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At the base of the mountain, we came upon another truck, an appropriately sized model for traversing a mountain. The driver pulled to the side, a trio of show-worthy Foxhounds dancing behind the cab. My brother rolled down his window.

“Hey man, do you know how we get to the fire tower on Albert Mountain?”

“Yeah, just take the detour through the parking lot up ahead. There’s a beautiful loop if you got time to hike. I think it’s about a mile or so.”

“Thank ya, sir.”

Tank’s engine growled, asserting its machismo, as we drove on to the scene of our wrong turn. There still wasn’t a phone signal among us. The correct road was perhaps five inches wider, and much less threatening. We were making up time, which was good, because, as we climbed higher and higher, the pressure in my bladder, fueled by two cups of lackluster continental breakfast coffee, was growing more and more intense.

Every time we came around a bend, my hopes for relief would be dashed. Until finally, we saw the trail and knew we had to be close. A few minutes later I was dashing from the truck into a patch of rhododendrons, smiling at the sweet satisfaction of release. We’d made it. In more ways than one.

There were two shuttles waiting for us, both SUVs. The General and Captain Cordage were loading their things into one of the vehicles with a gentleman in Carhartt overalls. The driver’s speech was a peppy southern twang that fit his face perfectly. Lieutenant Blazer and his friend Johnny, a first-time backpacker, were organizing gear in the Lieutenant’s mini van. Without a formal discussion of how we’d be dispersed, we started loading our packs and poles into the back of the other driver’s car.

There’s always an interesting energy in a shuttle, similar I suppose to an Uber ride across town, but more like backcountry Taxi Cab Confessions. It’s strange climbing into a vehicle with a total stranger and trusting them to move you down the side of a mountain. The reward for this faith is a beautiful bouquet of strangers’ biographies. I’ve yet to take a shuttle in to or out of the mountains without cracking open a treasure chest of nonfictional tales about others on the trail. This particular driver fell in love with a backpacker, took up hiking herself, covered trails all over the eastern part of the country, and landed in Georgia. I felt nothing but hot breath and silence from the three men behind me as I volleyed questions back and forth and encouraged her to unwrap more details of her past. It was a way to pass the time, and this woman, like most AT shuttle drivers, had seen some things.

After a little over an hour, we arrived at Unicoi Gap. The sun was shining and the parking lot was a flurry of resting thru hikers, day adventurers and section hikers settling up with their shuttles. We pulled gear from the backs of the SUVs and started finalizing the details of our wearables – tightening shoelaces, applying knee braces, adjusting pole heights. No matter how many times you’ve anticipated it, replicated it, lived through it, there is nothing that prepares you for that first day with a full pack on. It’s like offering a 5-year-old with a death grip a four-day-long piggy back ride.

The ascent north out of Unicoi Gap was a stupid steep climb by suburban dweller standards. I shrugged my shoulders a bit to settle and distribute the weight of my pack and met up with a familiar rhythm. Pole, pole, leg, leg, pole, pole, leg, leg … slow and steady up toward the mountaintops, where the views are spectacular and cell signals are weak or nonexistent. It was 10:30 in the morning and we had 11 miles to cover. I was ready.

It took less than an hour for reality to set in. “I did not take my preparation seriously enough,” Gravy huffed behind me. He’d done more than I had. Beginning around the first of the year he’d been putting weights in a pack and walking on the treadmill at an incline for an hour at night. But simulations in Indiana basements often pale in comparison to the drastic elevation changes of the southern states. There’s just no work around. These climbs in particular felt unforgiving and relentless.

I chatted with my inner philosopher as I heaved and forced by body over the dirt beneath me, arriving at the teachings on Mother Nature’s lesson plan. For this particular morning, we would be ruminating on challenges. Often, we find ourselves at the start of a tumultuous obstacle. And we resolve to take it one step at a time until we conquer it. This is the basic plot for nearly every compelling human account. Woman lives. Woman struggles. Woman overcomes. But, it can’t be easy or it wouldn’t be worth showing up.

It’s mirrored in the climb. Every time I come around a turn and see that there is still a significant way to go, I have to accept the challenge all over again – come to terms with the obstacle like I’m back at the beginning. The higher I get, the harder it becomes to accept the truth, and the harder it is to focus on how far I’ve come. Ten steps start to feel like 100. And who hasn’t been there in life? Who hasn’t believed they had something under control only to fall and have to get up again? The trail is everyone’s teacher. It doses out humility in varying prescriptions, but always with intention.

Around 1 p.m., Gravy and I stopped for lunch on a rocky overlook. An army of newly born bugs swarmed my sweaty head as I squeezed a few dollops of almond butter onto a tortilla and searched for my dried mango. I hadn’t seen Just Matt since we left Unicoi Gap that morning, but that wasn’t unusual. I assumed he’d come strolling up to the ledge, complain about how everyone’s always stopping to eat and press on just ahead of me. Bambi had already come and gone.

