An atypical day (yet not THAT atypical) on the A.T.
Prince and me, May 21, 2024
After describing what a typical day on the A.T. looked like for me, I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the times that were more unique, although not necessarily uncommon, on the A.T. The culture of the A.T. includes things such as trail magic (kindnesses done for hikers at no cost to the hikers) and trail angels (the people who provide the trail magic). These things and people are encountered on a fairly regular basis when you’re hiking in the NOBO (northbound) bubble (large concentration of hikers), but they are still special, standout moments in the routine of thru-hiking.
May 21, 2024 was not the first time I experienced trail magic from a trail angel, but it was a funny day of unexpected happenings that will always stay with me. Steve had just been visiting me in southern Virginia while Trail Days was happening in Damascus. (Trail Days is a 3-day festival in Damascus, VA celebrating those who hike the AT.) Steve had dropped me off on May 19 and I was hiking alone but in the hopes of catching up with my friends within a few days. During my weekend with Steve, I started having trouble with my right ear; I couldn’t hear out of it, and over-the-counter eardrops hadn’t helped me. By May 21, I knew I needed to get off trail and see a healthcare provider, for the first time since I’d started hiking.
FarOut app showing my route on May 21, 2024. The A.T. is the red line.
I had a 13.5-mile day of hiking planned for May 21, and I got started early to get to Brushy Mountain Outpost for lunch and to hopefully get a shuttle from the road crossing at Route 52 into the nearby town of Bland, VA to go to a clinic. I hiked with my buddy Prince for a portion of the morning and was glad for the company. We made it to Brushy Mountain Outpost right around lunchtime. It’s a small convenience store/grill on a rural mountain road, and they had veggie burgers (a win for me!) and ice cream. Town food is a treat while hiking.
Prince and I reunited with a bunch of other hiking buddies at Brushy Mountain Outpost and after eating lunch, I started looking on the FarOut app for shuttle drivers in the area. Prince shared some names and phone numbers with me, and I found a few others. In total, I contacted 10 potential shuttle drivers and had some not respond to me, others say that they were unable to help that afternoon. I began to get nervous that I wouldn’t find someone to drive me to town to the doctor, and I realized how, as a city resident, I had taken the ability to access healthcare via my own car, public transit, or ride-share very much for granted.
Finally, one of Prince’s finds paid off: a trail angel named Dijeridoo called me after receiving my text and came to pick me up within 10 minutes of us talking. I said goodbye to my friends and hopped into Dijeridoo’s Ford pickup to ride with him to the clinic.
Dijeridoo was incredibly kind. He’s a Triple Crowner, meaning he has thru-hiked all three of the longest trails in the US: the A.T., the Pacific Crest Trail (P.C.T.), and the Continental Divide Trail (C.D.T.). The best part about hikers becoming trail angels is that they know exactly what a hiker wants and needs. In Dijeridoo’s case, this translated to going above and beyond for me, a stranger who he’d just met but who was connected to him through the bond of long-distance hiking. In normal life, I’d never hop into a pickup truck with a stranger; on the A.T., that level of trust quickly becomes normalized. You need to be able to rely on others to access certain services more easily, and fortunately, the level of trust given on the A.T. is usually rewarded.
Dijeridoo drove me to the clinic in Bland, VA and waited in the waiting room while I saw a nurse practitioner who used a water pump/squirt gun thingy to clean impacted ear wax out of my left ear, which was gross but oddly satisfying. It was such a relief to be able to hear out of both ears again! Dijeridoo then accompanied me to the Dollar General next to the clinic so I could resupply (buy food for the next few days of hiking). He then drove me to the pharmacy to pick up the antibiotic eardrops that the nurse practitioner had prescribed, since she had seen inflammation of my left eardrum and couldn’t rule out an ear infection. My prescription wasn’t ready yet, so Dijeridoo drove me back to his house to meet the host of the Hiker Trash podcast, Ronnie Pettit, because Dijeridoo was going to be a guest on the podcast. I was impressed and a bit awestruck, but Dijeridoo’s down-to-earth and kind attitude made this seem like a natural occurrence.
