Reviews…
Along the AT in a time of pandemic
There are many tales of the pandemic. This is one of them.
THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC brought us stories of courage and science, confusion and stupidity and downright disinformation. We each have our own stories of those days of lockdown, all of them different and some of them truly unique. Ryan Michael Beck’s story surely fits that unique category.
The Appalachian Trail is a 3500km, north-south route that transits 14 states in the eastern US. It passes through forest and over mountains, through weather that varies from hot to snow and crosses roads that give access to nearby towns where hikers resupply. The trail also follows short stretches of road and farmland although for the most part it passes through wild country. Many who walk it are section-hikers who complete the trail over successive shorter hikes along parts of it. Fewer are those who attempt the entire length as a single journey that can take months. Ryan’s was one of those thru-hikers.
Ryan’s could have been just another story of the many written by thru-hikers. Take a look at Kindle books and you will see how numerous are books written by thru-hikers as well as hikers following other long-distance trails in North America such as the Pacific Crest Trail on the west coast. The difference with his journey was that he made it at a time of pandemic.
There was no pandemic when Ryan set out. News of it came when he was staying at a hostel just off the trail. He writes how…
Sitting around that kitchen table that evening was the first time while on the trail I heard someone talk about the upcoming pandemic.
The stories were to become more frequent as he moved northwards and the country started to go into lockdown.
Disruption and crises
For a long time I’ve been interested in how people cope with disruption and crises—the psychology of survival, as it is known. That is what attracted me to Ryan’s book. At first I thought it would be the tale of a Covid denier attempting the walk out of some libertarian sense of personal freedom and defiance of government. Still, there would be value in reading it because the book would show how Ryan lived and coped, the mental states he went through and how he solved the challenges inevitable in long distance hiking during a global pandemic.
It didn’t turn out like that. Although Ryan says his political leanings are conservative and although he speaks of personal freedom, he contexts it in terms of social and personal responsibility in ensuring his own and the safety of the hikers he meets. He and others he hiked with from time to time practiced personal hygiene, social distancing and other safety measures. Ryan turned out not to be a Covid denier.
The pandemic affected long-distance hikers even out in the wilderness. With communication only where they could find a mobile phone signal or when they encountered other hikers at an overnight shelter, ambiguity about what was happening out in the world produced a state of uncertainty.
The day before we were preparing to leave Gooder Grove is when information about the severity of the virus began to trickle in… Hiking up and over the Smokies made overlooking the virus easy. This marks a meaningful time when we collectively acknowledged the severity of the virus, planting seeds of exiting the trail and further division.
The division Ryan mentions is that among his hiking friends, the impromptu group that met on the trail and who were walking together before the pandemic spread. As warnings to leave the trail started to be heard from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, so discussion increasingly focused on the wisdom of taking the Conservancy’s advice. No one wanted to quit and there was confusion over whether continuing on the trail was the most appropriate thing in the gathering situation of pandemic and lockdown. A concern was that someone might pick up the virus when resupplying in a town or at a campsite and pass it on to other hikers and other towns.
…with fewer people on the trail the chance of contracting the virus was less than in the cities simply because contact with people was infrequent. They felt safer on the trail than they would be off of it. They decide to press on northwards.
As they walked on they noticed something: there were fewer and fewer hikers. Sometimes Ryan encountered day walkers, however thru-walkers seemed to be following the advice of the Conservancy and the civil authorities in heeding the lockdown being imposed by the different states. What to do? This Ryan mulled over as he followed the trail through forest and over mountains. His conclusion? With fewer people on the trail the chance of contracting the virus was less than in the cities simply because contact with people was infrequent. There was less opportunity for transmission in the open air. Ryan and his trail friends avoided sleeping in the shared trail shelters, setting up their tents nearby instead. They felt safer on the trail than they would be off of it. They decide to press on northwards.
