A view from the Appalachian Trail (photo by Tom Krattenmaker) During my recent three-day backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail, reassurance awaited me at every turn.
The ancient forest shimmered on the stretch of trail I took along the Connecticut-New York border. The sun-drenched, lush greenery exuded a sense of health and prosperity. Views beckoned from the east and west. My frighteningly close encounter with a rattlesnake—they are rare but still present in this part of the country—made me aware of the enduring wildness of this place. (As if I needed reminding; I had seen a bear and its cub on a day hike not far from the rattlesnake spot three weeks earlier.)
The weather was north-eastern summer at its best, temperatures reached a pleasant 27 degrees in the afternoon and cooled down to just over 13 degrees overnight.
Everything was fine, climate change or not. Or was it?
The long-distance hikers I spoke with along the trail and at the campsites told a different story. I had, of course, been watching the New Haven weather forecast for weeks and was ready to go when I saw the weather was favorable. But these long-distance hikers, making their way from Georgia to the AT terminus in Maine, had trudged through relentless heat and humidity, as if 15 miles a day on steep, rocky terrain with 30-pound packs wasn’t enough of an ordeal.
Water jugs help prevent dehydration on the Appalachian Trail (photo by Tom Krattenmaker)
To help hikers avoid dehydration, so-called “Trail Angels” placed jugs and bottles of water at the points where the trail crosses roads and scrawled the words “For AT Thru Hikers” on the plastic sheet.
The long-distance runners had hiked through a violent thunderstorm the day before my brief visit to their world. One hiker told me she welcomed the downpour and walked right through it, unfazed by the potential violence of the storm, enjoying the cool water that pelted her. Another hiker told me he, too, kept walking when the storm broke. He enjoyed the theater, he said, the crackle of lightning and thunder around him. “It’s all part of the experience,” he explained.
This experience is gradually becoming less and less realistic. Increasingly, downpours provide more than just cooling relief. They can flood the rivers the AT crosses, making them dangerous if not impossible to ford. They can wash away parts of the trail and soak the ground so badly that falling trees become a hazard. As temperatures rise, heat stroke becomes a greater danger on the trail, despite the valuable efforts of trail angels.
At what point do even the bravest and fittest long-distance hikers have to say “enough”?
This is already happening on the Pacific Crest Trail. Made famous by the book and film WildThe PCT used to be a challenge, but today it is almost impossible to hike.
“Every year on the Pacific Crest Trail, it becomes more and more impossible to complete a hike that covers a continuous trail from Mexico to Canada as parts of the trail become closed by fires,” testifies one long-time PCT hiker. “Hikers have to skip parts of the trail and hitchhike.” He says, “Maps/guides list water sources that may not be available if there was not enough snow during the winter.”
Such reports make me sad. Not that I’ve always wanted to hike the PCT or AT. A few days at a time is enough for me. It’s the thought of the destruction of our beautiful wilderness that makes me sad and worried. Getting into the woods once or twice a year is incredibly fun, but it’s more than that. It’s restorative. It changes my perspective. It reminds me of what and where the organic, real world is.
Even if you’re one of the many people who think backpackers are crazy and want nothing to do with life in the woods, with bugs, dirt, freeze-dried food, and sleeping on thin mats on hard ground, you know that long-distance hikers are canaries in the coal mine. They understand that the larger forces weighing down the trail are at your doorstep too, if they haven’t already.
I recommend the backpacking experience to anyone who is mobile, has mobility issues and can endure a few days without showers and toilets. The mountains, forests and rivers are to me what a beautiful house of worship is to a religious person. Many other humanists and otherwise secular people say the same. The pristine natural places are much more than “nice” and “pretty”, although they definitely are that. They are profound.
Thoughts both happy and somber flow through the mind of a humanist backpacking the Appalachian Trail this summer. You see so much that is still here and still great. You know it is changing, not in a good way, in step with the planet’s climate. There is so much to love, so much to lose.
