Words from the Trail
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I like to call myself a hiker, although I do not get a chance to do it as often as I would like.
The majority of my hikes have taken place in The Great Smoky Mountains, located in Eastern Tennessee. (Someday soon I plan to add my hiking logs from my now-defunct hiking site.)
I am also on an e-mail list run by Ed Wright. He has hiked to the top of Mt. Leconte – the most famous of the mountains in the park, although not the highest point – over 1200 times, and keeps a site where he posts not only his hiking logs, but those of just about anyone who submits one to him.
Today he sent out an e-mail containing bits and pieces from the trail journal of an Appalachian Trail (AT) hiker named Bumpo. In it, Bumpo laments about what he will miss most about the Trail as he returns to New York. It kind of sums up how I feel when I am hiking, and I thought I would share a few of them with you.
- I am going to miss the sound of God sighing through the treetops and across the ridges.
- I’ll miss the dank proximity of the primeval evergreen forest Its heavy air and vibrant mosses.
- I’ll miss those long, revealing views down the ravines and hollows of the Southern Hardwood Forest.
- The unexpected suddenness with which a view will present itself. And with it the unforeseen clarity of places past, of those yet to come and those I will never know.
- The sound incandesce of my breathing as I crept the summit that I’ve worked hard to attain.
- The giddy thrill to realize even, again that I am here on the trail. ”Look God, it’s me: [Jeremy], the spiritual creature having this physical experience.”
- I’ll miss the silky, formular shape of a cloud moving through the trees, rising to become the smoke for which these mountains are known.
- I’ll miss the smell of rain-scrubbed mountain air.
I will actually be going to “The Smokies” in a few weeks and hope to get at least a little bit of hiking in.
