In the hot, dry summer of 1999, I backpacked a section of the Appalachian Trail (near Waynesboro, Va.) with my two friends and their two dogs. Here are three scenes from that trip, drawn with very little exaggeration, in which our precious water supply was low, and the running stream that we’d expected to find had dried up completely. With the serious concern for dehydration, we strapped our heavy packs on our shoulders and lurched on ahead, parched and exhausted.
It was a fabulous (if brief) experience on The Trail (except, of course, for the heat, the ticks, and the back-breaking weight of our packs). I have since romanticised the idea of backpacking sections of The Trail over a period of years (especially the Smokey Mountain region in North Carolina). The only other section of The Trail I’ve backpacked was through Shenandoah National Park in 1990.
There are a few hearty folk who hike the entire 2,285 miles of The Trail from start to finish in just a few months, but that’s an adventure I will likely never know. There are books which document the adventures of such a trek, and the one I recommend is A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, who offers an honest and humorous account of his own experiences on The Trail. Great, enjoyable reading.
