AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller Page B

With town in sight, I shake it off and press on.
    All that we see of the town are a few businesses near an off-ramp of Interstate 81. It is the typical cluster of businesses that serve passing traffic: a gas station, a restaurant, a Dairy Queen, and a motel. We would visit them all, starting with the motel. As Crash checks in ahead of me, he shuffles through a small stack of bills and cards kept in a Ziploc bag, the hiker version of a wallet. Wordlessly, he extends one of the cards to me. The card has a picture of a clean-shaven young man, heavy, with a round face. I don't know why he is showing me this person. Finally it dawns on me that it is a picture of him on his driver's license. That's how he looked before the hike.

    Awol south of Atkins, Virginia.

    Crash started out with a good bit of weight to lose. He struggled early on. People from home doubted his ability to thru-hike, and before getting through Georgia, he started to agree with them. It was tough, he was lonely, and he started to wonder why he was doing it. He hitched to Blairsville, and from there he arranged a bus ride back to Atlanta. As it happened, he had to wait a day for the bus's departure. In that day, he had time to reflect on his situation. He didn't want people to be right about him. He didn't want to go back feeling like a failure. He put his pack back on and returned to the trail.
    Our motel is a simple one-story motel with a single row of rooms. More rooms have backpacks, boots, and hiking poles parked out front than cars. I get clean and take a look at my troublesome left heel. The bamboo shoot pain I had was in the same location of the blister I had in Erwin. Dead skin from that blister has peeled, leaving a circle of ragged skin around an inflamed red area. In the center of the whole mess is a new blisterlike abscess. All my other blisters I have treated with apathy, but I put effort into this unhealthy-looking wound. I clean it, coat it with antibiotic ointment, and paste a bandage over the top.
    Crash and I have dinner at the restaurant and dessert at Dairy Queen with two other thru-hikers, Jeff and "Double A" (written as "AA" in shelter registers). I tell AA that she should have the trail name "Snow White" instead. She has jet black hair, a pale complexion, and looks that are too clean and soft for a thru-hiker. She has heard this suggestion enough times for it to raise her dander. AA is simply the initials of her name, Allison Allen. I comment on the coincidence that my next door neighbor has the reverse name: Allen Allison. I go on to explain that I always had difficulty with the neighbor's name because the previous neighbor in the same house had the last name "Allen," like AA. To further compound the coincidence, we learn through our conversation that AA went to a small college in Georgia (Toccoa Falls) with Lisa Allen, the daughter of my previous neighbor.
    We talk of motivations for thru-hiking. "I've always wanted to thru-hike," AA says. "My dad and I hiked some when I was little." Answering that you want to do a thing because you have always wanted to do it seems somewhat circular, but it is as common as any other explanation.
    Writing daily journal entries is a welcome part of my routine. I also write a newspaper article every two weeks for the Floridoday newspaper. Writing for the newspaper does not come easily. I must submit an article before leaving Atkins, so I spend the morning collecting my thoughts and getting them composed into e-mail. At the moment, I regret having committed to writing the articles, and I am dismayed that the act of recording is interfering with the trip that I have proposed to record, but these thoughts are temporal. I am glad that I write. Experience is enriched by reliving it, contemplating it, and trying to describe it to another person.
    This is the first time on my hike that I feel burdened by tasks I put on myself. Back in the real world, I routinely enlisted myself in an excessive array of