Maps, Trust, and “Is it Worth It?”
My decision to hike the Bartram Trail coincided with my decision to hike the Benton MacKaye Trail. Originally, I thought I would hike the Bartram Trail north, make my way from the northern terminus to the end of the BMT, and then hike the BMT south. However, it was a little easier for me to break these two hikes up and to have some time in between, so that is what I ended up doing. I’m glad I did, because I needed a little bit of time to get myself together for the Bartram Trail. My body was in good shape, but it gave me a chance to resolve the unsettled logistical matters. Basically everything. So, when I finished the BMT, I set about handling all of the logistics for the hike – how to get to the Bartram trail, whether or not to hike northbound or southbound, whether I needed permits, the camping situation, how to navigate the trail and what maps I might use. The Bartram Trail really is a lesser-traveled long trail; therefore, finding information about it required piecing together snippets from a lot of older blog entries. It took a little time, but ultimately I ended up with a game plan, a shuttle driver, and a set of GPX map files that I could use for navigation via a free app called GAIA.
If you’re interested in the logistics of planning a hike on the Bartram Trail, I have a YouTube video coming out at the end of my Bartram Trail Series that provides a fairly comprehensive logistics guide to the trail. The Bartram Trail thru-hike was the first time I have hiked a long trail without waypoint information. In other words, the trail was blazed with yellow rectangles and I had a GPS-based map to show me my position relative to the trail (ideally on it!), but I did not have maps showing water or campsite information. I also was not sure if the GPX files I had found online were accurate. GPX files are code that can be read by GPS apps on your phone to show you your position relative to the map you are using, like the popular Guthook app. I typically use the free Gaia app when I am uploading GPX files for a hike, though for the CDT I used the free Avenza app. My point is, I was stretching myself in a small, measured way by hiking a reasonably long distance with less than the usual amount of information. For those of you who are interested in hiking the Bartram Trail, I did add waypoints to my map files as I hiked. I captured water sources and campsites, and a few other minor things. You can download and use my GPX files from the Trip Planners page on this site.
One of my goals on this hike was to map it so that there would be an electronic, app-based navigation option for the Bartram Trail. I originally reached out to Guthook to see if they wanted to partner with me on this. I would do the leg work and they would provide the user interface and distribution channels. But, they weren’t interested. The Bartram Trail really isn’t on their radar. So, I decided I would do the next best thing and at least add waypoints to some existing map files. It isn’t perfect, but it is better than what I started with and I only noted waypoints that were reasonably reliable (water sources, established camping options).
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole when it comes to the logistics and planning of a voyage, so let me get back to the story. I had a few weeks’ break after the BMT, got all of the details together, and then before I knew it, I was driving up to Russell Bridge to leave my car at the Southern terminus of the Bartram Trail. I remember the sun coming up over I-85 as I barreled north. This is about the only time traffic is calm in Atlanta. I was driving to meet a lady we will call Barbara (name is changed for privacy). I found her as a shuttle driver by way of the Nantahala Outdoor Center. They keep a list of local area trail angels and shuttle drivers.
There’s always a small matter of trust when it comes to such arrangements. I was trusting that Barbara would be there after my two hour and twenty minute drive, and she was trusting that I would show up and not be some type of crazy lunatic. I’m glad it worked out for both of us! Sometimes I think about how little slack many of us tend to give other people – how the knees jerk and tell us that we shouldn’t trust people. Trust must be earned, not given. I’m guilty of it myself. My wife is a much more trusting person than I. The funny thing is, I’m a data guy at heart, and if I look at the data, 99% of the times I’ve been reluctant to trust people and situations, everything has been ok. I’d guess that is probably the same for many people. So why then do we often base actions on the 1% rather than the 99%? I can’t really answer the question because, as I said, I’m guilty of it as well. I often try to be better about it, but then there is a little voice in my head that says, “but what if….” In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari talks about why humans are so fearful. It’s been a while since I read this, but the basic idea is that, predator to predator, we are not at the top of the food chain. Modern technology allows us to be now, but strip all of that away and what protects us from the beasts? If Saber-toothed tigers, giant man-eating dinosaurs, or the predatory cats of the jungles and plains could have translated their thoughts to modern day lobbyist-employed marketers, we likely would have ended up with a commercial that went something like: “Humans. They’re what’s for dinner.”
