Magic all around

The following is the first in a three-part series on trail magic, which are acts of kindness to Appalachian Trail hikers, and the trail angels who provide it. Despite its benefits to hikers, trail magic sometimes has negative consequences. This installment focuses on the different types of magic that angels provide.

By Noah C. Kady
Special to The Record-Herald

It looks like a lot of food for the one man sitting at the table.

There are two kinds of deli meat, turkey and chicken. Two kinds of bread, oatmeal and potato roll. Three kinds of salads, macaroni, potato, and garden fresh. Peanut butter and jelly. Salt and pepper. Ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Fresh strawberries. A stack of paper plates a foot high and a big box of clear plastic knives, forks and spoons. And drinks. Lots and lots of drinks. Icy cold green, blue and orange Gatorade, Mountain Dew, orange juice, apple juice and bottled water.

It has all the standard elements of a Sunday basket lunch, only there’s more of it than the average family can handle. Presiding over this smorgasbord, covering an entire picnic table in a small pavilion at Gathland State Park in Gapland, Md., is its purveyor, Orval S. Nelson, and he’s waiting for his guests – not that he knows exactly who they will be or when they will arrive.

Nelson wears an off-white t-shirt with the poem “Advice from a Tree” on the front, burnt-orange hiking shorts, and a gray paisley-patterned bandana wrapped around his head. His graying beard is full but the fact that it creeps down his neck indicates that it hasn’t been trimmed for a while and is still very much a work in progress. He has the fashion sense of a typical long-distance hiker, but in an apparent concession to comfort, he has traded in his hiking boots for a pair of more comfortable flips flops.

A hiker clad in similar garb ambles down the Appalachian Trail, which runs right by the pavilion, and Nelson shouts out to him, “Trail magic over here!” The hiker eagerly joins Nelson. His guest has arrived and Nelson plans on serving him something intangible, something that won’t be found on the table: a big helping of trail magic.

Providing food as Nelson does is just one type of trail magic, which can be virtually anything that helps a hiker along the way, including a ride to town, supplies, medical attention or simply advice. It can be a large, meticulously planned event or a small spontaneous act of kindness. Those who supply it do so for a variety of reasons but rarely expect anything in return.

Despite all its positive attributes, a plethora of trail magic in recent years has caused some to question its impact and its value to hikers. There are concerns about large gatherings taking place on the actual trail, leftover trash from unattended magic and excessive amounts of alcohol or possibly even drugs being provided. In addition, too much magic, some argue, might cause hikers to rely too heavily upon it or might trivialize the accomplishment of hiking the trail.

Nelson has only the purest of intentions, however, as he moves around the table in little bursts of energy, checking and rechecking his supplies, doing his best to provide his guest with everything he could want or need.

Less than a week ago, Nelson was himself hiking the Appalachian Trail and was known to those whose paths he crossed as Jedi, his trail name. Trail names, chosen by the hikers themselves or given to them by fellow hikers, can be straightforward descriptions of appearance or personality, or they can have cryptic meanings known only to a few. Like most hikers on the Appalachian Trail, Jedi prefers to go by his pseudonym when he’s on or near the trail.

Jedi was Southbound, having started at the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, but a foot injury forced him off the trail in Damascus, Va. Unable to continue his own journey and missing the interaction with other hikers of which he had grown so fond, Jedi sought solace by returning to the trail to offer what he could to those who still had miles to go before their own journeys would be finished.

“You can’t stand to leave. You’re home, the television’s on and you start getting sluggish,” he says as he pantomimes moving about in slow motion. “What better way to stay in touch with the Northbounders I met while going South than to come up here and do a little magic for them?”

Jedi, like most hikers, has many memories of being the recipient of trail magic, and, in part, it’s those memories that bring hikers back to the trail to give to others a semblance of what they were once so grateful to receive.

“It’s infectious,” Jedi says. “It’s been bestowed upon us and we want to pay it forward.”

