Edge of the world

The Appalachian Trail practically runs through my backyard! Suddenly, I'm inexplicably tempted to postpone my life for 6 months and become a sweaty, smelly, unkempt, skin-cancer-prone "through hiker." True, you can smell them coming long before you see them, but the people who hike the whole 2175 miles from Georgia to Maine just seem to be generally awesome and unusually wise. They're totally marinaded in deep thoughts, and zen, and body odor, and insight to life's great mysteries. (Perhaps the majority of their expertise relates to granola bars, sleeping bags, and GI illnesses, but that falls into the category of life's great mysteries, doesn't it?)

For lack of 6 months, I'm trying to get out and hike bits of the AT whenever I get the chance. Here's the first excursion. I went along with two great transition year residents (Amanda and Jaimie) and their husbands (Bjorn and Matt), plus Jaimie's vocal 2-year-old son who rode in a carry-on backpack and served as noisemaker/bear repellant. I'm not kidding about the bear repellant comment: as soon as the kid got quiet because he fell asleep, we came straight into a black bear sitting on the trail getting fat on wild raspberries. Jaimie screamed and it ran away, but we were within 50 feet of it before we noticed it or it noticed us.

We hiked to McAfee's Knob, which is one of the most stunning, most photographed spots on the whole AT. You come up to a ridge after about 4 miles of uphill hiking, turn a few meters off the trail, and suddenly it's like arriving at the edge of the world -- nothing but gray rock and blue sky. The view of the valley is stunning from the edge of the cliff overhang.

Me and Jaimie -- first timers on the Appalachian Trail

McAfee's Knob