I looked out over the slate and dirt canvas of a thawing landscape. The powder blue sky went on forever, dotted with fluffy clouds outlined in the most brilliant white the angel’s could pull from their palettes. Thru hikers would shuffle up to the edge of the rock, pause, make some comment, like, “Pretty,” or a simple, satisfied exhalation, and then they’d walk on, with miles and miles yet to cover before the sun fell behind the peaks.

I ran the zipper around my pants at the knees and removed the bottom portion. Instant shorts to minimize my excessive sweat. Not my best look, but the breeze bouncing off of my alabaster shins was a welcome sensation.

“I’m going to go ahead and get started,” I told Gravy. He was making adjustments of his own, with one boot off and his shirt untucked. I hoisted my purple Deuter up off the ground. Still no sign of Just Matt or The General.

It goes without saying that a dramatic slope is tough to climb. But the coming down is often what gets ya. Some of the downhills are steeper than the uphills, with large rocky steps guiding your path. Your balance is off and it’s a constant battle to bridle your downward momentum. Add to that, you have at least 35 pounds on your back. So, every time you step down, that weight presses against your back and down into your knees. I had two good knees and I was feeling it. I could only imagine what was going on in my brother’s joints somewhere behind me.

I came to a winding portion of the trail covered in a canopy of rhododendron plants. The jungle green was a welcome reprieve from the brown dirt and naked trees dominating my surroundings. Lost in the lyrics of “Shallow”, I didn’t see it coming. My ankle jerked to the right, and eventually my body followed. My boulder of a pack slammed up over the back of my head and I crashed down on my bare right knee and palm. My pants, a pair I seldom wore, had been sliding down all morning. Now, as I managed to get both of my feet underneath me and dig my poles into the ground, they were mid-ass, revealing a few inches of underwear. Humility still counts, even when no one is around to witness it.

I brushed the trail dust off of my knee and hands and grabbed my shorts on either side to pull them up over my hips. Gravy came around the corner just as I was readjusting my pack. My ankle was tender for the next five minutes, but eventually returned to the normal, tolerable strains and pains.

Throughout the afternoon, each taxing climb seemed more aggressive than the last, steeper and steeper as they came. The mountain was flexing its muscle and I was feeling every vein and bulge. As a reward for going up, the hills were tailed by unforgiving descents. Up, down, up, down, and so the hours between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. went on. The heft of my pack pulled me backward on one giant step down. I came down on the ledge behind me, every ounce I ws carrying surged into my already skinned palms.

We knew we had to stop for water at Sassafras Gap Shelter, one mile before Addis Gap, where we planned to camp for the night. Gravy, Bambi and I got to the blue blaze around 5 p.m. The boys went down the path to fill our bladders and Nalgene bottles and I sat down under the sign to wait. A thru hiker was across the way, waiting to see what others she’d met on her adventure would be doing for the evening. If they intended to press on to the next shelter, I imagined she would do the same.

“Hi Dad,” I heard her say across the way. “Just letting you know I made it to my shelter for the night.”

They discussed some family business and I sat a stone’s throw away pretending not to listen in, swatting tiny bugs from my salty, sweaty face. I wondered how old she was and how worried her parents were. I envisioned what they told their friends at dinner parties. “Oh, you know Sunny, she’s just so wild at heart. But we’re certain she’ll take that internship after she gets this out of her system.”

I pulled out my own phone and turned the power on. As soon as the device found the weak signal a hundred text messages started popping up.

Bambi:
Where are you guys?

The General:
Just Matt and I are taking a nap.

Bambi:
Enjoy it

Just Matt:
If you guys get to Sassafras and decide to stop there, that’s fine.

Bambi:
OK

The guys came panting up the path a few minutes later.

“That drop down there is no joke,” Bambi said. Admittedly, I seldomly go on water gathering duty on the AT. I’m not here to make excuses. I don’t really know how to work the pump, though I doubt it’s super complicated. But being the person who typically stands on the trail where the water fetchers reemerge, I can tell you that most water sources involve a dramatic drop off of some sort. The guys almost always come back red faced and breathless.

“Have you been looking at your texts?” I asked.

“Yeah. Dad wants to just stay here I think.”

“I think it might get crowded,” Gravy said.

“Plus then we’d have to do 13 miles tomorrow,” Bambi agreed. He pulled out his phone and started typing.

Bambi:
We decided we want to keep going and finish the day.

Biscuits:
Stick to the original plan, folks! We’ll see you at camp.

I don’t know that I ever saw an answer to these texts. Given the events that followed, I would guess that was because Just Matt and The General were grappling with the consequences of our decision.

Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along just as we were done putting our packs back together with full water. The Lieutenant had seen the others a few hours or so before and felt confident they’d be along fairly soon. Bambi and I decided to take off toward our final stop for the day.

My joints were starting to rust and lock up, and I knew we had to be close to the end of our 11 miles. I’ve covered a lot of ground – jogging, walking, hiking – and it’s amazing how different 5,280 feet can feel, depending on your state of mind and body. On that day, beautiful in the low 70s with an invigorating breeze, I felt every strike of my boot against the earth in the last mile. I’m certain it was my mind that willed me on.

When we got into Addis Gap, there were two areas to set up tents. A higher section with several spots circling around a fire, and then a small, uneven section on the other side of the trail. Guess where Bambi wanted to be. We started making our slanted lot a residence. Our cozy two person North Face® tent took all of 15 minutes to put together, so Gravy helped Bambi with their sizable three-person shelter. They wrestled with poles and snaps and tarps while I started inflating various mats and pillows in our tent.

Captain Cordage had an impressive hammock set up going near the fire on the other side. Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along a short time later and selected a nice area just in front of the Captain for their tent. The campsite was a buzz of chatter and construction. Everywhere you looked someone was boiling something or unpacking their mobile home. A young, chipper couple worked hard to strike up a conversation, but I was too drained to give them the verbal courtship they were after.

About 45 minutes into our work, a sizeable figure came down the trail. It was Just Matt. He walked over to the tarp extending outside of his almost entirely built tent, dug his poles into a pile of dirt and collapsed. His knees were like cantaloupes, round and bulging with various inflammatory fluids. Liquid from his leaky water bladder hose made a dark circle around the left side of his chest and beads of sweat consolidated and dropped onto his shoulders. He was one long exhalation of profanities. He unstrapped his braces and hurled them through the thin material he’d crawl into in mere minutes.

“Where’s the General?” I asked after he’d calmed down for a few minutes.

“Aw, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just decides to stay back at Sassafras. I haven’t seen him in three hours.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I honestly don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

It was starting to get darker faster. I had chills from my dried sweat and the mounting wind. Everyone was worried, but nobody knew quite when and it how it was appropriate to act on the concern.

I decided to start on dinner, a pouch of burrito fixins to be boiled and loaded onto a tortilla. Gravy was having a killer corn soup that I was admittedly jealous of. I sat on a log and balanced my jetboil cups. The sun was dropping. The wind pursed its lips and blew just enough to topple my dishes. An older gentleman was to my right, explaining his trail name, Pot Hole. “Because I can really slow you down,” he said with a chuckle.

Across from him, a woman from Switzerland was indulging with a fake laugh. Again, I couldn’t deliver. I asked if she was planning to do the whole trail.

“That’s the hope,” she said. “I have until September and then one way or another I have to go back home.”

“You’ll make it,” I offered. She was banking on her partner and host family being able to visit her in June, but other than that, she was on her own. She seemed like the type who didn’t mind that much. We exchanged pouches of instant cappuccino. I gave her my favorite – Trader Joe’s instant coffee with cream and sugar – and she gave me her preferred pouch, Nescafe. I can admit I thought it would be some sort of fancy Dutch coffee, so there was some disappointment on my end. She didn’t like things that were too sweet, so I imagine there was some on her end as well the next morning.

Lieutenant Blazer came over to inquire about The General’s status. I didn’t have an update. At least not one that would make him feel any better. There was often distance between us on the trail, but even still, you never felt alone. It never seemed dangerous. But as the trees grew murky against the Georgia nightfall, we all felt the gravity of one of our guys being out on his own.

“I’ll give it a few more minutes and then head up the trail and look for him,” he said. As if on cue, our bearded buddy came strolling into camp, instantly chatting with the other hikers. He would just be starting to set up his camp for the night while the rest of us were getting ready to call it. I chewed a melatonin and started down a side trail to go to the bathroom behind the widest tree and brush my teeth.

By 9 o’clock I was shimming down into my sleeping bag, enjoying the addition of a soft liner Gravy got me for my birthday. The sack, made from a t-shirt-like material, offers up to 10 degrees more warmth. Just outside I heard my brother.

“Did you already eat?” he asked Bambi.

“Yeah, I had some mac and cheese.”

“Did you make me some?”

“Ah, no.”

“Where is the bag?”

“I hung it in a bear bag down over there.”

“Cool. So I just won’t eat anything then.”

And then silence, as I drifted off into my melatonin-endorsed sleep that I hoped, but knew wouldn’t last. Because out here it never does.

Sometime in the indistinguishable hours of night on the mountain, we awoke to an electric flash of lightning and then, a minute later, a gut thumping boom of thunder. It was raining and a storm that no one knew was coming was roaring into Addis Gap.