Travels on the Appalachian Trail

 

By Carolyn A. Copenheaver and

Lisa D. Leslie

Summer 2003
   

            We first met at the 2000 New Faculty Orientation at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Lisa Leslie was just returning from six years in England spent at the University of Liverpool finishing her doctorate in nineteenth-century British literature with a specialty in the Shelley literary community.  Carolyn Copenheaver had defended her doctoral thesis, “Vegetation dynamics of Pinus banksiana in northern lower Michigan,” in the School of Forest Resources at The Pennsylvania State University.  Although we were from different disciplines, we discovered a common interest in hiking.  During that first year of teaching at Virginia Tech, we interrupted our grading with day hikes in southwestern Virginia.  We hiked Sartain Trail, Chestnut Trail, War Spur Trail, Lakeshore Trail, Saunders Creek Trail, and Kelly Flats Trail.  Our conversations quickly led us to realize that we were seeing different things even though we were hiking the same trail.  We wondered whether these differences in perceptions were due to our academic training.  Lisa’s training in literature taught her to see the world in a sensory, emotional manner.  Carolyn’s training in forestry taught her to see the world in a quantitative, objective fashion.  We decided to explore these differences.

            The one trail we had yet to hike was the Appalachian Trail (AT).  This trail seemed like the perfect location to study our different perceptions of nature.  Carolyn, being the scientist, decided we needed a proper experimental design.  Lisa did not know quite what she meant, but agreed anyway.  After several hours pouring over maps and guidebooks, Carolyn convinced Lisa that the study needed replication (i.e. 13 day hikes along the AT, one hike for each state the trail crosses) and a daily sampling routine (on the trail by 9 a.m., hike until noon, break for lunch, identify a location for a one-hour intensive study, and return to the trailhead).  Lisa agreed to Carolyn’s design with one addition: Talking was allowed before lunch, but on the return trip, Carolyn had to “shut up.”  We would return to the trailhead in silence to allow us time for personal reflection.  The intensive study period would provide material for each of us to write an essay on our perceptions of that section of the trail.  Since beginning this project in August 2001, we have hiked and written about sections of the AT in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.

            In comparing our paired essays from these hikes we observed some expected differences but found some unexpected similarities.  As anticipated, Lisa uses more of her five senses in her descriptions of the trail environment.  For example, in her essay from North Carolina she describes the “hoarse and raucous caws” of the ravens and the “high-pitched screams” of a hawk, and in her essay from Maryland (included below) she writes that when she walks on the rocks with her bare feet she feels “more connected to the earth.”  In contrast, Carolyn’s essays reflect a more list-oriented and quantitative view of nature.  In her New Hampshire essay, she identifies “red maple, low-bush blueberry, paper birch, Canada mayflower, bunchberry, [and] clintonia” as species present along the trailside.  In her Maryland essay (included below) she quantifies her surroundings, including “a crack in a rock sheltering 115 seeds” and “a sycamore sapling (2.6 meters tall from root collar to top leaf.”

            The unexpected similarities included a trend over the course of the project for Lisa to begin incorporating some quantitative observations in her essays and Carolyn to begin including more personal reflection in her essays.  In West Virginia the AT skirts the Harper’s Ferry cemetery where Lisa noted “186 grave stones within sight.”  In a switch of roles, Carolyn confesses in Tennessee “I have always loved white pine.”  We also both incorporated stories from our past experiences that were not directly related to the trail.  Lisa makes many connections between her AT hikes and her backpacking expeditions in England and Scotland, and Carolyn makes many references to her forestry field work in Michigan and Pennsylvania.  These differences and similarities indicate that our academic training does influence, but does not limit our perceptions of nature.  As we continue this hiking and writing project, we are eager to see if these trends continue, and wonder if other unexpected patterns will arise from our paired essays on the Appalachian Trail.

 Response essay by Lisa Leslie to Appalachian Trail hike in Maryland.

  Hike #2: Maryland

Rough-winged swallow.  “A brown-backed swallow,” Peterson’s guide emphasizes, lighter than the Bank swallow.  “Note the dusky throat.  Flight unlike Bank swallow’s, more like Barn swallow’s; wings pulled back at end of stroke.”  My swallow, I scribbled in my notes, is a “single, solitary swift-like bird” that I “actually saw pause . . . mid-air in front of a flying insect & then snap him up.”  Next he “lands on a rock for a short rest & then takes off again, skimming the water or flying high overhead.”  No real information in either description.

I want more.  I want to know more about this elegant little brown-backed, dusky-throated bird that flies unlike the Bank swallow and pauses, like a mid-air prayer, before devouring its prey.

It is a prey-er, as are we all, our entire lives.  Like the rough-winged swallow that I watched religiously for one hour on 22 September 2001, on a part of the Appalachian Trail that skirts along the shores of the Potomac River in Maryland below the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, we all prey on what holds meaning to us, snapping brief and small memories out of the air with an audible “click” of our beaks as we try to grasp an instant of worthiness and fly away with it forever.