Those most thankful for and often in most need of trail magic are thru-hikers. The Appalachian Trail weaves its way for more than 2,000 miles through 14 states. A thru-hiker is typically someone who is attempting to hike north from Springer Mountain in Georgia the entire distance to Mount Katahdin in Maine (although some try it in reverse and others break it into sections over several years). According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s website, www.appalachiantrail.org, in 2006 more than 1,100 hikers started the Northbound journey and a little more than 300 finished. Those numbers alone would seem to indicate that the sheer difficulty of the undertaking makes any bit of trail magic the hikers encounter along the way that much more special.

Sometimes it’s the magnitude of the gesture that makes the magic remarkable.

On the evening of March 17, Sunnyside, a 24-year-old thru-hiker taking a break from his studies at Indiana University, happened across “Apple’s Dome,” a giant, orange,15-man expedition tent set up in Burningtown Gap, N.C.

Inside were an oven, chairs, and food and drinks, including, most notably, green donuts and Jagermeister to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Much to Sunnyside’s relief, there was also a heater.
“It was 7 degrees outside that night,” he says. “The walls were frosted on the inside.” A photo of the orange dome lit up from the inside and contrasted against the night black sky reveals silhouettes of hikers inside savoring the warmth.

Other thru-hikers have similar stories.

Mr. TalkerMan, a 68-year-old Justice of the Peace from Cherryfield, Maine, recalls coming across a most unexpected sight just off the trail in Brown Gap, Tenn. Set up in “the middle of nowhere” was a University of Tennessee tailgate party. The trail angel, Ox, was a big booster of the school’s football team, the Volunteers.

Mr. TalkerMan says he was treated to bacon, eggs, home fries and “these things they call ‘Bubba Burgers.’ He even had a big banner with the UT logo that said, ‘Welcome Hikers.’”

Not all trail magic requires a vast expanse or expense, for that matter. Often, the trail magic that has the most meaning is that which is small and spontaneous, such as a car ride into town to pick up supplies or a cold drink at just the right time.

Mr. TalkerMan and another hiker, Young Eagle, were near Newfound Gap in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee when they had just about run out of gas with a climb looming ahead.

“It was hotter than hell,” says Mr. TalkerMan. “I looked up that mountain and I said, ‘I just can’t do it. If we could just get a Coke or something.’

“Right then, this woman comes across the parking lot with a Coke in each hand. She says, ‘You boys look like you could use a cold soda.’ Then she says, ‘And I’ve got some brownies in the car.’ “That was about the best trail magic because it got us up that mountain and another four miles to the shelter.”

Moonpie, a 29-year-old former car salesman from Raleigh, N.C., says “not all trail magic is about food.”

At the top of 6,285-foot Roan Mountain in Tennessee, Moonpie and his fellow hikers were treated to a banjo and fiddle performance by a pair of musicians who “just played for us.”

Many trail angels are people from local communities with no connection to the trail other than their desire to help hikers in need.

“Trail towns are very knowledgeable about hikers,” says Jim (who doesn’t have a trail name, but doesn’t use his last name either), a 49-year-old tax accountant from Seattle.

He tells of one time when he and another hiker, after going to town for supplies, were sitting near a Little League field “looking like bums” when they were offered a ride back to the trail by a lady.

Despite their appearance, he says, she went out of her way to help them.

Small, thoughtful acts of kindness are more reminiscent of the trail’s early customs, says Laurie Potteiger, information service manager of the ATC in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va.

Potteiger thru-hiked the trail in 1987, and was occasionally the recipient of trail magic herself.

“It’s really part of the trail culture and always has been,” she says, “but the essence of trail magic has changed. It certainly has changed in scale and scope.”

A right way and a wrong way

The following is the second in a three-part series on trail magic, which are acts of kindness to Appalachian Trail hikers, and the trail angels who provide it. Despite its benefits to hikers, trail magic sometimes has negative consequences. This installment focuses on some of the concerns about trail magic.

