My four thirty alarm sounded: an early bird chirping into the quiet of the morning. Soon the woods would fill with sounds of other feathered friends waking up and starting their day.

One morning at three thirty, I’d heard a solitary bird begin his morning song. It sounded like my four thirty bird, but this one was an hour early, with just a few short chirps. There was no response; the woods remained silent. The early chirper fell silent too for another hour.

I lay in my sleeping bag, luxuriating in its warmth and the peaceful morning sounds of the woods. I could hear Marathon Man rustling about, packing up his tent for the last time.

When I finally flipped back the tent flap to greet the day, the morning had a colossal feel to it. Early light filtered through the trees into our little clearing. I grabbed my water bottle, and at a cold and clear spring bubbling out of the ground, I cupped my hands in the pool and splashed my face. The shock brought all my senses to life. I had never been an early morning person, but out here on the trail, I’d fallen in love with the newness and freshness of spring mornings. I could smell spring in the air; on this morning it seemed all of nature heralded the arrival of a new day and promised: this will be a good day.

This is it, Marathon Man. Lead us home to Damascus.

The sun glinted through the bare trees, slanting sunbeams across our path as we worked our way toward the town. We had nineteen miles to our destination, most of it at 3,000-plus elevation, no serious climbs or descents, a fairly easy walk with time and spare energy to think.

We hiked in silence most of the morning, each lost in his own thoughts. Three men from diverse backgrounds had met on a narrow trail. We were all searching for something, with no agenda except to hike. But we had become a team, and now the team was about to disband. Our silence honored the brotherhood we three had forged.

I reflected on past weeks and all I’d observed about people and myself. In one month, I had gained more insights on life than I had in many, many years past. I’d traveled the sad road of death and grieving; it was time to find my path back to life and living. My mind had finally released the accumulation of years of job-related stress and now felt as clear as the spring by my campsite. I was Apostle, not just a reactor to disgruntled customers and difficult employees and demanding business situations and the sadness of bereavement. Now I was Apostle, hiking to . . . what? What lay ahead of me on this trail? Where would this journey take me? I did not know, but I did know I was shedding the old and hiking toward the new.

———

Our hiker handbook noted that by the time a thru-hiker reached Damascus, he would probably be in close to peak hiker shape. By this time too, all blisters should be healed. I had not yet been plagued by blisters. Whenever I felt a hot spot (an area where friction is occurring) on my foot, I had treated it immediately. During breaks, I had taken off my shoes to dry my feet. Those precautions had saved me thus far from the pain of blistering.

For a long time, the trail had followed the state line, and we were often uncertain if we were in Tennessee or North Carolina. But now as we began the last four downhill miles toward the town, we knew we were in Virginia at last. State number four.

Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had been beautiful, with rugged mountains and panoramic vistas. Those mountain climbs had toughened us and shaped us into true hikers, but we would welcome easier terrain. We’d been told the hiking in Virginia was less difficult, but even without that prospect, we were excited about exploring a new state.

What I didn’t know then was that it would take as long to hike through Virginia as the combined time we’d spent hiking the first three states. Virginia has the longest section of the AT, totaling 550 miles; it also held the promise of many interesting days on the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway in beautiful Shenandoah Valley.

At the edge of Damascus, the trail made a sharp right turn; we walked between two houses, and we were suddenly on Mock Avenue in the Friendliest Town on the Appalachian Trail. White blazes led us down Laurel Avenue, and then I realized I was hiking with an intruder—in my shoe. The steep downhill hike had produced my first blister. Thankfully, we planned to take our second zero day in this town, so I would have time to properly treat it.

Our first stop was at Mt. Rogers Outfitters, where I had bounced my box from Erwin, Tennessee. Then on to the post office to pick up the food box my trail boss Ina had sent. I toted both boxes under my arms as we searched for a place to stay. Damascus has earned its “friendliest town” moniker by playing host to hordes of wanderers every year, since the Appalachian Trail, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the Transcontinental Bike Trail, and the Daniel Boone Memorial Trail all weave through this town. Now we were searching for The Place, popular with hikers and cyclists, which offered lodging in an old house that was somewhere behind a Methodist church.

A woman’s voice called to us and interrupted our search. The owner of the Montgomery Homestead Bed and Breakfast invited us to her front porch and sold us on staying at her B&B for the next two nights. The B&B was more costly than The Place, but we splurged because Marathon Man’s time with us was almost over. It was a good decision; we had a wonderful stay at the lovely home.

