Camper Van Beethoven

     In the summer of 1976 I was three years old; my tiny fingers spread softly over the back seat of our chewed up silver car. The upholstery was starting to crack and my oversized head bobbed softly as we sped over the rolling, docile miles between Nashville and Memphis. I dreamed lightly out the window at the brilliant roadside trees, racing into patterns that only crayons could faithfully depict.
     My parents were so young then, hardly older than I am now. My mother was wearing a homemade, tie-dyed T-shirt that swirled into an island of yellows, oranges, and reds. Her face was soft and smooth and smiling. My father's beard grew monumental from his jaw and neck like a wild man's, nearly eclipsing his mouth. He was driving absently and debating with her. It was the kind of laughing disagreement that wasn't so much an argument as a circus of dispute. This one was about me, but I had no desire to keep up with what they were saying.
     "He thinks the world is flat," my mother said, pleading and motioning out the dusty windows. "He looks around and it looks flat and he has no reason to think it's different anywhere else!"
     "Come on," my father looked at her over his glasses. "He's a lot more perceptive than that. There's a globe in the house, he knows that's the world, he hears the propaganda, he knows it's round without having to see the curve!" They went back and forth about faith and reason for a while before my father said, "Hold on. Tanner," he leaned back over the seat and changed his voice to the soft, melodic tone that signaled me to pay close attention. "Do you think the world is flat?"
     "No," I said certainly, looking back out the window. My father's eyes darted back to my mother, a victorious grin peeking through his great beard. I stared out the window for a moment before completing my thought. "It's bumpy."

      Sixteen years later I was in a map shop in Atlanta, and I picked up a book called The Appalachian Trail Backpacker by Victoria and Frank Louge. I can't recall why I took notice of the book detailing equipment and preparation for hiking the 2,160 mile trail. I had never even been backpacking before. I only knew I had always loved the mountains, and every page I turned in the book brought me closer to the realization that I was to hike it myself.
      I spent two years saving money for the equipment and food, read a little bit more, asked a little bit more, and went on an overnight hike. I told the director of my college program that I would be missing a semester and fought to be sure that nothing else in my life could be planned to intersect that time. I tried to find a friend to go along with me, but the ones who were interested couldn't get it together, and I settled for starting the trail on my own. So on March fifteenth of 1995, when I found myself on the top of Springer mountain in Georgia, (the beginning of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail that follows two-by-six inch white painted blazes through Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine before winding up to the peak of Mount Katahdin in Baxter State park) I was in a new world.
      This book is a chronicle of the world that I found in the woods and of the inhabitants that I came to know and love. It begins not on the first day of my hike, but on the day I really began, the day I found my trail name. Starting with that moment, the transformation into a thru-hiker began. The quotes throughout the story are mostly taken from entries by hikers in the trailside registers found in every shelter. There is an appendix at the end of the book that details my preparation and the contents of my pack, but this book isn't meant as a guide, it's an experience of the trail. I'm certain that other accounts would differ from mine, but this is the trail through the eyes of the Vikings, who wound their way ever northward over the mountains and through the seasons of 1995, living a better, sweatier way, laughing until our bellies hurt, and finding new beauty in this land and this life. Greetings, and welcome to my story.