Boots on the Trail

This is another Sunday Story – no politics – just some tales from my backpacking days!

Housekeeping

“Housekeeping” notes from Our America.  

Many of you access Our America through Facebook.  I know that some are concerned about the impact Facebook is having on “Our America” and the world, and are considering dropping the platform.  There are several other ways to access “Our America” besides Facebook.  You can link through Twitter at @martydahlman. Or you can subscribe to the WordPress site – www.dahlman.online (click the register button on the side menu).  Or you can be “really special” and join the select few that get their essays emailed directly to them – just email me at dahlman@aol.com and I’ll put you on the list.  

To the moment (who’s counting) I’ve written 1,171 essays – and I don’t think I’m going to stop soon (why do I write like I’m running out of time?).  If YOU would like to “try your hand” on “Our America” as a guest essayist, I’d be honored.  Just a few guidelines:

• essays should be around 1000 words – 
• this is not a forum for personal attack (though politicians might argue the point)
• I reserve the right to decline to publish any essay – for my own reasons
• While the essay will be published as a guest essay and I will know who wrote it, 
• You can choose not to have your name published (I get it).
• Keep it moderately clean – it’s a family “show”.
• Yes, I was a teacher, and No, I won’t be grading your “work”
• And if you and I disagree – that’s OK, alternative views are absolutely allowed. 

And finally, thanks for reading “Our America”!!!!!

Boots

I learned to hike in the Boy Scouts.  We started out on five-milers at Scout camp, marching the hills and woods of Woodland Trails near Eaton, Ohio.  At eleven I learned why checking those “hot spots” on your feet were so important – they never, ever seemed to get better on their own.  You need to get a piece of “mole skin”, a thin felt pad with an adhesive backing, over the red spot, soonest.  By the way, I later learned that duct tape worked too. Fix it early, or find a blister later, when a lot more elaborate first aid  is needed.  But either way, you were finishing the hike!

Two pairs of socks worked, a thin cotton layer under a thick wool pair.  The cotton absorbs the sweat, the wool absorbs the effort.  And dry feet, to this day, dry feet are so much better to stomping in the wet.  Wet feet feel bad, get soft, and end up blistered for sure.  So a good pair of boots, supportive, well fitted, water resistance and broken-in are essential. 

How important were good boots for me?  Well for my high school graduation present, I asked for a serious pair of hiking boots.  My Raichle mountain boots cost more than $100 in 1974, a huge amount of money for boots at the time.  But they let me hike ANYWHERE – snow and rock, dirt and swamp.  And they lasted well into the 1990’s.  When they finally died, it wasn’t from bad leather – it was from worn out soles and no “cobblers” left in the world to replace them.

Hooked on Wilderness

In my last summer in Dayton, Ohio, my Scout Troop (229) sent a crew to the “High Adventure” base in the mountains near Philmont, New Mexico.  I was thirteen, technically too young for Philmont, but I talked myself onto on the crew (persuasive even then).  We hiked maybe seventy miles over several days.  The first days were tough with a forty-five pound backpack at elevation, but by the end I was “hooked” on backpacking, and the wilderness.

We moved to Cincinnati, and a new Scout Troop, 819 in Wyoming.  I ran into a group that loved to backpack, both the kids and more importantly, the adults.  We hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina and Tennessee, and north in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  And we found trails in the mountains of Pennsylvania (I wrote about one of those experiences, Hiking with Jack).  

We went out to the high plateaus and mountains of Colorado, and up into the summer snow of the Maroon Bells above Aspen.  But we also found closer places, like the Red River Gorge in Kentucky.  And a bit farther south, we hiked a trail along the Kentucky/Tennessee border near Cumberland Gap National Park.  It was a “two-day” hike called the Mischa Mokwa Trail.

Mischa Mokwa

I’ve hiked the trail twice, once with the troop and once on my own.  It’s about twenty miles long, starting off near US Route 58  and Shawanee, Tennessee. The trail goes up across the state line into Kentucky, and heads east along the ridgeline.  At the end it comes south off the ridge, across a state line again, this time into Virginia, and ends near the small village of Ewing.

The first time with the troop was a good two-day backpack trip.  We drove one car to the Ewing end, to shuttle kids back to the trailhead at Shawanee, about a fifteen mile drive.  Our big adventure – what to do about the rattlesnake wrapped around the trail post sign, right beside the path.  You won’t go back, and you can’t go forward (especially with kids). Going around isn’t good either, as rattlesnakes often come in pairs.  Better to deal with the snake you can see, than the one you don’t!!

It was a big stick, a really big stick, that did the trick.  We picked the snake up, and launched it into woods.  Then we hustled the troop along the way.  A pissed off rattler isn’t going to chase you, but getting far away from that shaking tail is a really good idea.  

Solo 

When I was in college, I drove back down in my Volkswagen “Squareback” to hike the trail on my own. A little over halfway there’s Brush Mountain with an abandoned town, called the Hensley Settlement. It was founded in the late 1800’s, and once had a population of near 100. There is a school house (more of a log cabin), a store, and a “spring” house; though there was also a big sign saying that the spring water wasn’t drinkable.

The Great Depression drove folks down the mountain looking for work, and the young men went off to World War II and found a whole different world to live in.  The last Hensley left the mountain in 1951.  The Park took over the settlement, and in the sixties began restoring buildings.  

Today it’s a “living museum” to Appalachian settlement, and if you go when it’s “open” there are folks talking about the way people lived.  But when I was backpacking through, it was after hours.  I had the entire settlement to myself, walking down the dirt street, looking in the buildings, all set for life – with no one there.  It was un-nerving:  a town “all dressed” up, but no life around.  

You’re not supposed to camp at Hensley, but I don’t think I’d want to do that anyway.  I don’t worry about wildlife camping in the wilderness, you take the proper precautions and bears pretty much leave you alone.  Raccoons can be annoying – but they’re a nuisance, not a danger.  But I do worry about people – and an empty town would just be too much.  I wouldn’t sleep.

Thumbing Back

The next day I finished, picking my way down the steep trail off the ridge and back into the valley. I ended up in Ewing, and began looking for a way back to the trailhead and my Squareback, about fifteen miles away. It was the 1970’s and “hitch-hiking” was still an OK thing to do. I had friends in college who travelled the country, by “thumbing rides”. So I walked over to US 58, and stuck my thumb out.

Even though I was a dirty hiker with a bush of unkempt hair and a bandanna, it didn’t take too long for someone to pull over.  It was a couple of guys my age, in a 1967 Mustang with Tennessee plates.  I threw my pack in the trunk, and climbed into the back seat.  The “boys” wanted to give me a “Tennessee ride”, to see what this “Northern boy” might do.  We screamed down the road, with the speedometer needle pushing 120.  What took me two days of steady hiking to cover, took less than a half an hour.  

I think I gave the “boys” what they wanted – an excuse to drive crazy, and a look of terror as we screamed around the turns. But we made it back to the entrance of the trailhead parking lot, and my Volkswagen Squareback. It had a top speed of seventy miles an hour, going downhill! After that “Tennessee Ride” I was pretty happy with that.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21