Later in the day, I returned my bounce box to Mt. Rogers Outfitters. I was planning to return to this town soon, so there was no point in mailing it ahead. Every May, Damascus hosts Trail Days, a yearly hiker festival that draws ten to fifteen thousand hikers and dozens of vendors of outdoor products. It’s the hiker equivalent of Woodstock, and thru-hikers will hitch rides for long distances to participate in the event. I had promised myself the full Appalachian Trail experience, and so I intended to come back to Damascus for this gathering of the trail community.

Early the next morning, I walked with Marathon Man back to the outfitter, where a ride waited to return him to Springer Mountain to pick up his car and head home. Sailor stayed at the B&B, nursing horrible blisters. I did not enjoy good-byes—I’d had too many of them lately—but I was not going to forgo one last walk with my friend. Marathon Man had made me a better hiker. He was the reason we had made Damascus in record time. The three of us were not only a hiking team; we had also become good friends. We would miss Marathon Man.

That evening, Sailor and I walked to The Mill Restaurant for supper. Pathfinder soon walked in, and I thought surely this surprise must be a godsend, a consolation for losing Marathon Man.

I had never met Pathfinder, although I’d followed his hike on the Trail Journals website before I began my own journey. He had started a thru-hike in January, in the dead of winter. When he reached Damascus, he abruptly left the AT, but promised to return later to resume his hike. Pathfinder had done numerous thru-hikes and was quite knowledgeable about the trail. I’d been intrigued by his journals and had wished that our paths would cross sometime on the AT. But what were the odds of such a meeting, with hikers strung out over two thousand miles and five months?

Now the well-known trail figure walked into The Mill Restaurant where we sat at supper. I recognized him from photos I’d seen, and Sailor invited him to join us. Pathfinder accepted our invitation, and we fell into the easy and quick fellowship of the AT community. I couldn’t wait long to ask my question: “Pathfinder, you hike the AT year after year. Why?”

“Well, Apostle, my wife died of cancer about five years ago—”

I interrupted. “Say no more. I know exactly why you’re here.”

The conversation that followed was one I would have many times with other men on the trail. The stories were deeply personal yet all possessed universal threads. We had lost a spouse and thus had lost our lives; we came seeking peace, harmony, and restoration. Pathfinder’s story of losing his wife to cancer was uncannily similar to mine. As he told his story, every detail resonated with my own pain and loss.

He and his wife had been athletic people, both marathon runners. The Big C had robbed them of many activities they had once shared as it slowly drained his wife’s strength and energy. Returning home one evening, they drove through Dicks Creek Gap, close to Hiawassee, Georgia. Pathfinder never even knew the Appalachian Trail passed through this gap and had never hiked on the AT, but that night he saw the trail sign and pulled over.

He told his wife he wanted to walk up the trail a bit. He walked a short time, lost in thoughts about the cancer and what it had done to their lives. When he finally turned to go back to the car, he saw that his wife had followed him a short way up the trail. From a distance, he caught sight of her, a frail shadow leaning weakly against a tree, breathless and too exhausted to go farther. Overwhelmed by what they had lost and filled with compassion for her, he gently picked her up and carried her back to the car. She said to him, “You’re going to hike this trail after I’m gone, aren’t you?”

“Shortly after that, she did pass away. I sold my construction company and came to the trail,” he told me. “And I’ve come back every year since to thru-hike. Apostle, I sold my company at the height of the building boom. If I’d kept my business and not done that hike, I’d be a rich man today. Instead, I’m happy.”

Pathfinder’s story sounded so familiar, so like my own—but there was one thing I could not comprehend. He had never finished that first thru-hike. As he approached the sign at the top of Mt. Katahdin, marking the end of the trail, he stopped ten feet away and could not go on. He broke down in tears, turned away and never reached that sign on his first hike.

I could not understand how one could stop short of such a hard-won goal. I had only been on the trail for a month, but already I knew something of the price any thru-hiker pays to reach Katahdin’s summit. Right now, that was all that mattered to me. I wanted to finish this hike, kiss that sign, and go home.

Later that night, I stopped at a Dollar General store and bought a bottle of Vitamin I. More commonly known as ibuprofen, this is a hiker’s best friend. Several weeks before, I’d started taking one tablet each morning to ease the pain in my aching feet and legs. A box of Little Debbie snacks also seemed like a necessary purchase; I flipped it over and found that each cake had almost 270 calories I could not pass up.

Back at the house, Sailor and I packed our bags for an early morning departure. We had hiked 461 miles, and the next day would begin our second month on the trail.

Before leaving in the morning, we checked the weather channel and the report promised an 80 percent chance of storms by the afternoon. “What are the chances those words have meaning?” I asked Sailor as we headed outdoors.

“Oh, probably about an 80 percent chance.”