Our fear is instinctual because it used to keep us alive. I guess you could argue that it still serves that purpose; however, I think it is useful to consider that, from an evolutionary perspective, it could also be a legacy of the past. Perhaps if we could evolve into a species with less fear and more collaboration, it would allow us to develop and create more, to achieve breakthroughs and new heights, to create stronger social fabrics and evolve past have-or have-not, do-or-die, fight-or-flight behaviors. If modern game theory, and examples thereof, tell us that fear drives humans to make suboptimal choices for all parties involved, why are we still afraid? More importantly, why do we still base decisions and actions on fear? I think to some degree, we just can’t help it. It’s in our nature. But what if we weren’t so afraid? After all, we have developed the technology and knowledge to stay safe from all predators, other than ourselves. And therein lies the irony. We hold ourselves back from what we could be – we subjugate ourselves. We can’t blame the lions and tigers anymore. People often ask me if I’m ever afraid of bears and other wild animals in the wilderness. My response is always the same – no. I worry more about other people, and human-created problems, like loose dogs. But why? Because other people are the biggest potential risk? We are a funny species, and I’m living proof of that. Maybe in another million years we will have pushed past our fearful ways. The way things are today though, it is hard to see a path for us to get there. It’s rather sad, really, to have such great potential as a species and watch as you never quite get there. Reminds me a lot of watching Braves baseball in the eighties.
Barbara was a spunky old mountain lady. I immediately loved her. She didn’t believe in slow turns and apologized out loud as she actively tailgated someone driving five miles per hour below the speed limit. “I know I shouldn’t be tailgating you, but god bless, how you can be driving this slow and not pull over I just don’t know. I know I shouldn’t tailgate….” Barbara lived near Franklin, North Carolina. She was retired, driving shuttles to help hikers and earn extra money. I gripped my seat as we careened around turn after turn, weaving our way up into the mountains. As we took a sharp curve on a narrow road, Barbara looked to the side and took a hand off the wheel to point out a cave on my side of the lane.
“That over there’s a bear cave. There’s another entrance somewhere back in the woods that the bear uses.” I wondered who used the roadside entrance. Maybe the mail bear? It definitely looked like a bear cave. I rotated my head backwards a little to keep it in my view as we passed by, mostly to avoid knowing whether or not we were still in our lane. Barbara took an awfully long pause from steering to look me in the eyes and make sure I knew about the bear cave. Trust – sometimes it feels like a wild ride, even when, in reality, it isn’t that big of a deal. We made it to the parking lot where I would start my hike without issue, safe and sound.
Barbara dropped me off late in the morning at a parking lot alongside the Nantahala River. This lot is right on the Bartram Trail. To the south, the trail crosses the Nantahala. To the north, it travels up 5.1 miles to Cheoah Bald, its northern terminus. I would hike up to Cheoah Bald to start my hike, and then come back down the same way, cross the Nantahala, and continue on my way south.
It was humid and sticky outside. My pack felt heavy when I lifted it. I was carrying 5.5 days of food – everything I would need for my trip. I normally wouldn’t do this. I didn’t need to. The trail passes right through Franklin, NC, right by a grocery store. But, I guess with the pandemic I didn’t really want to visit retail establishments unnecessarily. I also just didn’t feel like spending time resupplying. 5.5 days isn’t too much food, and after day 2 it would feel just fine. It just felt easier, so that’s what I did. A few hours after starting my hike, I would come to regret this decision.
It always feels a little weird starting a hike close to mid-day. I very much like starting adventures like this as early as possible, so I felt a little off getting started. I tend to be naturally antsy about starting things – I’m a man of motion. I like to act, to do, to take off and fly. I’m not good at being patient or sitting still. For this reason alone, starting the hike closer to mid-day was a good exercise in not relying on patterns, allowing (forcing) myself to adapt. I find that as I get a little older, it becomes easier and easier for me to place too much importance on routines, preferences, and schedules. I don’t know if this happens to everyone, but I’m quite sure I’m not alone on this one. Sometimes I notice myself falling into a pattern with something benign, like the time I go to bed, or what I eat for breakfast. I think this is all fine, but I also think it is good to remain flexible. I don’t even know why I think that is good – does it really matter? Probably not. Maybe a deep, biological undercurrent tells me that it is good to remain flexible to ensure survival. Too many patterns make prey easy to catch, after all. It’s how hunters hunt, and the hunted get taken down. Or maybe I feel that the spontaneity of youth, the adventure of life’s unknowns can too easily fall by the wayside if I become too comfortable in my routines. I do think it’s a slippery slope. Routines can be great, providing comforting structure and happiness, especially when one is pleased with the established pattern. I guess everyone is different. All I’m saying is, I try to be mindful of how I go through my days. I don’t want my comfortable patterns to turn into some kind of pseudo agoraphobic force that makes me less likely to try new things, shake things up, or be open to change. Yes, starting a hike close to noon seems like a silly example of mixing it up, but like I said, it’s a slippery slope. Life is made up of a million little decisions, any one of which can alter the course of the future. Life is also full of things that don’t go “my way” whether I’m executing routines and patterns or trying new things. It’s good for me to always practice going with the flow, since my natural tendency is to get a little stressed or agitated when plans don’t materialize. The idioms of old still ring true for working on oneself: “Practice Makes Perfect,” “Use it or Lose It.”
