Happy after a warm breakfast in Maryland, we crossed a rickety bridge into West Virginia and joined a dusty road officially part of the American Discovery Trail (ADT). Natalie had never heard the state’s anthem (one of many, apparently), so I loaded up John Denver on our little speaker, soon followed by the Toots version, paying homage to “West Jamaica.”
Humming right along, we’d only walked about 10 miles when a guy chased us down on his ATV to ask if we were walking “the trail.” We were, so he immediately invited us to spend the night in his house — plus his wife had made enchiladas for dinner. I was concerned we hadn’t traveled far enough for the day, but we also had no clear prospects of a bed and warm meal ahead.
We said we’d stay, and Kevin was ecstatic. White man, father, husband, he had big plans to bike the Continental Divide, a 3,100-mile trail along the Rocky Mountains. He appeared hungry as hell to simply be in the presence of people who could understand why we do it. The rest of the family looked and sounded like ordinary Americans: Kevin’s wife Wendy (dutifully cooking dinner while dutifully watching TV), Donny and Jim (eternal senior class clowns), and their wives Jane and Nemo (silently suffering through the jokes except to deliver their own precise wit). And don’t forget Oreo, the cookie-colored shepherd mutt, deeply aware, friendly, and good-spirited.
After a hearty supper of chicken enchiladas, salad, and cookies, the big happy family gathered around the TV to talk a lot of shit to each other and take it in stride. (“All happy families are alike.”) Donny and Wendy kept arguing about college sports down to specific plays, transporting me to my own family’s living room in Daly City. But instead of sports on the TV we saw a 60 Minutes interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, four years deep in civil war.
“If I were in charge, I’d nuke ’em all,” said Donny confidently.
“That’s why you’re not in charge,” his wife Jane replied, and we burst out laughing.
From Kevin’s living room I could see west to a few big blue mountain ranges, no small obstacles to our wayfaring. The nearer one looked easy, the next one looked harder but doable, and the third may as well have been a brick wall. Dark, tall, ominous — still days away but already implanted in my mind.
The next day we doubled our mileage. Three weeks into walking, we could feel our legs adapting to the 20-mile day, but our arms hadn’t yet contended with pushing the buggy up mountains (not to mention pulling back on the downhills). On the big, final ascent before Keyser, I hustled my ass off, at one point even digging into our “emergency” Snickers for some extra energy.
Sitting down at the end of the day was the greatest feeling in the world. Aaron, our Couchsurfing host in the small town of Keyser, treated us to pork chops, sweet potatoes, salad, red wine, and conversation. A white guy in his 30s, he worked as a substitute teacher for a living but was so badass he’d already walked both the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail. Plus, he had great taste in music: I spotted Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson Sessions among his records. He also helped point us in the right direction. Instead of heading west to Savage River State Forest, we decided to head to Thomas and Davis, “the coolest towns in West Virginia” by Aaron’s hippie-liberal estimation.
In the morning, we woke up shortly after 6 AM to Aaron — what a man — cooking us sausage patties and scrambled eggs. He even offered us the last patty: “I’m not the one climbing a mountain today.”
He wasn’t kidding. Up we went 2,000 feet into the air, up where the wind blows and the windmills spin.
But nothing else eventful happened that day. We climbed a mountain, saw some windmills, and by the end of day had walked 18 miles to a campground on the banks of Abram Creek. The universe was saving its energy.
As some cosmic practical joke, the first day of April ended up one of the most absurd and dangerous days of the walk. In short, Google Maps sent us down a path that didn’t exist anymore. We had plenty of warning: our own intuition, the guy in his yard recommending we go a different way, the sign at the beginning of the street that said “DEAD END.” Still, we kept going. And the more our intuition nagged at us, the more deeply invested we became. I didn’t feel like starting over, but we’d truly hit a dead end. The paved road had ended a mile ago, transforming into a rocky towpath — all well and good. But then the path veered in the entirely wrong direction. We backtracked a mile or so, scanning desperately for the right trail… But nothing.
So being a dumb, greedy, curious ape, I decided to scout through the brush in search of the path going in the “right” direction, and eventually found another towpath. I was ecstatic, and (somehow) convinced Natalie to help me lift our 100 pounds of stuff through a half-mile-long thorny thicket and muddy marsh to where the trail started back up again and (we hoped) would lead us to a real street again. It did, eventually, but first it led us right through the middle of an active coal operation. Hilariously, as we exited through the main entrance, a security guard stepped out baffled as hell at how these two weirdos pushing a stroller had just emerged from the mine without her ever noticing us going in. She gave a stern warning, and then offered us water.
We were back on a highway, and never so glad about it. After 23 miles — the third-highest mileage of the trip — we had safely arrived in Davis. We treated ourselves to dinner at Hellbender’s Burrito (an off-the-wall, definitely-not-Mexican establishment), and then spent the evening relaxing in the warm, cozy home of our Couchsurfing host, Ned. A white dude around our age, he was yet another badass: he’d once canoed the Ohio River to the Mississippi River with a single buddy. In Davis, he helped manage “old-time” (i.e. bluegrass, folk) shows for work and, in his free time, brewed his own delicious “Belgian stout.” While Natalie slept, the two of us smoked, snacked on venison jerky and honey sticks, and goofed around on Google Earth. He really wanted to find the coal mine we’d walked through. Before sleep, I leafed through his copy of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and found a Heraclitus:
It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.
Naturally, the most treacherous day gave way to the most lovely. In spite of the dull bourbon ache in my head (a shot of whiskey with Ned, my first since New York), in spite of a slow morning, in spite of a long time spent grocery shopping, in spite of a slow delicious breakfast, in spite of the fact that the rain waited for us to start walking before coming down — and then only sporadically so the flip-flopping heat and wet would drive us insane — in spite of just about everything, the second day of April brought a beautiful walk. We did 16 miles on Sugarlands Road, gorgeous, lush, windy, wonderful, wild — the still verdure framed by silent dripping rocks, trickling vines, slowly growing streams, acres and acres of meditative farmland, and mountains enclosing everything. Dogs, turkeys, chickens, goats, sheep, cows, horses, donkeys, mules, ducks, cats, deer, and all their young ones recently sprung, chattered, roamed.
During a brief lull in the rain shower, a middle-aged woman named Sandra was walking alongside a stream with her two girlfriends, Roxie and Charlotte. Sandra had driven past us earlier — maybe a couple times — and wanted to know the deal, so she shouted to us as we walked near. One short conversation and several hours later, we found ourselves warm in her house, well-fed, showered, and in bed. People are good.
How good?
The very next day we walked for 15 miles, and still had no idea where we’d be spending the night. Laura, a pale, dark-haired woman in her 30s, stopped by to see what we were up to. She shared our concern that a storm was coming and we still had no idea where to sleep, but we declined a ride. An hour later, she returned determined, squashed the buggy in her sedan and drove us the three miles to her house while barely able to move the stick shift. No problem at all: she delivered us safe and sound, set us up in the garage, and let us be. People are good, people are good, people are good.
