Gracefully Surrendering the Things of Youth?

I am 42.  Probably in the best shape of my life, but still 42.  The same age as a declining Tom Brady, older than all but one major leaguer (hey, Fernando Rodney!) and one NBA player (the immortal Vince Carter).

I’ve heard that age is just a number, however, and thus far, that maxim has proven true.  Save a small change in my energy levels after a day of teaching (I’m much more inclined to read on the balcony with a cup of coffee than to ride to the north side of Chicago), I feel no different than I did when I was 25.  (In fact, I often feel better – maybe because I do yoga everyday now?)

Thus, when my friend Matthew, aged 59, not only hiked the entirety of the Pacific Coast Trail but hiked it fast – and posted long diary entries with pictures nearly every day - I began thinking that I might one day do the same thing, probably on the Appalachian Trail, as I am more of an eastern bird, a creature of humidity, thunderstorms, and mosquitoes.

Accordingly, I began making vague plans…maybe early retirement, maybe negotiating a half-year sabbatical.  I decided I would hike it north to south…there are fewer people headed that way, you can start later in the season, you dispatch with the toughest 150 miles of trail right off the bat, and you hike into the warmth as the summer wanes and the fall comes on.

There were air castles, and they were lofty, and big.

*

It should be noted that, while I am an avid backpacker, I have never done any truly long-distance hiking.  The longest trail I’ve completed, the 180-mile River to River Trail that runs from the Ohio to the Mississippi in southern Illinois, was done in sections, the longest a 70-mile scorchingly hot trek (which is also the most I’d ever done at one go).  I’ve completed the longest trails in Indiana (the very difficult Knobstone and Tecumseh), Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, and Florida (the longest loop trail anyway).  However, save for the aforementioned River to River, all of those trails were 55 miles or less.

I’ve heard, though, that the toughest hiking is at the beginning, that, after you get into a rhythm, things get much easier.

If that is true, it means I’ve done the toughest part of a hike over and over and over…The rest should be a breeze, right?

*

With these dreams firmly in the peripheries of my mind, my wife, Patricia, and I set out to do some winter backpacking in the Ocala National Forest in north-central Florida December, 2019.  We’d read that the best part of the 1,200-mile Florida National Scenic Trail, 67 miles of it, runs through the Ocala.  We’d done a small section the previous winter, packing in a mere five miles, setting up camp near Hidden Pond in the Juniper Wilderness, and then day hiking and swimming around.  It was lovely.

This year, with long-distance glory in mind, we really wanted to do the whole stretch.  We’d have to do it fast (five days), as we had plans to be in Naples, four hours south, just after the New Year.  But the trail was flat and we were in shape and what’s 67 miles between friends?

We left from Chicago on Christmas Day and made it to the Ocala section’s southern trailhead at Clearwater Lake Recreation Area late at night on the 26^th.  As we got to bed quite late, we didn’t set an alarm, deciding we’d sleep well and put some miles in beneath the headlamps.  (This was not unusual – my wife and I are amongst that rarest of entities – backpacking night owls.)

After coffee, showers, meditation, reading, and repacking our packs, we hit the trail at just past 1 (gasp!) but feeling full of vinegar and verve.  Sure, we’d essentially have to make nearly 70 miles in less than 100 hours, but the way we were feeling, that seemed a triviality.

The Ocala, just as we remembered, was beautiful.  We relished in the varying habitats (dry longleaf pine sandhill uplands, live oak hammocks, open prairies dotted with lakes that stretched for miles under vast Floridian skies, dense, tropical, almost jungly oases).  And was it flat!  Initially, the miles rolled away.  We made more than ten by the time early winter darkness descended just a few hours later.

As it was raining heavily (we were in the midst of the rainiest December in central Florida in more than 80 years), we took a half-mile side trail to the Alexander Springs Campground (where they had bear-proof food lockers and hot showers), and claimed the next to last site available.  

At this point, I was wet and tired and my legs hurt, but this was all to be expected.  As a hiker named Barbie we met along the trail said, “There is no such thing as a completely pain-free hike.”  More troubling, though, were the hot spots going on to blisters on the ball of my left foot.  Unwisely, I had ignored them throughout the day, and they were singing a bit.

The night was a wash, so we had dinner, took showers, and went to bed early, without a coveted campfire.

