What I didn’t know when I wrote that passage was that I had a more pressing concern, and his name was Falcon. Falcon, of course, wasn’t his actual name, it was a trail name. Many people hiking the AT, or any long trail for that matter, adopt, or are given, a trail name, which they use during their hike. In fact, I never learned the real names of most of the people I met on the AT. Already, Mike had become Mikenango, a combination of his name and his hometown in upstate New York, and Erin had become Sweet n’ Low, a nod to her diabetes diagnosis (or, as we liked to say in honor of the classic Wilfred Brimley line, “diabetus”). I had not yet found a name that suited me.
Whatever his name, we knew Falcon was trouble from the minute he walked up to the shelter that night.
After he caught his breath, he zeroed in on Mike, saying, “That’s an interesting stove you got there.”
“Shit. A gear-head,” Erin muttered under her breath, as I rolled my eyes and made a gagging gesture. Not much had changed since high school.
Gear-heads are a peculiar breed of hiker, one that, even in our short time on the trail, we had learned to studiously avoid. They are, generally, middle-aged white men, decked out with sparkling new equipment, who will talk about hiking gear until they are blue in the face. Falcon was no different. Like most gear-heads, Falcon only feigned interest in others’ gear in order to pontificate about why his model of backpack/sleeping bag/water bottle/rain jacket was superior.
Although Erin and I had purposefully, and none-too-subtly, turned our backs to Falcon, leaving Mike alone to fend for himself, it wasn’t long before he tried to engage us, too.
“Hey, what do you girls use to filter your water?” he asked, pulling his shiny new water filter out of his pack. Mike mouthed, “suck it, suckers” to Erin and I. Pay back.
Since all water on the trail comes from a natural water source- a spring, a river, in desperate times a mud puddle, it needs to be purified in order to avoid waterborne illnesses. Most hikers carry a water filter to treat their water. Erin and I used bleach. Two drops of bleach in a liter of water kills anything dangerous, doesn’t affect the taste of the water, is light to carry, and most importantly, is safe to use. The method was uncommon in 2003, but certainly not unheard of. (One time, Erin and I collapsed in a giggle-fit when another hiker told us the joke, “What does Snoop Dog use to filter his water?” “BLEE-ACH!!”)
“BLEACH!” Falcon screeched, living up to his name, “I’ve never heard of that! Are you sure that’s safe?”
“Safe???” Erin said, “Well shit, Falcon, we never thought of that!”
Falcon, completely oblivious to the sarcasm Erin had so thickly laid on him, continued to quiz us about the bleach, and every other piece of gear we carried until I finally faked a yawn and told Falcon that we needed to turn in for the night. But my thought that we would find peace from Falcon in sleep was dead wrong. In addition to being a gear-head, Falcon was a world-class snorer.
Around 2am, without more than a few minutes of sleep, Erin and I simultaneously reached our breaking point. Half-delirious, Erin grabbed a hiking pole and began poking Falcon, while I stomped my foot on the shelter floor. This method worked to stop Falcon’s snoring for about 2 seconds, and then we would hear a loud snort, and the racket would resume. Then, at 3am, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike pull out his knife. He shot an evil look at the still-snoring Falcon, and then plunged the blade into the corner of his foam sleeping pad. I watched as he cut two small squares of the foam, which he then stuffed into his ears.
“Ear plugs,” Mike told us, and laid back down. Erin and I followed suit, but found that they did little to dampen the sound.
In the morning, I peeked an eye out of my sleeping bag, and saw Falcon cheerfully stirring his oatmeal, asking a bedraggled Erin, “How did you sleep? I didn’t snore, did I?” Erin is a redhead, and can live up to her fiery reputation. I feared for his safety.
Mercifully, Erin did nothing more than grumble, “just a bit” and pull her bag back over her head to catch a couple more minutes of sleep.
Somehow, we managed to drag ourselves out of the shelter, and sleep walk through the day, buoyed by clear weather and the excitement at crossing our first state line.
After a week on the trail, we had made it to North Carolina.