By Noah C. Kady
Special to The Record-Herald

Somewhere along the Appalachian Trail this weekend, a well-meaning individual or group will set up a large tent or canopy, fire up a grill, and serve up the best barbeque the thru-hikers lucky enough to come across it will ever taste. After they eat, the hikers might relax in comfortable lawn chairs and wash down their meals with a few cold drinks. The hikers’ stomachs will be full, as will the hearts of the trail angels who provided the trail magic.

And everybody will leave happy. Well, almost everybody.

Such elaborate instances of trail magic, which are acts of kindness to Appalachian Trail hikers, sometimes draw the ire of those who hike the trail looking to escape the creature comforts and materialism of civilization. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy will occasionally receive letters from hikers who are offended or disappointed by trail magic that takes away from their intended experience.

“The first one that really came to our attention was in the 100-Mile Wilderness,” says Laurie Potteiger, information service manager of the ATC in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. This section of the trail extends for 100 miles in Maine’s backcountry and, uncrossed by paved roads, preserves the illusion of wilderness.

Potteiger says that a group hauled in a large amount of supplies and took over a “pristine” campsite on one of the most beautiful sections of trail.

“It totally took away from the primitive experience,” she says.

Many people would say “a trail feed is not magic,” she says. “We acknowledge it’s not true magic, but after starving and suffering – what the trail requires of you – it still seems magical. It still seems like an oasis in the desert.”

The trail magic wouldn’t be magical if it weren’t for the contrast in the setting.”

The larger issue with such types of trail magic, says Potteiger, is the impact it has on the trail.
She recalls a volunteer who maintains a section of trail in Georgia complaining about a backcountry cookout in a primitive setting. The site was too small to accommodate the number of people who showed up and plants were trampled.

“It took an intensive effort just to rehabilitate the site,” she says.

The problem is easily remedied, Potteiger says, by moving trail magic to hardened surfaces, such as road crossings, or other suitable areas, where those who want to provide and experience the magic won’t get in the way of those who don’t.

In fact, many trail angels make their presence known only by the magic they leave behind, be it a cooler of cold drinks and candy bars at a road crossing, a six-pack of soda or beer in a stream, or a weather forecast for the next few days taped to the top of a cooler.

“It’s all about timing,” says Mr. TalkerMan, a 68-year-old Justice of the Peace from Cherryfield, Maine, who, like many hikers, prefers to go by his trail name.

“If you are desperately hungry and desperately thirsty and then you walk out of the woods and there’s a cooler full of water, then that is oh…,” he says, his voice trailing off.

Jedi, a 51-year-old, self-described “nomadic” trail angel, has come up with his own term for such acts: stealth magic. “That’s a different kind of magic,” he says. “Stealth magic is when you do it, get out, and nobody has a clue who did it. That’s the best kind of magic.”

That kind of magic also presents its own set of problems, however, the biggest of which is the trash that unattended magic can produce. A Styrofoam cooler can end up as hundreds of pieces blowing in the wind if an aggressive animal wants a taste of what’s inside. Leftover candy bar wrappers and empty plastic drink bottles end up littering the trail. And empty six-pack rings have a way of finding their way around the necks of small animals.

As for the human element, thru-hikers aren’t usually the ones to blame. In fact, they are probably more diligent than anybody except trail maintenance volunteers about picking up debris, says Moonpie, a 29-year-old former car salesman from Raleigh, N.C.

“I can’t see thru-hikers leaving trash anywhere on the trail,” he says. “We tend to pick it up, but there are a lot of other people on the trail this time of year who don’t.”

And therein lies the problem. Without anyone to supervise who is taking what and what they’re doing with their trash, there can be a tendency for people, some of whom might not even be hikers, to be negligent.

“Unattended magic is one of the problematic forms because that has resource impacts and affects volunteer morale,” says Potteiger.

“A hiker finds a cooler full of cold drinks on the trail and thinks, ‘Wow, this is so wonderful.’ It has not only the tangible reward but also meaning,” she says. “The maintainer sees it in the form of trash.”

