil macaroni, sleep, repeat... 

It didn't take long before we started pushing further from the trail. We began hiking at night, following the  small dot of light from our headlamps, we hitchhiked more and spent longer in town. We explored side trails, and laid over at lakes and rivers, crashed on the dorm room floor of an old friend for a couple of nights. The adventure of the trail seemed to be occurring more and more off the trail. By Halloween we had had enough. Faced with the flattening, more suburban stretches of Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, dropping temperatures and a general boredom we hopped a bus home from North Adams, Massachusetts. 

When Tim recently sent me this lovely map of the Appalachian Trail as Subway Line I spent some time reminiscing on the two months we spent hiking and the nature of that adventure. In many ways this map is a perfect representation. Riding the subway is an act of magic. We leave the surface of the world and descend into the subterranean. We travel beneath the street, beneath the buildings, neighborhoods, and wires, beneath the traffic filled tunnels, and old Indian grave sites, beneath broken ceramic water jugs left by the Dutch explorers, and dinosaur bones. The cardinal directions loosen their hold, we follow a colored line and at the appropriate dot on the map we reappear into the sun-filled, chaotic world having missed everything between. 

In some ways hiking the Appalachian Trail is like riding the subway. Head down, pack on back, pushing away the miles each day we followed the white line, hopping off at appropriate stops to buy food, shower, and call home. The moments that mattered were those when we came up for air. A moose in the woods, a swim in the river, beers with a Vietnam Vet, the Highland Games, and pints of ice cream. The miles of track that laid between these moments fade away into one long leaf-colored line. But the animated world through which the trail runs remains with me still. Happy hiking!