My
longtime friend Al is an optometrist who lives about 10 miles from me five days
out of the week. The other two days he
lives about 160 miles away…in his cabin in the mountain overlooking Lake
Nantahala in Macon County, North Carolina.
It is his retreat, his home-away-from-home and his favorite place to
engage in three of his favorite activities: photography, painting and
hiking.
Al’s
favorite hiking route is the five-mile round trip from Wayah Gap to Siler Bald,
the first half requiring a climb of almost 1,300 feet in elevation. He’s made the hike well over 100 times, and
with Cindy away in New York for the weekend I thought it was the opportune time
for me to accompany Al to his cabin and make my initial hike to Siler
Bald.
Al
has a routine he religiously follows on his weekend getaways and I didn’t want
to interfere, so the first thing we did on the drive to the mountains was stop
at Moe’s for dinner. (I forgot to
mention another of Al’s favorite activities: Eating.) Al and I both ordered a vegan burrito, served
with a generous helping of tortilla chips and as-much-as-you-need salsa. As I sat across from him I noticed he had so
much on his tray and was shoveling food into his mouth so fast that I’m pretty
sure he ate a napkin.
Once
we got to the cabin we had a couple of beers (not part of Al’s normal routine,
nor mine for that matter) and called it a night around 10 p.m. We were up at 4 the next morning to begin our
hike to Siler Bald. But first, Al wanted
me to get my run in so he laid out the following game plan:
·
Al drops me off at the base of the mountain and
drives up the 4.3-mile dirt road up
to Wayah Bald to take photographs of the sunrise.
·
I run up
the 4.3-mile dirt road up to Wayah Bald to get my run in for the day.
·
We drive down
the 4.3-mile dirt road and cross the road over to Wayah Gap for our joint hike
to Siler Bald.
So
at 5:30 a.m. and armed with a handheld flashlight I began the climb to Wayah
Bald. Portions of the road were so hilly
I was forced to interrupt my run by walking a step or two (in a land where one
step = one mile). Once I made it to the
top I told Al I wanted to cash in on my reward for running uphill by starting
to run back downhill; you know, for the
easy part.
Well,
there once was a time when running downhill was ‘the easy part.’ Unfortunately that time was not in this
century. I had only run a little over a
mile on the once-upon-a-time easy part when Al pulled up in the car and told me
to get inside. No complaints from me.
We
made our way over to Wayah Gap to begin our ascent to Siler Bald. Al took along a pair of hiking poles and a
backpack; I took along a cell phone and a camera. It wasn’t difficult for anyone crossing our
paths to know which one of us was the rookie.
I
followed Al for a little more than an hour through the Nantahala Forest and I’m
proud to report we made the ascent without incident. No falls, no cuts, no bruises and no brushes
with death. In fact the only part of the
climb that caused me to break out in a cold sweat was when we came upon a gorge
and had to walk across two logs stretched from one side of the gorge to the
other. I just made sure not to look down
at the impending 3,000-foot drop to the bed of boulders directly beneath us (in
a land where one foot = one millimeter and boulders are actually pebbles). The path was painted spectacularly in every
shade of green imaginable. We spent some
time at the top—Siler Bald, elevation 5,216 feet—and took several photographs
as Al pointed out mountains in the distance in the neighboring states of
Georgia and Tennessee. Al showed me the
area where he spread his brother’s ashes several years earlier and mentioned
what a windy day it had been and that some of the ashes had blown back in his
face. I mentioned he might be the only
person to ever snort a member of his own family (now might be a good time to
mention Al and I share a similar sense of humor).
I
took the lead on the descent, me being a veteran of the route and all. At one point we heard a creature moving about
in the foliage: Al thought it was a squirrel while I was pretty sure it was a
polar bear. In retrospect I believe Al
was probably right because if it were a polar bear the white fur would have
stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all that green.
Right
after that Al took the lead for the remaining half-mile or so. I’m glad he did so he didn’t have to see my
balancing act when my right foot slid off of a rock. Imagine this for a moment (if you’re Nadia
Comaneci please skip ahead to the next paragraph):
·
You’re on one of those razor-thin balance beams
in a pair of trail shoes, nervously trying to maintain your balance.
·
Some wise guy sticks his thumb in your thigh,
causing you to flinch.
·
The flinch leads to a desperate flailing of both
arms—something you might see in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon—that goes on for what
seems like a minute or more before you finally regain your balance…and ultimately
your dignity.
·
You make sure the expression on your face is one
of ‘nothing to look at here; just move along.’
However,
the nervous perspiration all over your face totally blows your cover. (Now might be a good time to share that Al
and I have a similar sense of balance, giving him no room to either criticize
or comment and I of course would do the same for him; in fact I have done the same for him—many times. As he has for me—also many times.)
A
couple other topics of conversation in the two hours and 10 minutes it took us
to hike the five-miles to Siler Bald and back:
·
Al mentioned our mutual friend Sarah Lowell has run these same five miles in an
hour. (Sarah is a talented and
experienced trail runner; Al and I are not.
Ironically today the Western States Endurance Run—a 100-mile run through
the Sierra Nevada mountain range was this weekend. Al and I ran it in 2004 and 2006. Notice I say ‘ran’ it; that doesn’t necessarily
mean we finished. If you’re interested
in finding out how we did, you can read about it in my first book Running through My Mind. Cliff hang much?)
·
In the early 1990’s future Atlanta Centennial
Park bomber Eric Rudolph was Al’s ‘neighbor’ as he survived off the land for
five years in the valley immediately below Al’s cabin. In fact when the authorities captured him
after the 1996 Olympics he was rummaging for food in a dumpster in nearby Murphy,
North Carolina.
·
Al told me I was now a ‘multi-summit bagger,’
meaning I had climbed to the top of two mountains. I laughed to myself as I thought back to a
time several years ago when I met someone who told me he was not only a runner
but a ‘multi-marathoner’ as well. I
asked him how many marathons he had run and he proudly replied ‘two.’ (My point: Al has made it to the top of a couple
hundred summits and I have run a couple hundred marathons, much more deserving
of a ‘multi’ label than simply ‘two.’ That’s why Al’s comment struck me as
funny.)
·
A Walk in
the Woods, a film starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte and adapted from a
book by Bill Bryson is being filmed in various spots along the Appalachian
Trail to include the area we were in today.
While we didn’t spot either of the actors, we’re pretty sure we stumbled
across something Nick Nolte may have left behind (if you know what I mean). A Walk in the Woods is about Bryson’s
quest to hike the *2,181 miles of the
Appalachian Trail (*the actual distance of the route according to the
Appalachian Trail Conservatory).
After
we finished we went back to Al’s cabin to clean up before heading out to lunch
Al’s usual post-hike lunch spot, the Nantahala Outdoor Center. We both ordered Al’s favorite, a vegan burger
and I’ll have to admit: After covering over 11 miles of mountain terrain I was
famished; I tore into that plate of food like I hadn’t eaten in days.
In
fact there’s a pretty good chance I may have eaten a napkin.