We headed north. For almost a mile, we shared the trail with horses and bicycles. The AT was blazed along the Virginia Creeper Trail, a converted railroad bed that runs thirty-four miles from Abingdon, Virginia, to the North Carolina state line. It was Saturday morning, and already there was much activity on the bike path. After more than four hundred miles of hiking in lonely woods on a narrow dirt path, it was a strange sensation to have bicycles whizzing past us.

We hiked over Feathercamp Ridge and Straight Mountain, the AT never straying far from the Virginia Creeper. Early in the afternoon, we stopped at Lost Mountain Shelter for a break. We had walked in light rain several times that morning, but it looked as if we would avoid the nasty weather that had been predicted. We had already hiked over fifteen miles, and we could probably still get in another ten before quitting for the day.

Before we could hoist our packs again, however, the 80 percent hit us. Lightning shot through the sky, thunder shook the shelter, and rain came in torrents. Sailor and I looked at each other wordlessly, grateful that we were safe and dry. We unrolled sleeping bags, and at two in the afternoon our hiking day was done. We spent the rest of the day in the shelter, relaxing and watching the storm.

The storm brought another person seeking shelter and gave us a new hiking partner. Litefoot had just graduated from high school and was hiking the AT as a graduation present to himself. He had been homeschooled, raised with strict religious training, and still carried an innocence not found in many of today’s high school graduates. Skinny, soft-spoken, and serious, he reminded me of myself at that age.

Litefoot had convinced his worried parents to let him do this hike to explore the world. But already he had found the world not much to his liking. The buddies he had been hiking with were drinking and partying, and he’d separated himself from them. We three were all trapped in the shelter for the afternoon and night, so our introductions were lengthy and thorough. Sailor and I liked the young man, and when Litefoot asked politely if we would mind if he hiked with us, we assured him we would be happy to have him join us.

We were three again. By six in the morning, we were on our way to Mt. Rogers. On Buzzard Rock, a slope of Whitetop Mountain, a fog bank engulfed the mountainside. Sailor was barely visible several feet in front of me, and shrubs and bushes appeared and disappeared eerily in foggy mist as we wound around Whitetop.

Then the breeze picked up and nature astonished me once again. That huge bank of fog became a living entity that gathered itself and took flight, swiftly and silently retreating. It moved from my left to my right, like a huge cloud scudding across a clear sky. The entire hillside on which I stood came into view as the cloud of fog rolled down the slope, up another hillside beyond us, and then disappeared in the distance. No fog in Ohio has ever done that. I stood and watched in awe. The air was now crystal clear.

“Can you believe what you just saw?” I yelled ahead to Sailor, who had also stopped to watch the show. Wow, God, You’re on the job early today. That was a treat. With an opening act like that, this will be a great day.

We crossed Virginia Rt. 600 at Elk Garden and hiked through open pastures on our way to the summit of Mt. Rogers. The world was increasingly green, and I was finding more and more wildflowers to sample; I munched all kinds and colors of offerings from my salad bar in the wild.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Appalachian Trail did not go directly over the 5,729-foot summit. Rather, the trail traversed the shoulder of the mountain, a half mile below the peak. A blue-blazed trail led to the top, but a sign also told us, “No Views.”

Soon after squeezing through a natural rock tunnel called Fat Man’s Squeeze, we arrived at one of the prettiest spots in Virginia. The Wilburn Ridge and the Grayson Highlands are dotted with pink and red rock outcroppings, with clusters of evergreens scattered throughout open fields on the rolling hillsides.

Herds of wild ponies graze these highlands. Although hikers are encouraged not to feed the ponies, many of the animals were so tame that they nuzzled us, looking for a handout. The ponies roam everywhere in Grayson Highlands State Park, including shelters and camping areas. We passed the Thomas Knob Shelter and spotted three of them at the picnic table, scrounging for food like park chipmunks or squirrels.

The three of us set up camp that night on a grassy bald, next to a large rock outcropping below the ridge crest of Pine Mountain. That day had been a wonderful twenty-two-mile hike. Our second day in Virginia gave us a rogue fog bank, the three highest mountains in the state, scenic hikes through unique rock formations, and those wild keepers of the hinterlands, the ponies.

As dusk settled over the highlands, I summoned enough energy to scramble up one of the rock formations and watch the last glimmers of the setting sun fade behind the rolling peaks. From my roost on the rock, I looked over our three tents arranged on the green grass of the bald, and found myself smiling at the absurdity of this moment of my life.

I am sitting on a rock somewhere in Virginia. I quit my job. All I do is walk all day. I should be lonely—and often I am—but something is very different. Something that has been eluding me for years has finally overtaken me. Contentment. I’ve been living life too fast. But now that I’m traveling at two miles per hour, contentment has caught up with me. God, why do we make our lives so difficult, trying to find contentment?

