Wolve (His spelling) as I know him was an anomaly, though I understand he fits a kind of archetype of character who unfortunately attempts the AT with some consistency. He appeared to Rescue and I in the middle of the night at uncle Johnny’s hostel in Erwin TN, and immediately he began to weave himself into a labyrinth of lies, the depths of which he seemed lost. After encountering him and others who had met him, only one thing was clear, nothing he said could be taken as true. It was apparent very early that his plan seemed to be that he would yellow-blaze up the trail, swindling overnight stays out of hostels and churches as he was able. His claims lined up closely with my actual life (He claimed to be from Minnetonka, which is only a few miles away from where I grew up, and that he had a similar plan to me beyond the AT.) and more so that of Smokes. (ex-military, tragic death of his wife and child, sometimes a son, sometimes es a daughter.) This was unacceptable to Smokes, when Wolve hitched into Damascus VA, there was a confrontation and Wolve got off trail.

Most of his tales lent to this persona that he must’ve thought was optimized to be attractive to women, a scarred veteran who overcame his dark past, has a rich family back home, and he can cook too! He introduced himself as “from Minnetonka, where the rich people in Minnesota live!” Claimed to work 18 hour days at a non-existant 5-star italian restaurant in St. Paul (it had a very generic name, I think it was “Italiano’s”), but didn’t know what a calzone was, and called tortillas “wet tacos” amongst some other food related oddities. He also had an absurd military story, something about 160 confirmed kills as an Army Ranger sniper in Nicaragua. I can’t help but  wonder what the real story was that led him to this existence.

From here we began to hike with Smokes, and would hang with him until Harper’s Ferry. Smokes is a larger than life character, he would get a carton of cigarettes in every one of his mail drops, which was every 4-6 days. He would chain smoke while hiking, even uphill, and he was fast, it was very seldom that anyone of us would be ahead of him. Last year he hiked the PCT, and he’ll make for the triple crown next year. Almost everyone I met on trail who were on the PCT in 2014 had at least heard of smokes. Rescue and I leap-frogged with Smokes, for a few days leading into Damascus. With the 3 of us and occasionally Eddy, and/or Ironman, who caught up to us just after Erwin, we formed a group, called ourselves The Fellowship, and began to head onwards towards where Nemo would return to Trail.

Returning to trail after Gatlinburg our party met Ox, another young man of thought. Ox had recently graduated with a master’s degree in theology from Notre Dame, and is perhaps the most philosophically religious person I’ve spoken at length with. We didn’t get near enough time with him then, as we split up at Hot Springs NC, but we enjoyed a couple of evenings discussing life, death, and Quentin Tarentino. Around when we met Ox, Nemo came across a dirty wool pullover hoodie and adopted it as his own, despite or perhaps because of Rescue’s protests and concerns of disease. In Hot Springs we got some business done, picked up our bounce box that Janeane had mailed for us back at Neel’s gap. I bought myself a new lighter and more appropriately sized pack, and started a bitter rivalry between myself and Rescue as to who can eat more burgers. This is still unresolved, but I am very confident in my guteral capacity. (It helps that I am still living hiker hungry on trail, and Rescue is back in school.)

A few days out of Hot Springs Nemo and I misplaced Rescue ahead of us, he left us a very sweet registry entry. His loss, the next day Nemo yogi’d us some glazed dounuts from a day hiker while I practiced cutting drills atop a shelter, we even caught up with him that night. We also got some bad news that night, Nemo’s great uncle had died. Nemo made plans to jump off trail for a while from Erwin TN. Nemo’s uncle played an important role in his family’s getting together, as it was told to me an amazing story of intrigue, eastern European politics, and Soviet Era espionage, but it’s his story to tell, so In brief and as I have left elsewhere, RIP Nemo Fam. Our next night, Rescue, Nemo, and I cut our day short to cowboy camp on an rocky outcropping, with a clear view of the sky, sunset, and sunrise. This night on the AT has stuck with me as we talked into the night about life and death, with fresh context and surrounded by earthly beauty.

In Erwin we celebrated St. Patrick’s day with Eddy Spoudazo, saw Nemo off, met Orange Crush, who would be the first finisher of the year, (it was obvious even then,) and spent a couple nights with Uncle Johnny while I got my systems swapped out to accommodate 1 person. There we met the first person on the AT that we didn’t like, but I’ll save that for next week.

After our inadvertent week off trail Nemo and I found ourselves a ways behind everyone we had thus far met, and spent the next few days only in each other’s company. This ended just before midnight at the Fontana Hilton Shelter, when we were awoken by the light of a headlamp and the shuffling of feet. Our new shelter-mate was beat, I got up and assisted him in hanging his food and he told us of his day. Ironman as he came to be called, had started at the NOC, 30 miles back. Having heard something about a pretty girl being at this shelter, he chose to push on an extra 12 or so miles after dark, in hopes of…? He didn’t have an answer as to what he planned to say to this mystery girl, we were oddly disappointed. He was getting off trail for a college visit or something the next day, so we left him hobbling around the shelter in the morning, expecting to never hear from him again.