*

The next day, waking early-ish to the sounds of children playing in the rain, I hurt slightly more than I had the night before, but still, no worries.  We packed up during a cessation in the rain, had breakfast (oatmeal and coffee), and made our way back toward the Florida Trail.  We made one brief stop at the springs and another to talk to a huge family who were fascinated by our huge packs.  They asked us tons of questions about backpacking, then gave us coffee strong enough to wake the dead.  Perhaps on account of this, there was morning optimism, and singing, and joy.

Unfortunately, my blisters got worse and were joined by others, and I could not get into any sort of rhythm.  The scenery was beautiful, the trail was flat or gently undulating, the skies were overcast, lowering, and poetic, but it was a slog, the whole time.  As the blisters on the ball of my left foot worsened, fattening and filling with fluid, I compensated by stepping differently, with more weight, on my right leg; this led to cramping in my right calf.  Also, an ingrown toenail (left big toe) started to throb, my shoulders ached, and my lower back began threatening to go out on me…once, I was sure it had.

In short, by the time early night had fallen, and we were wading our way through flooded Farles Prairie, I was utterly miserable.  We had made only about 12 miles, despite our much earlier start.  As I sloughed off my pack at our wet “campsite”, I remarked to Patricia, without hyperbole, that today had been the most painful day I had ever had hiking – and I have had some doozies.  (Once, on the Black Forest Trail in Western Pennsylvania, I had inadvertently peeled off a blister, which began bleeding.  As I hobbled on, it hurt so much I actually felt faint, and as though I might throw up.  On taking off my boot, I found that I had a hole in my sock right where the blister was, and that the open sore and exposed nerves were rubbing right on the back of my boot…And our second day in Florida was worse than that.)

As we moved about setting up camp, I began to entertain certain fears that had theretofore been only peripheral: that I was old, that my days of setting goals and accomplishing them were coming to an end, that I would never do anything longer than short weekend excursions.  After all, what business did I have thinking about the 2,100 mile Appalachian, with its tremendous elevation gains and losses, its rugged, rocky, flooded surfaces, and its requirement to pack for sometimes weeks at a time, when I was twenty miles into the flat Florida Trail and was wondering how I’d even make it out of the woods the next day, let alone cover 48 miles over the next three.

“If I don’t find a way to make the pain manageable,” I said over dinner, looking out over a marshy lake and intermittent pines in the deep dusk, “I don’t think I can finish.”

This may not seem like a huge deal, but I have never of my own accord failed to finish a backpacking trail once I’ve set out.  Ever.  Horrible weather, ill-fitting shoes, blisters, heat, cold, too-heavy packs, narrow windows of time, lack of water, poison ivy, broken water filters, broken lanterns, broken stoves, the flu…I’ve always found a way to surmount these obstacles and finish what I’d set out to do.  I knew there would come a time when I would not, but I didn’t think it’d be here, and now, so soon after beginning to nurture thoughts of being a through-hiker.

I lay down in the tent, feeling five or six points of pure agony on my body.  

“Would you like me to read you some Christian Science?” Patricia asked.

Patricia is a Christian Science nurse and, as such, is accustomed to helping her patients deal with pain and sickness.  Though I am not a Christian Scientist, I call myself an ally – and was open to any help I could get.

I fell asleep pretty much right away, but Patricia kept reading, telling me in the morning that I had looked so peaceful she didn’t want to stop.

We slept well.  On awaking, I felt better.  Not good, but better.  Not sure that I could make it 18 miles that day, but willing to give it a try and not abort the mission just yet.

In short, my pain had become manageable, and my declaring myself moribund put off at least until the afternoon.

Setting out, we made pretty good time.  Patricia, in addition to working metaphysically with me, had taped up my blisters a bit and, though I was still tenderfooted, was able to get into much more of a rhythm than I had yesterday, even after having to hike around the edges of a huge water meadow to avoid wetting my newly bandaged feet on more flooded sections of trail.  

At about three, we stopped for a late lunch, some Pepsi and Gatorade and supplies, at the beautiful Juniper Springs Recreation Area.  We still had almost 11 miles to go, and nightfall would be coming soon, but things still felt possible.  We enjoyed ourselves, looking at the map and eating, gazing out over the springs and the evocative grist mill that stood near them, resting our feet.  We stayed longer than we had indented to.