I scrambled back down from my rocky perch, back across the grassy bald to my tent. Inside, I relaxed, leaving the tent flap open; the vista of sky and peaks was too good to block out. Only after darkness set in did I reach out and zip up the tent flap. Couldn’t have those wild ponies sneaking in and stealing my food.

And I heard Pathfinder’s voice in my head. I could have been rich. Instead, I’m happy.

By six the next morning, our grassy bald was fully lit with morning sun and we were ready for another day of adventure. An hour into our hike, we stopped at Old Orchard Shelter to filter water and have a celebratory snack. We had reached the 500-mile point of our trek. Trail conditions were easy and the miles slipped by quickly. Litefoot’s company was pleasant and companionable; I looked forward to many days of conversation with him.

By eleven o’clock, we had hiked twelve miles and were in Dickey Gap. Virginia Rt. 650 crosses here, and a car was just dropping off a hiker as we arrived at the highway. It was good timing. The driver was the owner of Jerry’s Kitchen and Goods, a small grocery store and restaurant several miles away in Troutdale, Virginia. He offered to drive us there for a hot meal and then return us to the trail. It was almost as amazing as trail magic—we stumbled out of the woods onto a little country road, and within one hour we had a hot meal at a restaurant and were back on the trail again.

That hot meal seemed to cast its magic on the afternoon. Sun soaked our path, log bridges took us over beautiful streams, and wildflowers bloomed in abundance. Good conversation and easygoing humor flowed like the many waterfalls we passed, and even our mountain climb seemed as gentle as its name: Brushy Mountain.

Our goal was to reach Partnership Shelter by that evening. That would require our longest day yet on the trail, but we felt energetic and optimistic. Our determination was undoubtedly bolstered by the incentive of pizza. Yes, pizza on the Appalachian Trail. The shelter was close to the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area headquarters building, where a local pizza place had taped a menu to the outdoor pay phone, promising delivery. The imagined taste of cheese and spicy sauce kept us hiking at a good clip.

At six o’clock, we arrived at the shelter. Another great day. We’d hiked 26.4 miles in twelve hours, passed our five-hundred-mile mark, enjoyed a hot meal for lunch, and would possibly have pizza for supper. Could life get any better?

Partnership Shelter is one of the most comfortable shelters on the entire trail, a two-story log building that can easily sleep sixteen. It boasts a solar shower and piped water to a washbasin behind the shelter. Just down the trail, we found the headquarters, the pay phone, and the pizza menu. Things were looking good. Sailor and I ordered two pizzas and went back to the shelter to await delivery.

And then it happened. A goddess of stunning beauty sashayed from the shelter and took a seat at the picnic table in front of the building. Life could get better, it turned out. She had just emerged from the shower and was attired in her evening wear. Of course, being sociable folks, Litefoot and I sat down with the beauty.

On a whim, Bubbles had decided she wanted to do a section hike. She bought new equipment and headed down the trail. Five days later, she still had not figured out how to set up her tent. Every night in camp, men had offered to set it up for her, and of course she was happy to let them do it. I’ll just say it: men can be stupid and gullible at times.

When God created Bubbles, He must have taken extra time, because it was a job well done. Every curve was in its proper place, and Litefoot was entranced by the whole package. No, no, no, Litefoot! It’s a trap! You must resist the spell!

Our pizzas arrived, and later as Sailor and I headed for our tents, he speculated that Litefoot probably would not be hiking with us on the morrow. Come on, Sailor, I thought, have some faith in our innocent young hiking partner.

Early the next morning, Sailor and I were getting ready to leave. All was quiet in Litefoot’s tent. “Hey, Litefoot, wake up!” My call got no response, and I grabbed one of my hiking poles and gave his tent a good rap. “You coming with us today?”

After a moment of silence, a hesitant voice came through the canvas.

“Ah . . . you guys go ahead without me. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Sailor gave me an I-told-you-so grin over the tent as we hoisted our packs for another day. I clung to the hope that Litefoot would escape the spell cast at the picnic table and rejoin us later in the day. Alas, we never saw him again. Several days later, we met a hiker who had also stayed at the shelter that night.

“Do you know what happened to Litefoot?” I asked, hoping we might still reconnect with our young friend.

“Sure do. He left the shelter that morning, hiking away with Bubbles.”

As surely as Bubble rhymes with Trouble, Litefoot was now on a trail fraught with danger. After only a few days with us mature, sensible adults, he had jettisoned us for the first fair maiden to cross his path.

However, now that I think about it, we should have been forewarned. It was, after all, Partnership Shelter.