If I can leap forward to early May 2022 in Tasmania, my partner and I had the same conversation and came to the same conclusion. We were picking up friends from mainland Australia who were coming off the four-day Three Capes Track in Tasmania’s southeast. The Covid virus was still infecting people in Tasmania but most of the state had been double, many triple vaccinated, so most infections were mild. Would our friends pick up the virus in one of the overnight huts or elsewhere along the trail? We thought that unlikely. And so it proved. As Ryan and his friends had done a year and a half before, our friends spent most of their time walking by themselves and encountered few others. Anyway, they did a rapid antigen test before meeting us just to be sure they were not carriers. I admire their sense of responsibility.
Resupply and safety were not as much of a concern. We felt that sufficient hygiene was possible to protect us from the virus. We could take all the same safety measures on the trail as off. If resupply did become a problem, mail drops were a viable option. I imagined resupplying would have been difficult in the same way fifty years ago. Unanimously we decided to carry extra supplies in case problems arose.
Mail drops? That is an alternative to hitching into towns to resupply. They are used for resupply on other long distance hiking trails in the US. Supplies, food and equipment are sent for collection to post offices in towns along the route. Equipment no longer needed is posted home. Equipment for the season ahead is collected. As the virus spread and towns went into lockdown, Ryan would come to depend on mail drops for resupply as he sought to limit his contact with people.
I was hiking toward uncertainty with beauty all around
The walk continued, some days shorter and easier, others harder, especially with a pack loaded with a week or ten day’s supply of food after a resupply. Rainy, cold weather sets in. When he could find a connection Ryan discovered how divisive and vociferous the facebook discussion had become.
By this time and thanks to the sporadic news from outside, talk among the group was of some of them quitting. After days of deliberation, the first to leave the trail said their farewells. They were now three.
…like that the dominos started falling… Over the next two weeks we saw more than 95 percent of the 2020 thru-hikers get off the trail in one way or another. I was hiking toward uncertainty with beauty all around. The Conservancy’s warnings became more strident. ‘Get off the trail.’ These words reminded us we were not welcome.
Now, defiance of authority becomes a driver.
I would not be bullied by someone with no authority and with no way to enforce her demands. Retaliating for this aggression joined the list of things that made me want to stay on the trail.
Weeks in, like the rest of the country the trail was being shut down. They came into a town to resupply to find that shops were shut, streets deserted. It looked unreal but it was all-too-real. They overnighted at a hostel. In a conversation between the manager and the local policeman they overheard how the trailhead through which they would have to pass to regain the trail will be closed and under guard the next morning. Ryan’s description of their surreptitious pre-dawn extraction from the town speaks to the rising tension that has been building through the book since first hearing of the pandemic brought an increasing element of uncertainty to the trek.
“…we tested the red light beam on our headlamps in silence. The red light setting on the headlamp is used for seeing at night without disturbing other campers or wildlife with a bright white light. We had used this setting several times when leaving the shelters. This morning was different — instead of concern for others, we were concerned for ourselves. Our intention was to move through the town and to the trail without detection.
They succeeded in regaining the trail before it was closed later that morning. Their surreptitious exiting of the town reinforcing the reality that their thru-hike was now an exercise in evasion. It was time for cautionary measures. They split up. Ryan would walk by himself and meet the others at specified places during the day. That way, if one was apprehended by a wandering forest ranger the other could continue. Ryan was aware of the risks. They continued northwards.
…if we got hurt, no one would be able to help. If a rescue team came, they would be frontline workers. We would be taking them away from the health care system and the hospitals that desperately needed their help. Being all alone was the answer to the virus. It also made the adventure more exciting. With less possibility of help, the danger level elevated.
The forest was quick to erase the footprints of people who came before, Ryan writes on rejoining the trail. It was now several weeks since the lockdown started and already the trail was being obscured by fallen leaves and forest litter. He becomes disoriented but regains the trail.
Hikers know how lesser-visited mountain trails that do not get the maintenance the popular trails receive become obscured. You will be going along and then the trail fades away. Is that it there, you ask yourself on noticing what looks as though it is a continuation of the trail? Or, is it just an animal pad, the tracks that wombats and wallabies make in their wanderings? Ryan, though, was following a well-trafficked and popular long distance walking track but even it was being obscured by the forest.