As we were driving, in the waiting room of the clinic, and shopping at Dollar General, Dijeridoo had told me about his time hiking long-distance trails and how he had wanted to be part of the culture of kindness on the trail. He had received help from many trail angels in his three hikes, and he had also seen some turn helping hikers into more of a business than he himself was looking to do. He bought a house in Bastian, VA and was renovating it to be a space for A.T. hikers to stop and stay on their journey. He planned to do all of this as a donation-based service for hikers rather than charging them a set fee. I was impressed by the generosity of this idea. Physical and financial accessibility of the A.T. is something I thought about a lot while hiking and could be a blog post on its own. Dijeridoo’s idea would help ease the financial burden for long-distance hikers in a way that could make it more feasible for some folks to hike, and I admired and appreciated that very much.
After a few minutes of Dijeridoo talking to Ronnie and me sorting and packing my food, Dijeridoo asked if I could drive. When I said yes, he tossed me the keys to his truck so I could go pick up my prescription and he could continue to be interviewed by Ronnie. I was stunned at the level of trust Dijeridoo showed me, and I also was extremely apprehensive that I was going to damage his truck while driving on rural roads back to the pharmacy. I was thankful that we were in the valley and that the roads I needed to take were mostly straight and flat, and I made it back to the pharmacy and then back to Dijeridoo’s with me and the truck in one piece. Dijeridoo then asked if I’d be willing to drive his truck back up to Brushy Mountain Outpost by myself to pick up a couple more hikers who were staying at his place that evening, but I didn’t feel confident enough in my driving ability to drive the truck up and down the windy mountain roads. He was calm and accepting of my refusal, and he drove me back to Brushy Mountain Outpost so he could get me back to the trail and pick up the hikers himself.
I had only been off trail for a few hours, but I felt like I’d traveled quite a distance mentally and emotionally during that time. I still had 2-3 miles to go from Brushy Mountain Outpost to Helvey Mill Shelter, and I had plenty to think about while I finished my hike for the day. I felt giddy at the adventure I’d just had, meeting and quickly connecting with a stranger, trusting and being trusted by him, and receiving such kindness that I wanted to pay it forward and to figure out a way to bring that kind of trusting and kindness back to the “normal” and “civilized” world.
I grew up in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs, raised by parents who had both grown up in Philly. My mom and dad taught me to keep doors locked, to not get into cars with strangers, to be aware of my surroundings and use common sense when deciding when and how to interact with others. All of this is practical advice and not unique to living in or near a major city; most people I know and who I met on the trail were raised similarly. But the culture of the A.T. turns that thinking on its head. Instead of the default being skepticism and mistrust, it becomes openness and trusting others until they give you a reason not to. Instead of focusing completely on self-protection, you take care of yourself but also look out for others and help them when you can. Is this easier when you take a small subset of people and put them in extreme circumstances, where something as simple as going to a doctor’s office becomes an excursion requiring outside help? Does hiking put people in a calmer and more open state of mind where trail magic is seen as a reason to celebrate rather than as a cause for suspicion and concern? Or are hikers just hungry enough to suspend any mistrust they have of others?
I don’t have definitive answers, but here’s my current working theory. When you put a group of strangers together in a new situation where the only definite and known thing in common is the desire to walk thousands of miles through woods and over mountains in the name of achieving an audacious goal, you create an instant way of bonding and the time to build and strengthen that trust with their fellow hikers. Those who can’t join in on the hike can show their support via trail magic, sharing in the experience by brightening hikers’ days and helping them go a few more miles with a full belly and a lighter heart. As a hiker, even if you are meeting a new trail angel, you can connect that experience with the trail angel who helped you 30 miles in, 300 miles in, 1,000 miles in, and you are therefore more likely to trust them. And while there are times when my friends and I encountered creepy hikers or off-putting trail angels, the majority of people on the trail were good, kind, and trustworthy. I think the same is true in “normal” society…I’m just less sure of how to bring that out in day-to-day life in a city, at a grocery store, in a park, at a coffee shop. But I want to keep trying.