The Slog, Part 1
I’m the kind of hiker and outdoorsman that you might hear about from time to time. Yeah, no, not the guy who summits K2 on a unicycle - I’m the kind of guy whose body they find 20 feet from a popular hiking trail. “He was so close,” park rangers might say. “If only he’d brought a compass…”
I’d rented a cabin in the Shenandoah National Forest. I was going to solo hike after Mass and teaching a catechism class. The class went late, though, and I didn’t even start the two-hour drive to the trailhead until 2:00. Maybe even 3:00.
Winter had already thudded onto Northern Virginia as if cold, a gray headstone toppled onto it. There was none of that festive holiday mood, at least not yet. It was just cold. And dark. And cold.
As usual, I’d overloaded my pack, including three different books, a full gallon jug of water, and probably a bottle of whiskey (my preferred end-of-hike beverage). But I was going to start a hike in unknown territory one hour before dark. To my credit, at least I’d thought to bring a map.
The light was already starting to fade by the time I reached the trailhead. Snowflakes the size of cotton swabs drifted down through the tips of bare chestnut and oak trees, which themselves seemed to capture, store and broadcast the cold like ghost repeaters. The clouds roiled above on this, the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, concealing the top ridge and Skyline Drive, promising some interesting weather by the time I arrived. But down here at the base of the mountain, it was as quiet as a high-domed mausoleum for Titans.
I set out.
About halfway through the six-mile hike, I realized I might have made a mistake. Most of the trail was actually an abandoned access road. It was so clogged with dead vegetation and detritus that I frequently had to course-correct to get back on it. After it was time to flick on the headlamp, the road became a trail…and then basically disappeared. I thought I was lost - truly, irredeemably lost - more than a few times. And by now an ice storm slammed into the west side of the Blue Ridge, spilling its frozen cargo over the ridge and down into this valley. This was no longer a bucolic wintry scene of lazy cotton balls; it was a pyroclastic cloud of flechette needles.
I took shelter behind an oak tree to review the Trail Club map and have a little water break. One problem: the gallon jug I’d clipped to my pack was frozen solid. I was starting to doubt my chances of finding this cabin in the dark, in an ice storm, and now my worries went from hypothermia to dehydration.
That, and I kid you not, I felt malevolent presences watching me from just beyond my headlamp’s glow. Maybe that’s normal for people alone in the forest at night, but I felt the first manic shivers of panic starting to rise.
The map no longer made sense to me. I’d lost my bearings. However, I knew one thing about the area - Skyline Drive lay atop the ridge of the mountain, so if I could just keep going up, eventually I’d run into it, and I could walk down to a ranger station. If, that is, that storm didn’t blow me right off the ridge and back down into the valley.
This was where the Slog began.
My pants were wet and frozen at the same time. I was sweating, despite the cold, but the sweat became ice almost immediately. Even though it’s physically impossible, the gallon of water seemed heavier in its frozen state. And bringing that copy of the Summa Theologica sure didn’t seem like a great idea at that point.
Nonetheless, I walked. Onward and upward. I found remnants of a trail. Maybe not the trail, but one that more or less went in an upward direction. By now, I was sure I was going to die. I’d barely been married for a year, if that, and I was going to make my wife a widow (These days she’d probably say, “So close!”) But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, as they say. I was fully aware of the symbolism. My brain, nice and comfy in its warm brain box, just kept going, “You know you’re manifesting a metaphor, right?”
“Shut up.”
I kept walking. There was no other option. It was literally:
A) Make it to the road, or;
B) Die.
Every step lugging that pack up the mountain felt like everything I had to give. I realize I’d made a very, very bad mistake. Cockiness could kill. I was so embarrassed I thought about just sitting down and letting it happen. Just a few minutes of pain before everything became numb, and then sleepy time…
Eventually even my brain shut up - frozen coma, probably - and the only thing I was consciously aware of was the small pool of light in front of my two shuffling feet, the ice crystals slicing through it, and the increasingly loud roar of the storm just on the other side of the ridge.
The roar. It was louder. A lot louder. This was good. It meant that I was close to the top. I just had to keep going.
The “trail,” if that’s what it was, dog-legged to the right. I could see the ridgeline now. It was more of a negative image, really - spindly black trees silhouetted against a slightly-less-black background of storm clouds, likely illuminated by Hawkinstown an hour to the west. I thought about leaving the trail (basically committing the worst sin one can make hiking in unfamiliar territory) but if the terrain above was anything like the gnarly, thorny, rocky ground I could see in ten feet of headlamp light, I’d be doomed.
Dogging to the right was the only way to go. It made no sense, and it seemed insane to go anywhere but the 200 yards straight to my destination, so I kept walking. Shambling, really, but it was forward motion. My hands were now useless even in my gloves, but my feet still worked, even if I couldn’t feel them.
That’s when I heard the scream.
More soon…
So the cliffhanger- did you survive? Or do we know the ghost?