As the country slips into an enforced lockdown and after realising that they will have to avoid forest rangers if they are to complete the Appalachian Trail, the three have started to behave more like fugitives. What are the chances of encountering rangers on the trail? The possibility resurfaces through the pages of the book as an ever-present threat. With this uncertainty the tension builds.
Transiting Shananadoah National Park means crossing roads a number of times. There are roadblocks and rangers’ vehicles about. Risky. They are cautions. They adopt practices common to people who travel through dangerous territory—watchfulness, being quiet, exercising situational awareness. They approach the road crossings quietly and watch from concealment before hastily crossing. Stealth movement ensures their road crossings are successful. Then, on the last road crossing Ryan fails to notice a rangers’ car. She notices him and calls out for him to stop. Questions follow. Does he have a permit? Well, no. It is with surprise that the ranger hands him one with instructions to fill it out. She is not going to bring Ryan’s journey to an end. Into the forest he heads.
It is around here that Ryan’s tale reaches its climax. He has built up tension over the time in which they learned of the pandemic and came to learn of its severity, their dilemma over whether they should leave the trail, their decision to defy the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s insistence that hikers quit the trail and their semi-clandestine camping near the overnight shelters, right up to his encounter with the forest ranger. The encounter becomes a climax of the story, a make of break point that falls into resolution thanks to the leniency of the ranger.
Now, the lockdowns ease as does the tension he has built up through the story which ends with his reaching the end of the trail at Mount Katahdin.
Ryan’s is a tale of perseverance and evasion—the evasion of officials and of the disease, the escaping of the pandemic by avoiding it through taking simple personal hygiene and precautionary measures. It explores the dilemma common to so many emergency situations — stay put or go, remain in place or escape? Deciding to stay on the trail was Ryan’s evasion strategy. It worked.
Parallels
Ryan’s story raises questions about how people without a home to retreat to coped during the Covid lockdowns. My partner and I had been living in our van and tent in a small and basic caravan park on the edge of a small town on the southeast Tasmania coast when news of the impending pandemic started to trickle through. As the extent and severity of the pandemic started to become clear we wondered how others without a permanent home would cope. Fortunately for us, we found permanent accommodation just a couple weeks before or state locked down. What about other people living in their vans and camper trailers? Some were saved when a few farmers made space available for camping. It was a trying time full of uncertainties for those living the mobile life.
As I read Ryan’s book, another story, The Brexit Brigands, came to mind. It is a fictional narrative of a group of British friend who, forced out of their homes in Spain by political events that see the partial disintegration of the state, head into the mountains for the following year or so, living in their vans in semi-concealed locations in the forest and moving camp periodically, encountering people only when necessary and moving along mountain trails while watching out for others. They unobtrusively resupply in mountain villages and by hunting with a crossbow. That, though, is fiction. Ryan’s story is fact.
Evasion skills proved useful for both Ryan and in the fictional Brexit Brigands. They also proved useful to the recluse and petty thief, Christopher Knight, during his 27 year solo sojourn in a permanent bush camp in a forest in Maine, USA. He stole supplies from a nearby forest camp, where he was finally apprehended by a game warden. His camp was only discovered once, by fishermen who agreed not to disclose its location when Knight told them all he wanted was to be left alone. Knight’s story is told in journalist, Michael Finkel’s 2017 nonfiction book, The Stranger in the Woods-the extraordinary story of the last true hermit (2017; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, ISBN 9781101875681).
The value of these fact and fiction books lies in their ideas on how to cope with difficult situations, something not all that alien to Australians given our recent bushfires and floods. The books are based on low-likelihood/high-impact events. One is a a hypothesised but unlikely pandemic, another an improbable political upheaval, the other a story of seclusion. Ryan’s and the Brexit Brigands are stories of countries thrown into confusion and uncertainty, as are their protagonists. It is a device of fiction writing that science fiction and disaster stories start with such an improbable event and the stories of coping flow from these. Ryan’s story takes this fiction-writing device into the literature of non-fiction.
Outbreak in the Woods; 2021 Ryan Michael Beck; Kindle edition/independently published. ISBN 979 8504005690.
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