Potteiger says trail magic can be a positive experience for all concerned as long as it is done “thoughtfully and responsibly.”

There are some people, however, who exploit the trail magic concept. Some of them might present themselves as trail angels but ask for a donation – or even outright payment – to cover their expenses.

“We’ve had problems in the past with commercial entities trying to pass off their services as trail magic,” says Rita Hennessy, an outdoor recreation specialist for the National Park Service in Harper’s Ferry.

Jim (who doesn’t have a trail name, but doesn’t use his last name either), a 49-year-old tax accountant from Seattle, remembers a man in Damascus who had a cell phone outside with an unlimited minutes plan. He was advertising a “free hiker phone” but had an oatmeal can available for donations.

“He could easily be making a profit on it, but I don’t know what his thing is,” Jim says.

Sunnyside, a 24-year-old thru-hiker taking a break from his studies at Indiana University, says he has a problem with people who want to impose their beliefs upon him in exchange for their version of trail magic.

He recalls one place that served waffles to thru-hikers but expected them to listen to a religious pitch.

“We got a single helping of waffles and a double dose of Jesus,” says Moonpie.

“It was good if you like a sermon with your meal,” Sunnyside says. “I’m not against thinking that way; I think that way. But I am against people telling you to think that way.”

Trail magic can also come in the form of alcohol and, for some, drugs. If they keep their nose to the wind, thru-hikers can enjoy plenty social events in trailside towns.

Jim says he recently caught up to a group of hikers who started nearly a month before he did.

“These guys are partying their way up the trail,” he says. “If they hear a rumor of something going on, a party or something, I think they’ll adjust their schedule to go to it.

“These guys can hike 25 miles a day, but they don’t do that every day. They might not finish before November at this rate.”

He is quick to note that their style doesn’t make their experience any better or worse than his own. One is not more right than the other, he says, it’s just different.

“It’s important to hike your own hike,” he says, “and part of that is to keep your mouth shut.”

While reports of too much trail magic in the form of alcohol or drugs being provided at some events are troublesome, Potteiger says, it appears to be more a reflection of society than the trail.

“Alcohol use and abuse has always been going on among the early twenty-something set,” she says. “I don’t know if the nature of the trail experience has changed or our culture has changed. I think a lot of these hikers are out of college and they’re just continuing the college experience. What you read in the paper would seem to bear that out.”

Hennessy says that partying is not the reason young people hike the trail, however. “I don’t think that anybody would hike the AT for that purpose,” she says. “It might be something they do, but it’s not the reason.”

She acknowledges that the prevalence of trail magic in all its forms has altered the landscape, though.

“(Hiking the trail) has become much more of a social experience,” Hennessy says. “The thru-hikers that I know who did it 20 years ago had a much different experience than now.”

While some of the younger hikers may enjoy the social benefits of trail magic, Mr. TalkerMan says they also benefit from what it teaches them.

Many young people today are lacking something in the way they are raised, he says, and trail magic teaches them lessons in giving and in social interaction.

“It’s good for these kids – I call them all kids at my age – to experience that. It’s a character-building thing for them,” he says.

Jedi agrees that there are life lessons to be learned from trail magic.

“Think about great literature in which characters face epic struggles,” says Jedi. “They all get something along the way that helps them accomplish their goal.

“We can take this from the trail into our own lives – spontaneous acts of kindness, random acts of kindness – and I think that’s good. Any type of magic is good.”

Volunteers are magic, too

The following is the third in a three-part series on trail magic, which are acts of kindness to Appalachian Trail hikers, and the trail angels who provide it. Despite its benefits to hikers, trail magic sometimes has negative consequences. This installment focuses on alternatives to traditional forms of trail magic.

By Noah C. Kady
Special to The Record-Herald

Some days are full of magic.

For Moonpie, a 29-year-old former car salesman from Raleigh, N.C., who, like many thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, goes by his trail name, one such day occurred near Wautaga Lake in Tennessee.

