Outdoors – Page 6

You Can Do (Trail) Magic — You Just Have to Do It Right

June 8, 2018 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

I recently had this piece published on the excellent long-distance hiking site The Trek (thetrek.co — that’s .co, no “m”!)

It’s no mystery why hikers in the midst of a grueling long-distance journey love “trail magic.”

Whether you’re having a great day or feeling ground down, hot, cold, tired or sore, an unexpected treat or random act of kindness by a stranger— food, a ride to town, some sage advice, a swept shelter, a clean privy, just about anything — can provide an instant jolt of joy and gratitude.

trail magic appalachian trail — John “Evil” Stout, left, of Glade Spring, Va., provides trail magic to hiker Anna “Soupspot” Fornili of Richmond, Va. at a parking lot where the AT crosses VA 603 on May 9, 2018. Photo: Clay Bonnyman Evans

But here’s a little secret: The people who provide all that generosity and serendipity will tell you that they get just as much out of it as hikers, maybe even more. Here is just a sampling of the rewards “trail angels” reap from their good deeds:

The warm-fuzzy feeling of bringing joy to tired pilgrims, aka the “helper’s high” (which has even been demonstrated by science)
Soaking up hiker vibes and stories (and politely ignoring the funk), especially for those who cannot undertake a long hike of their own
The knowledge that they are “paying it forward” and “being the change” when they tidy up a privy, pick up micro-trash, or toss branches off the trail

So, everyone loves magic, right? Well, not quite. In recent years, this venerable tradition on long trails has come under fire from critics who say it’s ruining the experience and even harming the trail, especially on the A.T. There are some legitimate concerns, to be sure, but I think the problem has been overblown. You can do magic — you just have to do it right.

Magic Marred?

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, tasked with preserving and managing the trail, has increasingly voiced concerns that more, and ever-more elaborate, trail magic may diminish the trail experience, negatively affect natural and human resources, and even generate a sense of entitlement among some hikers.

hiker tent virginia appalachian trail — Caption: A hiker’s tent in a field near Newport, Va. Photo: Clay Bonnyman Evans.

Some critics also have claimed, without evidence, that trail magic is responsible for luring more and more — and too often, more unprepared — hikers to the trail. Others accuse trail angels of scrubbing the AT experience of its challenge and making the trail “too easy.”

“Sometimes these acts of generosity (no matter how well-intentioned) may result in additional work for volunteers or may compromise the natural environment,” the ATC declares on its website. “Hikers who only have a few hours or days to enjoy the sanctuary of the A.T. may not appreciate distractions from the natural environment.”

There’s no question that, done improperly, some kinds of trail magic can cause problems.

Much as it pains me to say it, all those untended coolers tucked along the trail can cause problems. Inevitably, they attract animals, from stinging hornets to raccoons and bears, which may end up dead because they’ve become habituated to humans and human food. And distressingly often, trash ends up strewn along the trail.

Most trail denizens can recall the sublime experience of happening upon a “hiker feed,” in which some enterprising angel has laid out a sumptuous spread of food and drink at a road crossing. However, done without proper planning, such gatherings can lead to everything from damage to plant life to litter to an outbreak of viral illness.

Seredipity

Still, as a hiker who has both given and received trail magic, on the Appalachian and Colorado trails, I find the current wave of anti-magic sentiment a tad … overwrought.

In my thousands of miles of long-distance hiking, I have never met a hiker who seriously altered her plans to take advantage of rumored magic; magic is not as ubiquitous as some critics claim — on the A.T., I experienced no magic at all for more than 700 miles between Grayson Highlands, Virginia, and New York; I never expected magic — it was always serendipitous — but I always appreciated it; and the trail was plenty hard, and plenty wild, with or without magic.

appalachian trail upper goose pond — AT hiker Bearbait relaxes at Upper Goose Pond in Massachusetts. Photo by Clay Bonnyman Evans.

“It’s frowned upon, a lot of times, if someone thinks that it’s altering your wilderness experience,” says the reigning AT trail angel, Miss Janet, who travels in her van from Georgia to Maine each year, assisting hikers in countless ways. “But shelters, privies and road crossings are all things that alter your wilderness experience. Someone standing there offering you a soda, I don’t see how that is altering your experience … unless you are the person who needed that soda really bad that day.”