We headed into the Juniper Springs wilderness at twilight.  I didn’t like hiking such a beautiful stretch at night, but we had hiked all of it last year, and our memories were still vivid.

Again, we made pretty good time.  At about seven, in the full starry darkness, we stopped to make coffee and eat cookies at Hidden Pond (where we had camped last year), a beautiful and well-used camping area in the heart of the wilderness.  We had gone about 13 miles at this point, and still had five to go.

Though ready to be done, I steeled myself to lumber on.  Man, was it hard to get started again! Every part of me was screaming that it was time to pitch a tent and sleep.  

But get started I did, and though more hobbled than I had been earlier, still moved well.  And though it sucked not to be able to see the landscape, the sky was spectacular, starlit and vast.

About nine, I reached a point when I felt I could go no farther.  I sat heavily, head between my knees, feeling, for the first time all day, horrid.  Again, everything below my shoulders hurt.  Everything.

Patricia, for her part, was positively sprightly – and sympathetic – encouraging me to focus past my physical woes.  Off in the darkness, a chorus of frogs sounded like a huge, purring cat.  “Listen to that,” she said.  “Focus on that.”  And I did.  With wonder.  I still hurt though.

We still had 2.5 miles to make, and I’d no choice but to make it.

The habitat changed as we went north, back into the dry pine uplands.  I pondered stopping (we’d camped near here last year) but, as there was no water anywhere, this was not an option.  We had to make it to Hopkins Prairie Campground.

We did, an hour and two long, limping miles later.

I had thought we’d be coming to another big, lit-up campground like Alexander Springs, but I was wrong.  Hopkins Prairie was a primitive, backcountry affair, sans electricity and running water.  Also, contrary to the map, it was a fair piece off the trail.  A few hundred yards along a flooded, unpaved road, with no campground (or sign of a campground) in sight, I again could go no farther, and dropped my pack unceremoniously in the wet grass.

“You should carry it,” Patricia said.  “You’re just going to have to come back and get it.”

“I don’t care,” I said, pouting fully.

We reached the entrance to the campground just a few minutes later, and claimed the first open site we came to.  Everything was dark and still.  It was late, 11 p.m. eastern, but felt much later.

We were completely out of water, and though the map said there was water available here, we could find nothing.  So, reluctantly, after retrieving my pack, we walked towards the pond adjacent the campground, and began trying to find a trail down to the water.  There were a few, but all became boggy long before they reached the water’s edge.  The thought of filtering stagnant water, while essentially squatting in it, at midnight, after 18 miles of hiking, was about the least appealing prospect ever.  Thus, we returned to the campsite.  Patricia took a few bottles and went up the road to look for a pump or spigot.  I began setting up camp.

The word that kept coming to me was destroyed.  I felt positively destroyed.  By the warming, happy light of our solar lantern (which was the only light visible, anywhere), I got the tent up and everything in its right place, but nothing felt easy, or fun.  I was able to feel gratitude when P. came back just a couple minutes later with four full water bottles, but this was short lived.  

We ate dinner, briefly pondered a fire (nope!) and then readied for bed.

“My God, do I feel wretched!” I whined.

Patricia again read to me from her Christian Science text.  In the tent, we had strung up a little string of white, star-shaped lights that we’d bought at Publix (Christmas clearance sale) and the glow was beautiful.  I focused on that light, and her words.  Soon, I fell into a fitful sleep. 

*

Sometime during the night, I had a dream in which I decided to nix the rest of the hike and called a service that came to your campsite, picked you up, and gave you vegan steak and apple pie on the way back to your car.  I told Patricia of this, and she was happy with the arrangement.  This taken care of, I was able to drop off to sleep fully, despite my pain.

*

I awoke just after dawn, the deeper part of me glad that our hiking ordeal was over.  As consciousness began to filter back in, however, I realized, to my chagrin, that there was no vegan car service coming, that we were in one of the remotest spots in all of the Ocala, and that I still felt utterly battered.  

After dozing fitfully for a while longer, I was able to motivate myself with the fact that finishing the trail would not be much more work than hiking the road out.  