It started out simple enough when another hiker’s mother met Moonpie and a few other hikers at the lake with cold sodas and food. After they were finished, another thru-hiker came by and reported more “trail magic” on the other side of the lake.

Trail magic is an act of kindness to Appalachian Trail hikers that helps them on their 2000-mile journey from Georgia to Maine.

Moonpie and his companions went to investigate and on their way came across a fisherman who asked them if they wanted some trout. “He gave us 14 trout,” Moonpie says, still with a hint of awe in his voice.

Once they reached their original destination, they were not disappointed. “They had beer, wine, and liquor,” he says.

“As we’re there, a guy in a sailboat pulls up and takes us on a sailboat ride around the lake.”
While they were getting off the sailboat, Moonpie says, a man approached them and asked if they wanted a keg of beer. They said that they did and he told them to wait there. Later that night, Moonpie says, “we see a headlamp on the water and here’s this guy kayaking a keg across the lake for us.”

“That was probably the best day of my trip.”

Despite Moonpie’s appreciation, some would contend that so much magic tends to increase expectations among hikers and diminish its impact, much like a magic act in that once the audience has seen the same trick several times, some of the “magic” is gone.

A posting by “Rick” on www.viewsfromthetop.com, an online hiking community, offers a glimpse into the mindset of many of those who have reveled in trail magic’s excesses.

He writes, “… when I did the Pa. section, I found a lot of five-gallon buckets near road crossings filled with candy, snacks and bottles of juice. The first few were awesome. However, I found that as I hiked, it wasn't so much a surprise, in that sometimes I started to expect something would be near a road crossing. I'd get to a crossing and there'd be nothing and I'd be slightly disappointed.

“See how easily I was trained??

“I now think of trail magic as something that pops up out of the blue for a one time thing where all the stars are aligned … rather than something that folks can expect when they get to a certain crossing.”

“Maybe we need a new term,” says Rita Hennessy, an outdoor recreation specialist for the National Park Service in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. “Maybe the serendipitous ‘magic’ term disappears from that. When it becomes an expectation, I think that the ‘magic’ is lost.”

Hennessy was a ridge runner on the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut and Massachusetts from 1985 to 1987. Essentially a backcountry ranger, Hennessy was primarily responsible for educating and aiding hikers along her section of trail.

According to Hennessy, the term “trail magic” might not have even been coined at that time. It wasn’t until she took a job with the park service in 1997 that she started to hear the phrase.
In conjunction with the terminology has come an increased interest in providing trail magic. Many trail angels are former thru-hikers who are looking to give something in return for the kindness they received or simply want to keep a connection with one of the defining experiences of their lives.

Jim (who doesn’t have a trail name, but doesn’t use his last name either), a 49-year-old tax accountant from Seattle, had his most memorable trail magic experience when he ran into a group of 1999 thru-hikers who had set up shop a little off the trail near Hogpen Gap in Georgia.
The group of men, all in their 30s now, was having a reunion, complete with wives and children, says Jim. They had placed signs on the trail inviting everybody to relive their memories with them while enjoying hot dogs and cheeseburgers, cookies and drinks.

That’s not uncommon. Laurie Potteiger, information service manager of the ATC in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., says that often a thru-hiker’s first impulse after hiking the trail is to return as a trail angel but that there are alternatives.

“Trail magic is a good thing, but we may have reached the point where we don’t need to solicit more of it or encourage more of it, whereas there’s always a need for more volunteers,” she says.

The volunteers who maintain the trails might just perform the purest form of trail magic. Without the time and sweat they pour into the upkeep of the trail, hikers would have a more difficult time with even some of the shortest sections.

Many hikers don’t think of trail angels as being the people who use their own resources to go out on the trail and cut back poison ivy, pull weeds, and clear blown down trees, says John Hedrick, Potomac Appalachian Trail Club supervisor of trails.

However, he says, the volunteers’ work is invaluable to the thru-hiker’s experience.
“If (the volunteers) didn’t do it, sections of the trail would be closed down in a year and a half,” he says.