I’ve also played angel on a few occasions, helping hikers at Partnership Shelter in Virginia and Kenosha Pass and Durango in Colorado. I’ve given rides to hikers, provided a charging station, snacks and drinks, collected trash, swept shelter floors, and spruced up a privy. And I’ve spent even more time doing less obvious forms of magic, including volunteering with the ATC’s Konnarock trail crew, “knocking down” the poop pile at a privy in New Hampshire (hey, it needed doing, and wasn’t nearly revolting as I imagined it would be), answering hiker questions from my perch in the “synthetic world,” dispensing and applying yards of Leukotape to pitiful hiker feet (someone tried to give me the trail names “Doc” and “Nursie”), cleaning the bunkhouse or bathroom at hostels, and more.

Myriad Magic

You get the idea — there are countless ways to do magic. You just have to do it right.

And honestly, rather than scolding angels, conjuring up problems that strain credulity, and placing too much blame on long-distance hikers — who, for example, make up far less than 1 percent of all AT users each year — those who want to protect the trail might do better to celebrate and promote magic in its nearly limitless incarnations while seeking to cultivate a spirit of giving and gratitude on the trail.

colorado trail cactus clear creek — A flowering cactus alongside the Colorado Trail in Clear Creek Valley. Photo by Clay Bonnyman Evans.

With that in mind, here are a few positive suggestions:

Expand your definition of magic beyond chow and rides.
Planning a hiker feed? Cool, but please do your best to follow Leave No Trace principles. The ATC offers guidelines for a successful, low-impact event.
Like most hikers, I always appreciated coming across a cache of goodies in the woods. But to protect the trail and wildlife, please don’t leave unattended coolers full of food or drinks. Feel free with your generosity, but save it until you have time to enjoy your reward — hanging out with the people you are helping.
Be willing to do whatever needs to be done, whenever and wherever you see it, even while hiking. Spontaneously clean up a shelter, haul out someone else’s trash, report a problem, offer what you have to someone in need — anything that helps hikers, volunteers, and the trail itself.
Consider volunteering your time with an ATC trail crew or one of the 31 affiliated maintaining clubs that keep the trail open and healthy for millions of annual users, or the equivalent organization on your favorite trail (or a similar organization on another trail). I suspect most hikers would be astonished by the amount of work it takes to build, say, a series of rock steps, or a bog bridge.
Donate to organizations that keep your favorite trail in good condition, such as the ATC and its local clubs, Pacific Crest Trail Association, and Colorado Trail Foundation.
Be creative. Jim Tabor famously has been leaving hand-carved spoons along the trail in Pennsylvania for hikers since 2011; I ran into guy who had hoisted an iced-tea dispenser on his back, “Ghostbusters”-style, and served hikers on a steamy Pennsylvania ridgetop; on dry stretches of trail, nothing is more welcome than finding clean water left by an angel.
No matter how you decide to give back, always keep the health of the trail in mind.

Yes, Stacey Kozel’s PCT and AT lies matter

September 25, 2017 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Somewhere in Maryland during my 2016 hike of the Appalachian Trail — I think it may have been Washington Monument State Park — I saw a blond, female hiker with what appeared to be extremely beefy, bulky leg braces.

She was talking to some people, and I am an impatient hiker, so I didn’t stop to satisfy my curiosity about her. But after I completed my hike, I came across numerous news stories — CNN, ESPN, ABC, CBS, USA Today and many more — about a woman named Stacey Kozel, who, though paralyzed, had hiked the trail with the help of some high-tech leg braces. I put two and two together and guessed I’d her seen in the park.

Kozel, who goes by the trail name Ironwill, told ESPN magazine that she has lupus and had suffered an attack that left her virtually quadriplegic just a couple years earlier.

“I waited till I was paralyzed to actually hike the trail,” she quipped to CBS.

I was impressed. The AT is incredibly challenging even for those without disabilities, and this woman had done it paralyzed. Later, after she was a guest on the Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail podcast, I wrote to her to say how much I admired her. She responded warmly and we both felt good.

I heard in the spring of 2017 that Kozel was planning to hike the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. Again, I was impressed—who wouldn’t be?