With breakfast, coffee, and a walk around the campground (which was situated in a lovely live oak hammock on the edge of a prairie, and quite beautiful), I was again feeling okay enough to go on.

Looking at the map earlier, I had determined that, tomorrow, it was possible to stash our packs and day hike out…this gave me another modicum of hope, and I began thinking we might just get the whole thing done.

Things again went well initially, though I had to stop and elevate my feet often, and it was slow going getting restarted.  The first part of the day’s hike followed the edge of the forest and gave on sweeping views of vast, waterlogged - and gorgeous - Hopkins Prairie, and the miles rolled away.  By the time we stopped for lunch, adjacent a small, unnamed pond, we had done maybe seven miles, and I felt better than before I’d started.  The day was warm and humid (my favorite), occasionally spitting rain but otherwise splendid.  

We knew that, today, the trail would pass something called the 88 Store, but, save that it was the only business along the entirety of the trail, and that you could restock and take showers, we knew next to nothing about it.  Was it a convenience store?  A bar and grill?  A hostel?  Some combination thereof?  We passed a hiker in the late afternoon, a really fit old dude with a huge beard wearing what looked to be a small skirt and nothing else, who told us that we were about five miles from the store, and that it probably stayed open fairly late, maybe 8 p.m. as it was the only store around there.  We began to concoct pipe dreams about hot showers, a pizza, cold Pepsi…As the daylight waned, we hiked hard.

At dusk, we stopped at a place where the Florida Trail crossed an off-road trail, and I took off my shoes and socks and elevated my feet.  The nurse (and caring wife) in Patricia took over then and, after washing my feet fully, she dressed them and bandaged them and rubbed them.  Lying on my back, looking up through the pines at the vesper sky, I laughed and cried, it hurt so much and felt so good.  

A man and his sons in a Jeep pulled up (surprising us as we were in a very remote area) and, looking confused, asked if I was okay.

“Yes,” Patricia said laughing.  “Just taking care of some blisters.”

What they’d thought of pulling up and seeing a hippie splayed out on the ground in the middle of nowhere, bandaged like a mummy below the ankles, we’ll never know.

Darkness fell and, though we lost the trail for a bit, we reached the 88 Store before 8.  It was close to what I had expected, though not as glorious.  It was essentially a dive bar, catering to locals.  It had once had a restaurant.  “We’re between cooks right now,” the proprietor said.  There had once been a small store.  “We’re cleaned out right now.  Had a bunch of bikers come through.  We need to restock.”  There had once been hot water showers.  “You can take a shower but the hot water heater’s on the fritz.”

The good news was it was open until “whenever”, there was a place to plug in our phones and my rechargeable light, they had chips and cookies and non-alcoholic beer (Pabst!), and we would be able to wash the grime off (even if it’d be more refreshing than we’d hoped).

I took the first shower.  It was personality-alteringly cold, and the stall, in an outdoor shed, looked like the setting for a low-budget slasher film, but, afterwards, I was clean again.  Thankfully, the night was still warmish.

          As Patricia showered, I drank NA Pabst, booked our favorite hotel in Naples, caught up on Facebook, ate snacks. I posted a few pictures and mentioned my blisters.  My friend Jeremy, another avid hiker and backpacker, commented, “Blister filled?  I thought you learned your lesson long ago,” to which I responded, “Apparently not…at all.”  I thought of asking his advice on dealing with blisters, but every time I ask him for advice, on anything, the first thing he says is, “First, I think you need to grow a pair.”

By the time Patricia was done, it was getting late and, again, we both felt ready to stop for the night.  However, we didn’t want to make the next day’s hike too long and, furthermore, to stay where we were meant pitching a tent under a sodium arc lamp by the parking lot of a bar.  So, reluctantly, we filled our water bottles, hoisted our packs, and set off into the starry darkness.

Our goal was Grassy Pond, just about two miles away.  I felt we were making good time, but Patricia, referencing the Guthook hiking app she had recently downloaded, contradicted this, and we had a dumb argument.

“There is no way we have only gone three tenths of a mile!  That’s the distance from our apartment to Trader Joe’s!  What does that take?  Five minutes?”

“That’s what the app says.  You have to remember that we are hiking on uneven terrain, with heavy packs on.”

“No way.”

“That’s what it says.”

“Then the app is wrong.”