From the parking lot I crossed over highway 74 and back into the woods. I saw a bike locked to the side of a tree – clearly someone self-shuttling via bicycle. I have done this before myself for kayaking, though never for hiking. The climb up to Cheoah bald was tough. It wasn’t that the terrain was that bad – it was just hot, humid, I was carrying a lot of food weight and five miles of climbing is, well, five miles of climbing. Fortunately, there were lots of beautiful cascades flowing down the mountain, including one that was roughly twenty feet tall. Moss on the rocks and trees was emerald green and wildflowers popped with color, particularly violet and gold.
The Bartram Trail joins up with the Appalachian Trail just before the summit of Cheoah Bald. I couldn’t remember Cheoah Bald from my AT thru-hike, but I was delighted by the view when I arrived. There is a little wooden sign that says “Cheoah Bald” at the top – no marker denoting the northern terminus of the Bartram Trail. The view says it all though. The bald is small, but I could see far off into the distance, rows and rows of blue ridges (hence the range’s name) disappearing into the horizon line. There was a gentleman sitting down at the bald. I learned that he was the owner of the bike and had hiked up to the summit to complete his last section of the Bartram Trail. It reminded me of seeing southbound AT thru-hikers in Maine just starting their long journeys as mine was coming to an end. This time, my adventure was just beginning. I wondered if he had a similar feeling seeing me up there at his finish. He left shortly after, and I stayed to enjoy the view and a snack before I headed down.
Going back down was much faster. Unfortunately, about halfway down I noticed that, no matter how much I adjusted my hip belt, I could not relieve my shoulders of the weight of my pack. I thought it just needed to be adjusted, but when I unfastened my hip belt, it dropped to the ground without my pack! I removed my pack to see what was amiss, and quickly discovered that the cross bar that attaches the hip belt to my pack frame had snapped in half. I knew I wouldn’t be able to repair this until I got back home. As it was, my hip belt was now just a glorified fanny pack. I would have to bear the weight of my pack entirely on my shoulders for the rest of the trip. My decision to carry 5.5 days of food, somewhat needlessly, was now going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Oh well. While this was definitely a bummer, I had been considering trying out a hip belt-less pack for a while now. I figured this was a good, if impromptu and less-than-ideal, chance to see if my weight load was manageable without one. There was nothing I could do but hike on, so that is what I did.
On my way down, I ran into a group of college-aged kids who asked me if it was “worth it” to keep going. How does one answer such a question? I could have Mr. Miyagi’d them and said something like “Keep going always worth it, even when destination unclear.” But instead, my stock answer for this question is usually just “yep.” Because I generally do think it’s worth it. I find it to be a funny question though, because no one really knows where one path will take them. If I decide to eat a cheese sandwich with pickles today, is it worth it? Maybe. Or maybe I’ll wish I had pastrami on rye. Is it worth it to go to Paris on a vacation if I only have three days? Maybe. Do I want to see Paris with the time I have, or do I want to risk never going because I waited and never had the opportunity again? Maybe I would go later when I had more time. Maybe I wouldn’t. The implication behind the question “is it worth it” is that there is a path one should take when faced with a given decision, a right and a wrong, an optimal and sub-optimal, without regard for different people and different paths. We humans love black and white clarity when we can feel like we have attained it, even though it is often an invention of the mind.
Isn’t the answer to “is it worth it” always “yes?” If I don’t go to Paris, then I still haven’t been to Paris. If I eat the cheese sandwich with pickles, does it really matter if I then wish I had something else? I’ve eaten the sandwich – there’s no point in lamenting something I did not eat. Similarly, if I told the young lads that no, it wasn’t worth it based on my suffering a long uphill climb in the heat (just for argument’s sake, because I really did feel it WAS worth it), then I am reacting to my moments of suffering, and not really the “worth it” part. I am also projecting my experience onto their future experience, which I know nothing about because it has not happened yet, nor will I be there. We need suffering to appreciate not suffering, just like we need rain to appreciate the sun. So yeah, I guess I believe it’s always worth it – we just might not know how that eventual growth will manifest, or whether it will be our growth, others’ growth, or both. Not every “worth it” event might feel worth it to us after we experience it, but maybe it was worth it to someone else somewhere in the universe, or maybe it will be worth it to us in ways we cannot see. It will always be worth it. That’s all we really need to know. I thought about this for a split second and probably paused a little too long, staring at them as they waited, clearly wondering if this was really how they wanted to spend their day. “Yep,” I responded, and hiked past.
