The Long Road Still Calls: Some Thoughts Before the Arizona Tail

Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove is a sweeping epic that transports you to the fading days of the Old West, offering a sublime meditation on the human condition while following a memorable cast of unique characters across the unforgettable canvas that is America.

Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a hiking blog and not a literary book review blog?

Looking at the featured photo, you might also be thinking, wait: isn’t this supposed to be about the Arizona Trail? What’s happening? Yes, and yes (!) let me explain…

How not to start a hike on the AT section

Walking down the Dragon’s Tail I began to hear a faint whisper of «Goodbye» from the breakfast burrito I had hastily devoured about an hour earlier. The Dragon (U.S. Route 129) is a section of highway that features 318 curves in just 11 miles, typically an exciting destination for motorcyclists, sports car enthusiasts, and, on this summer morning, a middle-aged father obsessed with making time to take his son and his two friends to Fontana Dam to begin a two-week trip along the Appalachian Trail (or so we thought at the time…).

Absurdly, in retrospect, we had set aside two weeks to hike the entire Tennessee portion of the AT, for an average of about 20 miles per day with no days off. Temukan D3du8x di sini. None of us had that long of a backpacking experience.

But look, there I am at the top of Mount Leconte! Having grown up in East Tennessee, I obviously knew the Smokies, so how hard could this be?

I guess my friend Robby inherited his father’s need for a good time, as I barely had time to kiss the ground and re-swallow regurgitated burrito morsels before we immediately proceeded to plow 2,100 feet in less than 4 miles to the Shuckstack Fire Tower.

In mid-July.

During an unusually hot drought when all the streams were silent and there was no water in the first two shelters.

Start as you want to continue, as they say.

more fun

After a debilitating bout of hypernatremia, a massive outbreak of poison ivy, a narrowly avoided death from a rattlesnake, and a debilitating 33-mile hike in a single day through the Smokies to reach the section I had missed by having to go off trail at Newfound Gap later, I could say I hiked the AT section from Fontana Dam to Hot Springs, North Carolina.

(One of my friends came all the way to Erwin, Tennessee, just to spite us.)

Yes, we fell far short of our overly ambitious and totally arbitrarily imposed targets.

But (to use the old cliché) it’s the journey that’s important, not the destination.

Try again (and “fail” in another way)

After all that fun, I decided I needed a similar hike the following summer, this time on the Lake Tahoe Rim Trail.

My Lyft from the Reno airport broke down halfway up the steep, narrow road to Mount Rose (my starting point).

I needed a day zero on day 3 after immediately proceeding to treat the sun poisoning because I forgot the sunscreen, but I went ahead anyway (plants get energy from the sun, so why couldn’t I?).

I had some more benign but at the time completely heartbreaking wildlife encounters (bears, plural!)

I got caught in a freak hail storm in the Sierras before rushing out to Truckee, where I managed to get a free ride from a stranger to the San Francisco airport to fly to Hawaii (as one does, a natural detour) to meet up with an old friend for more hiking/backpacking, just in time for a tsunami.

The Arizona Trail: third time’s the charm?

Paradoxically, both of the aforementioned trips only served to increase a need to wander.

Each time I thought maybe I would get it out of my system, but both times I was wrong, so why keep fighting it? 110 miles, 140 miles, why not 800 miles on the Arizona Trail!

Following the call

Okay, but what does a Western novel from the 80s have to do with any of this?

At the beginning of Lonesome Dove, Captain Woodrow Call and his literary colleague Augustus McCrae come and go to embark on one last adventure, with the unspoken question: When we feel some sense of oppression, apathy, meaninglessness, etc., can we undertake some external adventure to give rise to internal meaning?

We can all think of plenty of rational reasons to be hesitant to commit to a longer hike (work, logistics, financial concerns, just the quiet gravity of standing still), but if you pay close attention, you may notice an underlying nervousness or even fear (at least for me!).

But as becomes clear throughout the novel, if there isn’t a lot of personal growth along the journey, you won’t feel nervous beforehand.

If the journey is truly great, you will experience doubt, and all doubt should be taken as a sign that it is worth pursuing.

go ahead

If you’ve managed to read this far, I hope you’ll stick around as I document my experiences on the trails throughout the trip.

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