It is said that the Appalachian Mountains, cut from the same earth as the Scottish Highlands and the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco, are among the most ancient mountains on this planet and that once upon a time they rose higher than even Everest is now. But the rivers which run through them, older than the mountains themselves, along with rain and ice and time have humbled them, and what’s left in our lifetimes is a verdant ruin. The highest peak of the range, North Carolina’s Mt. Mitchell now stands at only around 6700 feet.
The ruin, still crumbling, is ironically in a process of healing after decades of careless, post-Civil War, industrial exploitation. Though most of the great, old-growth firs, oaks, and hemlocks were slain, the endless, relatively young forests still offer a bounty of wild food. The soil is so very rich. And there is no scarcity (most of the time) of mountain streams whose sweet water always leaves some aftertaste of greenness. I wouldn’t quite call them loving mountains, but they do not fill me with the sense of ominous indifference of the Scottish Highlands or the Alps. I do not feel out of place among them. Indeed, growing up in Atlanta just south of the Appalachian foothills, they are, to me, as much home as anywhere else is.
So, what a thing it is to embark on a journey straight from one’s front door! No baggage check-in, no TSA, no turbulence, and no layovers - just an old-fashioned adventure. The first stranger I’d divulged my plans to was the proprietor of a lakeside pub in North Georgia, sheltering me from a terribly chilly morning rain, in a place whose name a map could not say - though the lake was called Burton. “I’m going to New York!” It wasn’t my first long-distance bicycle rodeo, but just saying it to someone didn't mean I'd actually get there.
On trips such as these, there is little else besides the circular motion of my legs and the bike’s cranks that is in any sense predictable. There is a weight to the emptiness of having absolutely no idea how any day will play out. But I find I am tremendously energized in being forced to discard plans just as readily as I concoct them. A friend recently asked, “So you’re just getting your ass constantly handed to you by nature?” Yes and I wouldn’t have it another way. If the oldest mountains on this planet couldn’t resist the way of things, what can I do?
NO TRESPASSING! There is no placard more beloved in rural America than the one that threatens prosecution or violence upon any interloper who so basely and vilely trespasses on someone else’s most sacred private property. Unlike in Europe where I tended to (stealthily) pitch my hammock wherever I pleased, I made damn sure I spent every night of this trip on public land lest I awaken with sleepy eyes from a dream - made all the more vivid by sleeping outside in the fresh, oxygen-rich air - staring straight down the barrel of a gun.
Grayson Highland State Park was a dream of Britain and British mountain biking, replete with authentic bog, ferns, wild horses and cattle, barbwire-lined bridleways (decorated, of course, with standard-issue horse crap), roads undoubtedly of the old-Roman persuasion (surely the Romans built roads in Virginia after they finished up in Wales), firs, and heavily abused topsoil upon which very little else can thrive besides rocks. Aside from your run-of-the-mill Appalachian deforestation, I read that once upon a time the shepherds and ranchers who lived there, in order to stave off the forest’s encroachment upon their grazing pastures and crop fields (NO TRESPASSING!), would set the bush ablaze, eventually burning the topsoil. Like some of the rugged landscapes of the UK, it is not natural, but it sure is pretty!
On the fourth of July, while much of the rest of the nation was celebrating the simultaneous births of both American independence and Betsy Ross’ Summer 1776 collection of “NO TRESPASSING!” quilts and signage, I was gunning my way through Jefferson National Forest in the dark with a very dry mouth desperate for a sip from even the faintest stream. Alas, between a very dry early summer and a Virginian penchant for running dirt roads along the long mountain ridgelines which are generally waterless anyways, I'd gone a solid thirty miles and five hours without any water. To think I’d wanted to set up camp at half-six but ended up not getting into my hammock until 1:30 in the morning! Cycling up and down the gruesome Sulphur Springs Road thirsty as hell with only a head torch to light the way was an experience not easily forgotten. But I did learn that the body seems to have a surprisingly large reserve of energy in case of emergency.
A half hour before midnight I finally reached a paved road and not long after spotted a man walking out onto his front porch to enjoy the fireworks that a few locals were igniting in a nearby field. I dropped my bike on the edge of his lawn (NO TRESPASSING!!) and teary-eyed asked him for water. Never have I been so thirsty. He graciously obliged, went inside to his fridge, came back out and handed me six ice-cold bottles of water. “Have all of it.” It’s just water after all, but the generosity stunned me regardless. I chugged three bottles and filled my own empty-for-far-too-long water bottle with the other three. We exchanged names. I told him I was cycling to New York. I told him about Sulphur Springs Road. “I don’t even take my ATV up there anymore and you rode it in the dark?” he wondered. So much I do on these trips seems to fly in the face of common sense. But it’s not for the thrills, it’s not because of some derring-do, I just needed water.
Oddly, while he and I chatted in the dark, our voices filling the still night air, fireworks seemingly at an end, his wife silently peered out from behind the screened door leading into the kitchen. After a minute she shut off all the lights and I heard her lock the door. Perhaps my being a desiccated traveler desperate for a drink was merely a false pretense to mask my true intentions of robbing their mobile home and filling the tiny bags on my bicycle with their valuables. Dunno. It was quite the contradiction to behold - his openness and kindness and her fear and suspicion. No one in Europe had ever been afraid of me, not that I noticed anyways. To be sure, it wasn’t the last of the odd contradictions I’d experience on the road to New York.
Before I left, I told the man which way I was going - towards No Business Creek and up Wolf Creek and Sugar Run Mountains. “Is there water in the creek?” “Should be.” About to get back on the bike, I heard him warn, “By the way, and I kid you not, there are rattlesnakes up there." A half hour later and having never seen a wild rattlesnake in Appalachia before, I pretended that I hadn't heard that as I searched in the dark for a place to pitch up beside the creek. In the morning, I made my way towards an AT Hikers hostel on the other side of the mountain, having decided that I needed to rest. About halfway there along the mountain road, I saw something big, green, and long basking in the morning light - it turned out that he kidded me not.