“Maybe you’re wrong.”

And so on and so forth…it ended with me suggesting if she loved the app so much, she should marry it.

We arrived just before midnight in the isolated Grassy Pond area and stopped at a sign indicating a side trail to a campsite.  There was no site, however, only a huge, wet clearing, replete with myriad off road vehicle tracks.  Patricia told me that, according to the proprietor of the bar, there had been a primitive campground here once, but it had been taken out.  Odd that they had not removed the sign.

We looked for possible spots, but nothing really appealed.  Thus, we trudged back to the main trail and set up in the clearing right by the sign for the campsite.  Despite its proximity to the trail, it was a fine spot, sheltered by sprawling live oaks.  We made camp and ate dinner, finishing pretty much all of the food we had brought.

The night had grown cold…surprising us because there hadn’t even been a puff of wind to mark the cold front.  We basically had to layer up with all our clothes.

Lying down in the tent, again in the light from the string of stars, I felt better than I had on the whole of the trip.  We laughed and felt like kids on our first campout, snuggling together beneath our sleeping bags and emergency blankets, taking turns holding our stuffed camping weasel.

I slept terrifically, and deeply.

*

The next day dawned sunny and cool.  We still had 11 miles to make, but, after 36 in the last two, this felt quite doable.

After breakfast and coffee and packing up, we sat in the sun, relaxing, reading, meditating.  The sun felt warm and good on our skin.  My feet and legs still hurt, but nothing like they had.

We had thought of stashing our packs at the Delancy Campground, about four miles away, but we got there so quickly and so effortlessly, we decided to just hump them all the way to the end.  We refilled our water bottles (thanks to some campers at Delancy – there was no pump) had some almonds, and continued on.

Our friends, Tom and Leiza, were meeting us at the northern trailhead at five, and, checking our watches, we found we were on a pace to arrive there early.  Still, we hurried on, hoping for the chance to change and clean up a bit before we met them.

The last part of the trail ran parallel to the shoreline of the controversial Rodman Reservoir, which was being drained to eradicate some exotic species.  Many locals want to destroy the dam and also the reservoir.  I didn’t know enough about it to have an opinion, but thought it was pretty in the late afternoon light.

We arrived at the trailhead fifteen minutes before five, at the exact moment Tom and Leiza arrived there.  I was grateful for the cold-water shower I had taken the night before, as I was still fairly clean, and the lack of chance to wash up was not fatal.  Patricia knew them (they were Christian Science nurses, too) but I was meeting them for the first time, and was glad my smell would not make my first impression.

Tom grabbed my pack and grimaced.  “That’s more than I would want to have on my back,” he said, setting it down again.

As they drove us back to our car, Tom and Leiza kept remarking how far we had hiked.  All told, it took nearly an hour and a half to make it back to Clearwater Lake.  “You guys sure went a long way!” they each said, several times.

We had.  And in a very short time.  Even though the trail was flat, it was still an accomplishment.  My friend Brickman, a fellow hiker from nearby Gainesville, texted me, “I’ve been hiking here my whole life, and 36 miles in two days is pretty damn impressive.”

Watching the sun set over the pines and little towns of rural central Florida, I gave myself over to thinking.

I had not yet grown old.  I was still capable of setting goals, even lofty ones, and accomplishing them.  If this trip were any indication, I would be able to at least contemplate the idea of through hiking a major trail.  I had felt as though I couldn’t go on, several times, and yet had, so that was something.  And Patricia, though not as keen to plan things far in the future as I am, would love to do a major hike as well – and would no doubt have an easier time of it than me!

Sure, I would have to address my foot situation.  (Note: I already have, ordering new shoes, Altra Lone Peak 4.0s, a size bigger with a huge, wide toe box, and a box of rubber blister bandages.) Sure, I would have to plan rest days at the beginning of any trip, maybe several of them, to give our bodies a chance to adjust.  Sure, I knew that I would eventually slow down, would grow old…

But not yet.

The idea of through hiking something loomed like a monolith, a god, in the twilight.

As did the thought of Mexican food in Ocala, a shower, and a New Year’s Eve celebration.

As did a rather enormous sense of relief, happiness, and accomplishment.

January 7 – January 19, 2020

Hyde Park, Chicago, IL

Millsville, IN