Every year, I like to take a week or so and take a longer backpacking trip. This is part of my overall goal of hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail one section at a time. Four years ago we started out at the North End of Shenandoah National Park. This year I find my starting point about 130 miles further south, at Crabtree Meadows. In past years, I’ve walked with my dad and sometimes my brother. This year, dad would be going again and we would be joined by my buddy, Captain Shutter.

On the Appalachian Trail, many hikers user trail names, made up handles that they use to identify themselves, not unlike CB handles or internet Nicknames. I go by the name The Rain King and I call my dad Short Term, since he seems to forget the most strenuous parts of a hike not long after walking them. Or in other words, if it weren’t for his short term memory loss, he would probably quit hiking. Going into the hike I didn’t really have a name for Captain Shutter. On some of our earlier hikes, I had christened him Trail Donkey, but he had been hiking at a much better pace, so that name no longer seemed right. I was sure that a new name would present itself before the hike was over.

Crabtree Meadows is over 200 miles from where I live. A friend from work kindly offered to drive us down to our starting point and to help us shuttle dad’s car to the point he would get of the trail. She had gone hiking with us in April and earned the trail name Uber-bot for her relentless and untiring stride. It took us about four hours to get to the tiny town of Montebello, Virginia. From there we just needed to drive four miles up a small road to Crabtree Meadows. We didn’t go far on this small road before our speed was reduced to a crawl. We climbed steeply up a mountain, only to go back down the other side. The mountain dropped away sharply from the road. And the road itself was rutted and filled with large potholes. As went farther down this road, I began to feel extremely guilty for making my friend drive her minivan over this over-glorified goat-trail to a destination that I’d never been to before. We pushed on, if for no other reason, because there was no where to turn around. After inching over large bumps, down sudden drops and around hairpin turns, we finally reached the gravel parking lot that marked our destination.

Short Term was there waiting for us. He showed us where he set up his tent, and then drove off, with the Uber-bot following in her minivan to deposit his car 30 some-odd miles down the trail. Capt. Shutter and I set up our tents and then looked at our surroundings. We were camped in a field at about 3000 feet of elevation. The horizon was ringed by the summits of mountains. You couldn’t help but have the feeling that you were on top of the world. You might think that after driving to such a remote location, that we would be very isolated from the rest of the world. But that wasn’t the case at all. Camped about 200 yards away from us was a group of giggling college girls, and not long after we finished setting up our tents a family of four showed up and sent up their tents. Some time later, a bunch of drunk rednecks drove by in their Jeep Wrangler, seemingly intent on finding a way to drive it stupidly enough to overcome the design of the vehicle and roll it any way.

With our tents pitched and food bags hanging from the limb of a nearby tree, we had nothing to really do but wait. We sat on a large rock and looked at the clearing sky and talked. The air was chilly, but not uncomfortable. We sat in the dark and talked, occasionally wondering around to see what we could see. At long last, we saw head lights headed up the road towards us. We walked down to the parking lot and retrieved Short Term and thanked our friend the Uber-bot again. She drove off and the three of us were left high in the mountains of central Virginia, with nothing but the contents of backpacks.

It was late so we climbed in to our tents for the night. I read a chapter from my book and then turned off my headlamp and went to sleep. Maybe it was the cool air and the warm sleeping bag, or maybe it was just that I had slept very little the night before, but I slept incredibly well. I woke up around 6:30 and got out of the tent set up my stove and started heating water for coffee. Capt Shutter and my Dad joined me before long. We cooked our respective breakfasts and enjoyed the meal under blue skies. Once breakfast was cleaned up and our tents were stowed, we put our packs together and set off for the trail. We followed the little gravel road for about a half mile to an elevation of about 3500 feet. There we came to the Appalachian Trail. And as if on cue, two hikes came towards us, heading North. We exchanged pleasantries and in the process realized that they were thru-hikers.

After chatting for a moment the hikers continued north up the trail. And we set off in the opposite direction, headed towards a shelter that located 7 or so miles to the south.