“I’ve always had hope,” Kozel told a reporter about her PCT attempt. “I think you should always have hope. If you don’t give up you just never know what you are, you know, what could happen. I mean, who would think that someone paralyzed would be hiking right now so anything is possible.”

In September, news stories reported that she had completed the PCT in one of the toughest seasons ever—record snowpack meant hikers had to slog through snow to cross California’s Sierra mountains and ford rivers roaring with more runoff than usual; two women drowned along the way — and wildfires surrounded the trail in Oregon and Washington.

Then, on Sept. 20, long-time PCT trail angel Donna “L-Rod” Saufley asked a simple question on social media: “Did anyone in the Class of 2017 see Stacey Kozel on the trail this year? Just wondering. No one we hosted mentioned a word about her.”

The subsequent discussion among PCT ’17 hikers made clear the answer: Nobody had seen her. Then someone

This poorly altered photo contained anachronisms that made other 2017 PCT hikers suspicious. Stacey Kozel photo/ABC.

pointed out that her purported finish photo and date contained anachronisms: That day was densely smoky, but the photo showed blue skies, and a portion of the PCT monument that had broken off in August was still intact (closer examination reveals that it’s almost certainly been Photoshopped, and rather badly, at that).

Kozel quickly amended her finish date to “late August,” which only further raised suspicions. First, thru hikers never forget their start and finish dates. More to the point, she had reported that she entered Oregon on July 31, which would have meant, at the least, she would have had to average nearly 31-mile days every single day across Oregon and Washington. That didn’t square with Kozel’s own frequent public admissions of being a “slow” hiker — 1 mph on level ground, she has said — or video that showed her very slow progress on portions of the AT. She’d have needed 31-hour days for 31 days.

Combined with the facts that no trail angels or resupply depots ever saw her, all her published photos were taken at or very near easily-accessed trailheads easily accessible by road and a good deal more strong circumstantial evidence, it became obvious to all but the most gullible that she had not hiked the PCT. Perhaps any of it. It even turns out that people who posted on social media about “hiking” with her were all fake accounts; one even told a harrowing tale of how Kozel rescued someone on the PCT from a snow slide.

The revelations led the AT hiking community to begin asking its own questions and doing basic math, and it became abundantly clear that she had not, and could not have, hiked that trail, either. Witnesses corroborate that they saw her on a few, limited portions of it, but that’s all.

In response, Kozel complained to ABC about people “taking away my integrity.” In a blog post, she declared, “I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail,” unknowingly (knowingly?) echoing the words of author Bill Bryson in his bestselling book, “A Walk in the Woods”: “We hiked the Appalachian Trail,” Bryson wrote, though in fact he hiked less than 40 percent of it.

A few people have emerged, if not exactly to defend Kozel, then at least to tell people to back off. Some have criticized those who asked reasonable questions and sought answers, rather than the person who told the lies in the first place.

“It’s sad to me that people might feel like I let them down because of this negativity,” Kozel told ABC News. “That’s what hurts the most.”

Let’s be clear: Any “negativity” here is Kozel’s alone, her lies are the cause of any hurt she now feels, and if anyone feels let down, it’s her fault, and nobody else’s. She lied and seems to have gained financially, accepting speaking engagements and reportedly working on a book deal based on what she knew to be lies (full disclosure: last year I offered to ghost-write or co-write a book with her, but she declined).

Appalachian Trail hikers began to notice that all photos of Kozel were taken at or very near trailheads. Photo by Stacey Kozel.

Journalists should have been more diligent (then again, I’m an uber-skeptic and because I wanted to believe, I didn’t properly vet her AT story; looking at the video in hindsight and doing a little basic math, it’s painfully obvious she could not have hiked the trail in the time frame she claimed, or in my opinion, at all), but Kozel grossly misrepresented herself to them.

She also may have misrepresented herself to the company that made her braces, which has now removed all references to her from its website.

Worst of all, in my opinion, her bogus “message of hope” was broadcast far and wide. That could literally have had dangerous, even fatal, consequences, had a person with different abilities who wasn’t prepared for the challenge decided to head out on the trail.