During our ascent into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park we cam upon a familiar face, Rescue had caught us! He had found some new friends, including the girl who had drawn Ironman’s pink-blazing, and Eddy Spoudazo, who would be another recurring character. Travelling through the Smokies with snow, ice, swordplay atop Clingman’s Dome, and some shenanigans about Rescue wanting to go by Sasquatch, we made our way to Gatlinburg. Piling into a motel that by all accounts should’ve atleast had racecar beds, had a rough night, and thinned our group to just Rescue Nemo and I.

Getting a hitch back to trail was easy, but once the car was in motion things got weird. The driver, a sedentary looking old man, asked for a picture of one of our IDs; this set off some warning lights, but thus far we’d received so much good will from kinda weird folks that our shields were pretty far down. He got my ID, in which I look maybe a little too much like a serial killer, and sent it to his sister as some form of security. He had enough service to get that message out, and to receive her panicked response, but not enough to placate her before losing service entirely. This is when he turned and took us towards the Cades Cove loop, promising wildlife sightings, and a quick return to course. Our protests were too meek, or too polite, or perhaps he was simply determined to kidnap us to relive a smokies trip of his youth. He drove slowly, and stopped frequently to let other cars pass as we exchanged glances, communicating our mutual bewilderment. He told us of trips he had taken in his youth, took blurred pictures with his phone, and hollered out to picnickers an kayakers, returning his head to the vehicle once in a moment of ironic clarity, “They must think I’m crazy!” We agreed. By the end of our diversion, what should’ve been a 20 minute hitch back to trail turned into 3+ hour Odyssey. Returning to cell service we found that his sister had turned my ID over to the sheriff’s office, we got kidnapped, and had the police called on us. Upon our arrival to trail he gave some a passing hiker a can of soda, and with one last glance between us all as if to say, “we just spent 3 hours with you and you didn’t even offer us drinks that you intended to give away?” we fled down the trail before something else could go odd, and that is how we came to know Grandpa Roadtrip.

Nemo and I started our Appalachian Trail journey the 12th of February, 2015. We had a decent idea what we were getting into, although we made some significant miscalculations…

Chiefly regarding how we setup our mailed ration system. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the AT is also its biggest ease, it’s seldom difficult to get off trail and into a local town. Where we half expected to enter a town every week or so, it has proved easy to go into town every few days. We found ourselves scrapping most of our ration plan on day 3, splitting our plan in half, we went from 14 – 16 day rations to 6 – 8 days apiece. We were exceedingly lucky to have the support of my sister Nicole for our first few rations, (and several other times while we were near her stomping grounds) although we probably doubled the number of times she had to come and meet us to drop off our rations. By another stroke of luck we traded some fancy cheese we had, in exchange for the shipping a bounce box forward with the 2nd half of our 1st ration. (Thanks again Janeane) Rationing was probably our biggest recurring challenge while on the AT.

Our other miscalculation: winter. Now this may sound foolish, but Nemo and I are from Minnesota, we figured Georgia was going to be practically tropical by comparison. We weren’t totally wrong on that, on one of our coldest days the temperatures were floating just below zero Fahrenheit, Nemo got a text from his Father whom up in cabin-land had seen minus 40. After Improvising some crampons and snagging some extra layers we were mostly out of the woods on this count.

Lastly and less of a miscalculation, I started the trip ill, and maybe still am. It’s been overall mild but early on had an acute phase which knocked me off trail for a week to see a doctor, and wait for the roads back to trail to get plowed. (another thanks to Nicole for facilitating this) I’ll spare the details, but it’s been manifesting as periodic stomach bug, a couple days of symptoms with a gap before recurring. The gap between episodes has been getting longer so I’ve just been dealing with it as needed. As far as I have seen or heard, it hasn’t transmitted to anyone I’ve traveled with.

At Unicoi gap Nemo and I were greeted at the end of a struggle down an icy descent from Blue Mountain by the a fire rescue truck. They asked if we had seen a 240 pound bald guy up there. We hadn’t, but shortly thereafter he came marching out of the woods after us, looking completely unfazed, with some decent walking crampons on. Having found who they were looking for the fire rescue service offered us a ride into town, we took it on a whim and met maybe our most significant companion of the AT, certainly the first half. Rescue, as he came to be known, split a motel room with us, and was taken aback at Nemo’s calls for, “hotel sword fighting” only to be more bewildered to find that I was carrying a real sword. We left him in town during the next snowstorm, being bored and unfazed by the Georgia snow, but it wouldn’t be long before we met up with him again.