He cites a recent storm in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia that knocked down 2,500 trees and required 3,500 man-hours to clear.

“The trail was impassable,” he says.

“Mother Nature does things that will close down the trail and volunteers have to clear it out,” he says. “That, to me, is trail magic.”

Members of the PATC like to point out that they’ve been performing trail magic for 80 years. Often, however, their efforts aren’t labeled or acknowledged as magic.

That doesn’t mean the thru-hikers don’t appreciate the work that’s been done on the trail, Hedrick says.

“(At first) the hikers kind of take it for granted, but after they’ve been out on the trail for a while and they see the work and the effort that goes into keeping this trail open, I think they begin to realize that this is a phenomenal thing,” he says.

“When they come up to us on the trail, they could not be more appreciative,” says Hedrick, who completed a thru-hike in 2000.

Potteiger says it would be great if more hikers could channel their goodwill into trail maintenance, which includes painting blazes on the trees, maintaining and building shelters, and taking steps to fight soil erosion.

Oscar Streaker has been hiking on different sections of the trail for years and for the last couple of months has been driving up from his Sykesville, Md., home to help rebuild a shelter at Rocky Run in Maryland.

He says the trail has given him a refuge over the years, a place to clear his mind and refresh his spirit.

“I just have the need to give back to the cause,” he explains. “It’s God’s sanctuary being up here. What could be better?”

Rick Canter, Maryland district trails manager, has been doing trail maintenance for the last 16 years and knows what it takes to keep the trail in top shape.

“Anybody who volunteers to come out here and not get paid a dollar, I have total respect for,” says Canter.

“The thing about trail magic is that it’s really easy,” says Potteiger. “Go to the store, buy some food, go to a road crossing. A volunteer effort takes much more effort and planning.

“We think people find it very gratifying, but it just takes more time.”

Furthur (sic), a 49-year-old former culinary arts teacher from Pittsburgh, intends to do what Potteiger suggests.

Having seen what happened to the trail after a storm came through and how fast the volunteers were able to remove trees and reclaim the trail, he was inspired to return the favor.

“If I used a section of your trail that you’ve maintained,” he says, “why shouldn’t I go back and help you maintain it?”

“Without them,” Furthur says, “you’d be sleeping under the stars or in the snow.”

Jim says living on the other side of the country prohibits him from showing up in person to help with trail maintenance but that he intends to become a member of one of the clubs responsible for that sort of work and support it monetarily.

Providing trail maintenance in lieu of hamburgers and Coke would certainly be more in line with the park service’s vision for the trail.

Hennessy says the park service sees as the purpose of the trail to serve as a footpath that people complete with their own “unaided effort.”

“Once trail magic comes to be an expectation and it will happen throughout, then the whole reasoning for the trail, and the concept we at the National Park Service want to preserve, is going to diminish,” she says.

On the other hand, she points out, Earl Shaffer, who became the first person to thru-hike the trail in 1948, hiked it again in 1998. Fifty years prior, Shaffer had enjoyed the bohemian-type experience of connecting communities by walking on the road and going through town, where he was sometimes the beneficiary of acts of kindness, but at the end of his last thru-hike, Hennessy says, he complained that it had become too difficult and its location too remote.

In fact, some feel that the pendulum swinging back in recent years to something that more resembles Shaffer’s original hike is a move in the right direction.

To them, trail magic often provides evidence of humanity’s best attributes.

“It’s reassured me that there’s a lot of good people in this world,” says Mr. TalkerMan, a 68-year-old Justice of the Peace from Cherryfield, Maine.

Pebble, a 22-year-old from Waynesboro, Va., who recently graduated with a degree in English from Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., says nobody is being forced to partake in the trail magic experience.

“If people want to be self-sufficient, they can walk on by,” she says. “(Trail magic) is part of the trail community.”

“The truth is that there are not many people who turn down trail magic,” says Potteiger.
“We wouldn’t want to see it go away, but there can be such a thing as too much of it without proper planning.”