And while it’s easy to feel sorry and embarrassed for her, allowing Stacey Kozel to get away with lying because of her disability is an insult to people of different abilities. To excuse her is to say, “Well, it’s OK, dear, because you’re different.” That kind of condescending prejudice is just another kind of discrimination, and it literally devalues the achievements of every other person of different abilities out there.

A lot of AT ’16 hikers have come forward now to say they doubted her story, but I sure never saw any public discussion about Kozel. We were duped, and our gullibility unfortunately allowed her to believe she had gotten away with it. Had we been more skeptical, she wouldn’t have moved on to the PCT and her next lie.

All this is really, truly a shame. Stacey Kozel would be inspiring simply doing sections of the trail, but in her exaggerations, she has diminished anything she has done on the trail. It’s very clear that she did virtually none of the PCT, and only limited portions of the AT. My suspicion is that she started the trail, hopeful as any hiker, and like so many, simply found she couldn’t do it.

Kozel is suffering the consequences of her lies now, and I certainly feel for her. But I hope she’ll decide to take a first step toward rehabilitation by publicly admitting and sincerely apologizing for her lies.

The Trail Is the Teacher: Start Here

July 5, 2017 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

The Trail Is the Teacher is an episodic account of my somewhat unexpected 2016 thru hike of the 2,189-mile Appalachian Trail.

I published the book as a series of blog posts, so the story is a bit “upside-down.” Having received a few requests to read it from the beginning, here is a table of contents for easy location of each chapter. Each chapter contains a link to the next chapter at the end.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: Prologue

2: Snow

3: Tumbling Down

4: Zombies and noro and bears

5: Smoky Highs and Lows

6: Trailus Interruptus

7: Hike Your Own Hike

8: A yellow blazer, a legend, and some hippies

9: Smoke and Wishes

10: On the Road to Damascus

11: Four’s company, snore’s a crowd

12: The Hills Are Alive

13: Good Times, Bad Times

14: Alone Again

15: Out of the Bardo, Into the Bears

16: So Long to the South

17: Penns(hell)vania

18: Rocky II, Granitic Boogaloo

19: Jersey Joys

20: Hot and Bothered

21: Cooling It in Connecticut

22: Hornets, Fairies, and PCBs

23: My White Whale

24: Vermont Blues

25: Call Me Flipper

26: Into the Wild

27: Out of the Wild

28: Over the River

29: Southern Maine Surprise

30: On the Beach

31: Duct Tape, Slackpacking, and Sore Feet

32: Ho(s)tel New Hampshire

33: Welcome to the Whites

34: Presidential Peaks—and Valleys

35: Meeting Miss Janet

36: One Last Ass-Kicking

37: … But a Whimper

38: Lessons Learned

The Trail Is the Teacher: Living and Learning on the Appalachian Trail

October 20, 2016 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Here’s a preview of The Trail Is the Teacher: Living and Learning on the Appalachian Trail, about my 2016 thru-hike of the (then) 2,189-mile Appalachian Trail. The complete book is now available at Amazon a both an e-book and paperback.

One: The Best Teacher in the World

Of the many the thru hiking accounts I’ve read, most open with either a) a scene of transcendent beauty/personal revelation or b) a moment of excruciating pain/extreme challenge. Think of the opening scene in the movie Wild, in which Reese Witherspoon, playing hiker Cheryl Strayed, hurls a bloody hiking boot into a deep gorge with a scream of rage.

But a month after completing my own, unconventional, somewhat unexpected Appalachian Trail thru hike, no singular moment of mysticism or misery has elbowed its way upstage. Instead, I keep coming back to a hiker I first met about 600 miles up the trail, in southern Virginia.

The members of my unexpected crew — you’ll meet them later — and I were cooking dinner with other hikers at Jenkins Shelter (mile 578.6) when a petite young woman tottered up, burdened by an enormous pack. She was trailed by a grimacing older man, who made quick, angry work of pitching his tent, then disappeared inside without a word.

The girl set down her pack and started chattering nervously. Fine blond hair, cut short, framed her narrow face and her blue eyes were friendly, but fretful; there was something quavery and frail about her that reminded me of a baby bird that had fallen from the nest. I was surprised when she said she was 23 and a college graduate. Her companion, First Step, was a kind of chaperone, a former college professor she’d recruited because her parents wouldn’t let her hike the trail alone. Her trail name was Two Pack.

