The story begins 36 years ago this past May in the Glenbrook
North High School library back in Northbrook, Illinois. I was talking with a friend of mine named
James Henmueller who was telling me about one of our friends that was planning
to ride his bike from Illinois to Kansas after high school graduation. The year was 1978 and we were to graduate that
June.
James thought the long distance bike ride was cool because
it was an epic adventure that marked time.
I said it would be cool to do something epic like that after graduation
as well. How we decided to go
backpacking in Great Smoky Mountain National Park is beyond me, but that plan
was hatched that day in the library.
I guess I thought the fact that I owned a backpack and
hiking boots qualified me for this adventure.
Growing up in the land of the flat, Illinois, I was excited that I would
be seeing mountains for the first time as well.
The dream was that we would be hiking along the tops of the Smokies on a
flat path on the crest of the ancient hills.
Apparently, research back then was not my strong suit. We were headed for an adventure all right,
but not the kind I was expecting.
James decided to skip going to Prom and spend the money on a
set of new tires for his Plymouth Valliant automobile for the drive down to
Tennessee. My preparation for the trip
consisted of mink oiling a pair of heavy hiking boots that had seen their
better days. We were clearly heading
into unknown territory.
A few days after we graduated from high school, we set off
at dawn for the mountains of Tennessee.
Illinois soon was behind us as we made our way southeast through Indiana
and then Kentucky. The excitement built
as we crossed into Tennessee. James
drove for about 12 hours straight before handing off to me. I proceeded to nearly kill us heading 70 mph
into a town that came out of nowhere when we got off the interstate. We lived
and rolled up into the entrance to Great Smoky Mountain National Park around
dusk. The ranger’s station was already
closed, so we decided to sleep in the car in the parking lot and get our park
permit first thing in the morning.
Dawn broke as we crawled out from our sleeping bags in the
car. As the saying goes, “There’s
nothing like a good night’s sleep and that was nothing like a good night’s
sleep.” We rubbed our eyes and went in
to get our permit to backpack the week in the park. We quickly learned that our preparation was a
little sketchy. The ranger wanted to
know our itinerary for the week. Both of
us never even looked at a map of the park before we came. So, we winged it and plucked out a shelter
along the trail about every 10 miles or so.
They should make you take a test before letting people into the park who
plan to backpack. It would have exposed
our ignorance.
So we set off to our selected starting point at the south
end of the park. We found the trailhead
and parked and locked our car. How we
were going to get back to the car was beyond me because our new itinerary had
us backpacking 71 miles to the north.
Then what? It didn’t matter back
then, we were on our way.
We hoisted our packs, adjusted our straps and belts, and
immediately noticed that we were both looking straight down as we made our way
up the trail. Breathing became
constricted. It was very warm and
humid. Are we having fun yet?
We ascended and descended the hills into low lying green
worlds of moss and ferns. There were
huge dead tree logs everywhere. We
hadn’t covered that much ground when we realized there were bugs in the Smokies
too. Tiny black nat-like flying insects
called no-see-ums seem to be in their own atmosphere orbiting our human body
planets.
We climbed up out of these ravines onto a now rocky trail
leading up and up and up. Each time we
thought we had made it to the top; we realized it was just another false
summit. As we felt the warmth of the
day, our packs became more and more cumbersome.
Unfortunately for James, his shoulder strap broke and he was having a
tough time rigging up a suitable fix.
For me, something began to feel warm and stingy on the heels of my
feet. At a rest break, I took off my
boots to reveal the horrors of silver dollar sized blisters on each heal. Houston, we have a problem.
When you undertake an activity like backpacking, your feet
are everything. You blow a tire and your
trip is in serious trouble. Walking
barefoot was not an option I guess, but looking back on it, if I only had a
pair of Tevas, I may have been able to weather the panic and the storm.
Blisters hurt, a lot.
When you are carrying a third of your body weight and are already really
uncomfortable, blisters make you do crazy things, like quit. I was determined to make it to the first
nights shelter that we had picked out though.
The thing was, the trail had to be marked wrong or something because 4.2
miles seemed liked a full marathon. Near
dusk, we saw a sign that indicated our shelter was just off the trail a
piece. Maybe after we regrouped a little
at the shelter, my spirits would pick up.
They didn’t.
The shelter was open on one side with a chain link fence
gate at the opening. It sat up on a low
platform. Upon entering, we selected a
couple of built in bunks made out of wire and laid out our sleeping bags. I don’t remember a whole lot about the
shelter after that except for the mice.
There were mice crawling everywhere.
They were crawling over the rafters and they were crawling over my
sleeping bag. Oh well, just so they
don’t get any of my food I thought.
Morning came and my spirits were soon crushed by the
realization that I could barely walk with the pain from my blisters. Panic turned into terror and I announced to
James that I was heading home. I told
him he should continue on, and that I would head back to where we started and
hitchhike home. James tried to calm me
down, but I had made up my mind. Then,
James decided that he would join me and we would be going home.
In the years since, I have told James that I felt I had held
him hostage in a weird way by saying I was going to hitchhike home. I really felt genuinely bad about it. What was he to do, let me go off like a crazy
person alone in Tennessee to be murdered by some lunatic on the
interstate? James has told me since that
his feet were killing him too and it wasn’t completely accurate that he was
fresh and ready to continue. Bless James
for helping me to feel a little less of a complete loser and more like a guy
that just didn’t know any better.
So we went back down the trail from where we came the day
before after a stirring breakfast of Carnation Instant Breakfast and some Pop
Tarts. When we came to a stream, I had
the idea of soaking my sore feet.
Unfortunately for me, I had popped my blisters and the wounds filled up
with freezing water. As we were almost
back to the car, James informed me in a panic that he had lost the car
keys. This was not good.
For some strange reason, we searched for the keys near the
car and for some strange reason, a miracle occurred and we found them
nearby. By this time, we were both on
edge, annoyed, disappointed and dreading the 14 hour car ride home. As we looped around the mountain coming up
out of the pit where the trailhead started, James almost drove off the
road. The sound of the car bottoming out
was like nails on a chalkboard. This was
going to be a very quiet ride home.
As the states slipped by and as the sun lowered in the sky,
we approached the urban metropolitan areas of Gary, Indiana and Chicago. I remember a very strange sense of relief
that we were once again in the land of concrete and buildings and pollution and
I was glad. Nature had completely kicked
my butt and I was heading home with my tail between my legs. Even now it feels weird to say, but that was
how I felt at the time.
With dusk and fatigue setting in, James almost killed us on
the Edens expressway by almost rear ending someone at 60 mph. He had had enough and we were fortunate that
we did not make any contact. James was
so done with the trip that he literally dropped me off down the block from
where I lived and said I could get my things in a couple of days. Ok.
I cut through familiar backyards in my neighborhood and then
appeared like a ghost in my own backyard.
I must have looked like the opposite of the Field of Dreams baseball
players going into the cornfield. There
was a summer party going on in my backyard and the guest made a double take as
the guy on the backpack trip appeared, a day later, downtrodden and dispirited.
It would be nearly 12 years till I attempted another
backpack trip. A few months later, a new
chapter in my life began as I moved with a friend and his family to The
Woodlands, Texas. Funny the moments in
your life that have such meaning and impact.
Some of them, that at the time were huge disappointments, laid the
foundation for greater triumphs down the road.
And some of them just make interesting stories about life lessons we
have learned.