I made my way back to the parking lot and crossed the Nantahala River, stopping in the middle of the bridge to watch a few rafts full of paddlers float by. As I noted in a previous post, I’ve kayaked the Nantahala a number of times. My favorite section to paddle is known as the Upper Nantahala, farther upstream than this. It is more difficult than the section that the Bartram Trail crosses, but it is still relatively tame as far as class 3 paddling goes. It’s a little narrower and steeper than its lower section, so it moves faster and has more continuous rapids. The Upper Nantahala is probably one of my favorite runs in the Southeast because it is not clogged with rafting traffic, and it rewards the paddler with non-stop action without the stress of technical class four and five rapids.
The Bartram Trail follows a paved walking and biking path alongside the Nantahala that I didn’t previously realize was there, even though I’ve paddled past it many times. It was fun watching the boaters pass by as I walked in the opposite direction. It was also a little sad, in a reminiscent kind of way. I used to go kayaking all of the time, but haven’t in recent years. I’ve focused more on running and hiking since my AT thru-hike. That’s ok – there’s only so much time for passions and interests, so one must make choices. But I was a relatively skilled paddler at one point, just like I have been a fluid guitarist and fluent in Chinese at points in my life. It elicits a sadness not of not doing the thing, but of having reached a certain level of proficiency and now falling short of that peak. The upside is that I can always return to all of these things, when and if I want. Life is pretty short, so it would take a lot for me to continue only doing one thing forever at the potential expense of finding time to explore other pursuits. It has been interesting how life has led me to these various hobbies and outlets through a series of small moments.
I had a little trouble finding the trail again after it departed from the river. After a bit of wandering around I used my Gaia app and map files to figure out that I needed to walk briefly along a paved road before a trailhead took me back up into the forest and then along a gravel road for a while. I ran into a loose dog outside an old house at one point. It barked and followed me, chasing closer when I turned around, but backing up again when I swiveled to face it. It didn’t follow me too far past the property boundary, losing interest in the dog-speak voice I was using to try and calm it down. I was happy when the trail turned off the gravel road back into the woods. The day was already getting long and I wasn’t too sure where I would spend the night. I had to cross over a ridge and back down towards the Nantahala again, so I was counting on finding a place somewhere by the river.
On my way down I saw a large pack of wild hogs! They are fairly common in the southern Appalachians, but I myself had never seen them before, so I was excited about it and managed to get them on film. You can see them in Episode 1 of my Bartram Trail thru-hike series. There were at least seven or eight adult hogs. I didn’t capture them all on film. I could see two tiny piglets, but only occasionally because they were so small that they stayed mostly hidden under the overgrowth. The hogs spooked when they saw me, but seemed to settle down enough to make a slower exit. Two of the larger hogs stayed behind to wait until the piglets were safely cleared and heading away from me before moseying on. I’ve heard that hogs are incredibly smart. I wonder if hogs ever ask each other if anything is “worth it.”
I found the Nantahala River again and signs of humans re-emerged. I could see people camping across the river at drive-in sites. It was getting dark, but I finally found an overgrown, but relatively flat spot that had been a campsite at one point. I could see the remains of an old fire ring. It began to rain as I contemplated the spot, so I decided to not wonder if it would be worth it to hike on and accepted what I had. I cleared some sticks and limbs as the rain grew steadily harder. By the time my tent was up, the rain had slowed to an intermittent sprinkle. I cooked my dinner and ate, standing in the dark and looking at flickering lights across the river. I caught the scent of campfires. They smelled of contemplation and kindred spirits, of loneliness and memories. Fireflies decorated the fall of the sun and welcomed the rise of the moon, seeming to celebrate it as if it were more than just the Hawthornian lot of two celestial bodies: always rising and falling in the universe. I enjoyed their ritual celebration of this changing of the guard. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about falling into routines. Maybe I should take a cue from the fireflies and just perform my nightly dance. But, I was born a homo sapien, and therefore life is more complicated than that.
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