Over the next few hours, she talked almost nonstop, and I wasn’t the only one who had a hard time imagining how she had managed to survive nearly 600 miles of the trail. She seemed to know very little about camping or cooking. She lay the rain fly to her tent on muddy ground to “dry” as a light drizzle prickled down from a gray-cotton sky; a friendly husky staying at the shelter quickly circled several times and plopped down on the convenient ground cover for a rest.

And when she pulled her boots and socks off, she revealed narrow, pale, blister-ravaged feet whose toes seemed strangely stacked atop one another, almost crumpled.

With her companion awol in his tent, shelter denizens took pity on her, helping her cook and offering advice. I shooed away the dog and helped her hang her rain fly, and tried not to stare at her battered Picasso feet while handing her a thick roll of miracle-working Leukotape for that violent-looking crop of bloody blisters.

“I guess I’m being too negative,” Two Pack said, explaining First Step’s lack of sociability. “I’m not appreciating him enough. I should be more grateful.”

Though she usually pitched a tent, that night she nested securely among the many-colored lumps of a full shelter that night.

~~~

The next morning when I rose at 5:45 I saw through a misty gloom that First Step had already packed up and left camp, abandoning his charge. When she woke a short while later, she really was shaking a little bit. Was he gone for good? In classic, laconic hiker style, many of us offered words of encouragement.

“Well,” someone said, “now you can do what you wanted to do in the first place: Hike the AT on your own.”

A couple of hours up the trail, our crew passed a guilty-looking First Step, who wanted to know how Two Pack was doing. Cool, even a little remote — you don’t just bail on people like that — we all said she was fine; she was awake and gearing up to head out when we left. She would sink or swim now, on her own.

“I would bet a thousand bucks,” I said as we walked on, “there’s no way she’ll finish the trail.”

Nobody disagreed.

~~~

Four months later, I had become a southbounder — or rather, a flip-flopper, having jumped off in Vermont and gotten back on at Katahdin to finish my trek. I had just rock-hopped across the nearly dry Piscataquis River on a warm, late-August day, slipping at the last minute and soaking one shoe.

But I was feeling good, having just knocked out the first 90 miles of the 100-Mile Wilderness in four days. Now I was sitting on a rock, wringing out my sock, when a fast-moving woman in purple breezed by, grunted a hello, and picked her way quickly across the stones. She was soon followed by two companions, the first of whom I immediately recognized.

“No way! Two Pack!” I shouted, jumping up, genuinely feeling more elation than when I’d summited Katahdin just a few days before.

She looked me over and clearly didn’t recognize me. Her once doubtful blue eyes now seemed steely, almost grim with the same thousand-yard stare I’d seen on the faces of so many northbounders (aka NOBOs) who were plunging through the wilderness like hounds on a scent.

“My name’s Pony. We met somewhere in southern Virginia, way back in May,” I said, reaching out for a fist bump. “I gave you some Leukotape. Your companion bailed on you that morning….”

“Oh yeah,” she said slowly, a smile briefly softening her galvanized expression. “You were with some other guys, right? Younger guys? I remember you now.”

“I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings,” I said, “but we all thought there was no way you would ever finish. I’m super psyched to see you all the way up here! You definitely get my vote for most inspirational story on the AT this year.”

“Well … thanks,” Two Pack said. But her companion was hollering from across the creek and she was already moving up the trail. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’ve grown a lot on the AT.”

But I could see she didn’t need a compliment from me or anyone else. She had gotten up that chilly, foggy May morning in Virginia and, taking the advice of other hikers, just started walking. I learned later that her erstwhile chaperone bailed out in Pearisburg — and she kept going. Now, some 1,500 miles later, she’d be catching her first glimpses of Katahdin within a few days. One step at a time, sometimes on painful feet, she had walked right past all her doubters — her parents, her former professor, my crew — to prove that she was tough and resourceful and resilient.

Of course, she didn’t do it alone. Nobody does. Other hikers, yes. But most of all, she had the best teacher in the world: the trail.

