Dreams Deferred (Again)

or A Hiker’s Guide to Global Pandemic

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How quickly time has passed since our send-off event at Dorcas Library on Leap Day! So much has happened, in so brief a time.

As posted on Facebook, Craig and I have postponed our trek of the Appalachian Trail for the time being. Depending upon travel restrictions from state to state, we may begin to do short sections as soon as we are out from under our self-imposed quarantine. Certainly, we hope to be able to continue in 2021, and we are continuing to train toward that end.

Deciding not to start our trek was difficult. We have spent hours training for this trek. We have spent money on equipment specific to the demands of this trek. We have been singularly focused on this hike for a full year; and I have been thinking about this hike for 50 years.

However, as we discussed options and monitored trusted scientific sources, the way became abundantly clear. To travel from town to town, carrying a virus along with us to which none of us are immune, was not acceptable. To travel the trail and risk becoming sick or injured in any fashion, and perhaps require assistance from mountain rescue units, was unacceptable.  Certainly, requiring medical assistance of any kind from a trail town during pandemic was unacceptable. To add our supply needs to small stores in trail communities, already feeling pressure of not having enough of the right things, and having too many of the wrong things, was unacceptable. And to do these things when there was a clear option to return home seemed unconscionable. 

Now, our decision seems so obvious and so clear. We expected that other hikers would do the same, and certainly most have. What I did not expect was animosity from the hiking community toward those making this decision. We were called “armchair hikers.” We were called “judgmental” and told that such decisions were and should fall under the HYOH (hike your own hike) philosophy.

Name-calling doesn’t faze me. But people who willfully ignore public health concerns do! There is a distinct group of folks in the hiking community who appear to be completely ignorant of the effects of thru-hiking during a pandemic; or, if not ignorant… who simply feel that the science and math of this virus is wrong. That they will be proved to be somehow wiser and tougher than the rest of us. They are relatively clear that they expect to remain healthier on the trail than off, and relatively blithe about their chances of burdening trail towns at all.

Certainly, a person who hiked the trail without requiring resupply, or ever needing medical support, might be healthier on the trail than at home. But with so many day hikers flooding the parks, even that logic does not necessarily track.

What I read underneath their bluster could well be a different kind of fear. Many people who choose to repeatedly thru-hike, are homeless by choice. Hiking is their way to recover from a variety of ills which are generally exacerbated living in our structured and strictly labeled culture. Being on the trail is their link to mental and physical health. Reliance on trail towns, trail “angels”, and other hikers is their way to survive. Without this, they are lost.

Recently, an online trail group I follow were extolling the virtues of Grandma Gatewood, who was the first woman to complete a thru-trek in 1955. They remarked that she had completed her hike during the height of polio outbreaks in the United States. I sense a logical fallacy here in concluding that polio and COVID-19 are the same type of outbreak, but will let other more scientific minds do the research on this one.

What does resonate for me is this: in 1955, Emma Gatewood was the only thru-hiker registered. She was one of only 14 to complete the hike during the 1950s. In 2017 alone, 3,839 people registered to thru-hike northbound (NOBO); 497 registered to thru-hike southbound (SOBO); and 1,186 hikers completed their 2,000 miles ( a figure which includes registered section hikers who took more than 1 year to finish). One hiker potentially carrying viruses from town to town is not equivalent to hundreds or thousands of hikers carrying viruses along the trail.

During this pandemic, I am reminded of so many books. In this case, perhaps, Lord of the Flies is most apt.

Stay tuned for more blog posts. We are quarantined! I have plenty of time for writing.

http://appalachiantrail.org/home/community/blog/ATFootpath/2020/03/17/updated-covid-19-guidance-for-a.t.-multi-day-and-thru-hikers