Book review: A Land Made of Water by Robert R. Crifasi

January 25, 2016 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

A Land Made of Water: Appropriation and the Evolution of Colorado’s Landscape, Ditches, and Water Institutions by Robert R. Crifasi. University Press of Colorado, 424 pp. with b/w photos and illustrations. $50 (print); $40 Kindle.

Let’s face it. Most people would no more pick up a book about such enticing subjects as “ditches” and “water appropriation” than they’d spend an afternoon at the beach reading an auto manual in Esperanto.

But with his first book, “A Land Made of Water,” former water resources administrator for the city of Boulder’s open space program Robert R. Crifasi has written a deeply researched, deftly written guide that is both informative and entertaining, even for lay readers.

Widely regarded as one of the area’s bona fide water experts, Crifasi sat on the boards of 11 private Boulder ditch companies and managed all of the city’s ditches. He’s also shoveled countless tons of wet leaves, silt and the occasional dead skunk as a ditch rider.

He begins with a concise history of water development in the West, noting that the Anasazi people who inhabited Mesa Verde were building ditches and reservoirs for irrigation as early as 900 BCE. The Spanish took some of those ideas and blended them with a cultural and political system of “acequias,” a word adapted from the Arabic “al saqiya,” meaning “water conduit.”

The Boulder and St. Vrain valleys were dry indeed before pioneers dug the first ditch in 1859, using shovels and horse-drawn “Fresno scraper” plows. Based on historical documents and photos, he concludes, “I think we can safely state that east of the foothills from approximately Coal Creek on the south to St. Vrain on the north there were virtually no lakes present prior to active settlement.”

Few area residents may know that a famous 1882 Boulder County case, Coffin v. Left Hand Ditch Company, led to a Colorado Supreme Court decision that established the most basic (and still standing) principle of Western water law: first in time, first in right. Essentially, the ruling meant that simply owning land did not automatically give one rights to water passing through.

That may sound a little, well, dry. But Crifasi injects the history of this mini-water war with real-life drama, personalities and the occasional pointed observation.

“Today, Colorado’s Prior Appropriation system has become a symbol for the preference of private property over common property, the privatization of public resources, and the rule of markets to distribute natural resources,” he writes. But, he notes, the Left Hand Ditch Company resulted from the kind of cooperative that many would revile as “socialist” today, and prior appropriation was widely understood at the time as a victory against control of water by wealthy capitalists who could afford to buy land.

Crifasi relates the history of how modern Front Range residents came to enjoy a wealth of water through such public projects as the Moffat Tunnel and the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. He’s also refreshingly frank about conflicts between some environmentalists and the reality of water in the dry West.

While wearing his ditch rider’s hat, Crifasi ran into a young biologist who found found leopard frogs, a federal species of concern, in one of his ditches and thought it should not be disturbed.

“I wholeheartedly shared his desire to protect the species. But the problem was that these frogs migrated into and now occupy habitat that was created by people,” Crifasi writes. … Never mind that if someone like me didn’t get the laterals cleaned, there would be no point for the rancher to turn water into the laterals so he might irrigate his hay meadow. The laterals would simply dry out and cease providing tadpole habitat or a source of water for the hay meadow. … It felt like to me that he wanted … some kind of frog Valhalla. Our conversation made me feel like a callous frog killer for even suggesting it might be necessary to occasionally disturb the habitat … so that we might perpetuate it.”

He dispels, though history, the common romantic notion that “Indians roamed the plains as if it were an ecological utopia” and that settlement was “a fall from Eden that happened with the discovery of gold.”

“Human-induced changes to our streams and the outright construction of lakes make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between natural systems and those that are more or less derivative of human action,” he writes. And, he concludes, “Since Boulder citizens began actively acquiring open space in the name of preserving nature, I think it is especially important to consider how the landscapes … came into existence in the first place.”

Despite such candor, Crifasi isn’t likely to spend a weekend taking potshots at feds alongside the likes of Cliven Bundy; indeed, he has no truck with ranchers who refuse to see the value of preservation, as well. Rather, he is a deeply informed realist: “I do not wish to wax nostalgic for a paradise lost. Nor do I advocate dismantling our ditches and reservoirs or drying our fields to recreate something that is long gone.”