             *            *            *            *            *           

This section of the Appalachian Trail is a wide, flat canal path, one of four modes of transportation from days gone by, running parallel: the Potomac River, the Canal path, the C & O Canal, the railroad tracks.  It is one of the easiest sections of the AT, much different from the North Carolina section we hiked last month.  It is well-used by city and suburb dwellers who want to “get away from it all” on the weekend, to leave behind their concrete and steel lives and return to nature.

To many people, this is nature (and at this, my thoughts approached feelings of horror).  This well-worn, high traffic, noisy and chattering trail: where we were kept from our silent walking by a National Parks and Recreation Ranger; where a woman with a degree in Horticulture and Landscape Design from the University of Maryland told us that pokeweed, with its deep purple berries and fuscia stems, was once used for dye; where family after family pedaled their Trek mountain bikes of various sizes merrily and noisily in enjoyment and determination; this sidewalk that extends out from Washington D.C., from Baltimore, and from the hearts of all people who cannot help but snap at that opportunity for outside-ness—this is nature to them—and to us all.

             *            *            *            *            *            *

           I sit down on a rock by the Potomac River.  I settle myself with my orange field notebook, much more official than a “journal.”  How much does this affect the subject and sense of my writing?  On our first hike, I did nothing but loll around and enjoy being in the natural world, but this time I want to focus.  Carolyn’s equipment labels her; she has purpose.  How do I fulfill my half of this project, the person schooled in literature as compared to the person schooled in science?  My equipment is less obvious, but treasured and valuable nonetheless: my bird field guide, my binoculars, and most important of all, my senses.  I prepare to play the part I have adopted for this drama: I am THE ARTIST.

I am sensitive to all that surrounds me: the rushing river and the warmth of the sun on my legs; the towering, bright-white cumulus clouds against the bright blue sky and the active and dusky little swallow; the ionic and river smell of the water and the inner peace and refreshment that diffuses through my body like a spell.  A light-blue damselfly that flits near and far.  The rocks patterned in soft swirls of layers in gray, white, orange, and beige.  The early autumn golden trees on the hillside opposite.  The friendly, melancholy train whistles.  I take off my hiking boots, and notice it is easier to walk on the rocks with bare feet: I am connected to the earth.  I scramble down to sit with my feet in the water on a small jet of rock that sticks out into the rushing Potomac.  I am surrounded on three sides by water making distinctly different sounds.  To my right, the river rushes directly at me; in front are the sounds of swirls and eddies, a more gentle, gliding flow; to my left, calm lapping of the back current, as the river forces past this peninsula, comes and goes.  The rocks that I sat on before are now above and behind me; I am at water level.  I am just another part of the landscape, a small creature snapping frantically to catch the meaning of experience. 

There is a lot of traffic on the Potomac this sunny day.  Kayaks, both fiberglass and inflatable, rafts, tubes, bright blue boats—these different water craft get people close to the water for a day of fun. They all watch Carolyn, I notice, who is slightly upriver and slightly further away from the water.  I turn to look, to see what they see: a woman in a bright orange cruiser’s vest brandishing tapes and instruments, counting seeds one by one and measuring her widening circles.  Her obvious scientific method justifies her procedures; I can look at her and see that she is doing something.  To most eyes what she is doing is curious and uninterpretable, and that is the draw: the curiosity of the unknown.  I process material on the inside, which looks like nothing, or laziness.  I am just a girl, sitting on a rock, writing in her journal.

One of the plants that Carolyn taught me to identify on this hike is the giant paulownia (Paulownia tomentosa).  It is a bold, rather masculine plant with huge, heart-shaped leaves.  The ancient Chinese extracted products from this plant to use for beauty treatments, but now it exists largely in waste places.  But I remember it among all the plants we identified on this walk because, as Carolyn said, it is large—like the “large” words of Polonius to his son in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

 This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

 These words are nourishment to souls in search of individuality, and they feed my own thoughts as I spend this day outside writing.  It speaks of a commitment to the self.  Of a conviction that if we follow our hearts, we become better individuals and better members of society.  Like the Buddhist concept of mettā, if we cultivate self-love, we spread that love to others.  Focus and breadth; keeping the larger world in mind while working to develop the self.  And although I somewhat snobbily said “this path along the C&O canal is not nature,” it is just that, to some people.  If you live in the city, you must take your nature wherever you find it, snapping it out of the parks and the preserves that have been created for human enjoyment and human refreshment.  Perhaps even this path allows people to find that still point within themselves, that wider connection to the world—the focus that teaches us about our inner minds, the breadth that understands that this knowledge connects us to the rest of the world.

So.  Back to my journal, back to my binoculars, back to my barefooted connection to the earth.  It is warm and sunny.  I cannot believe that it is warmer here, further north, one month later, than our last hike.  I cannot believe that not a word has been said, between Carolyn and I, from passers by on the trail, here in my own journal, about the events of just eleven days ago [the events of Sept. 11, 2001].   I sit on my perch, like the Rough-winged swallow, keeping a calm eye on my territory and dashing out to capture whatever is nourishing to my soul: fact, fiction, myth, nature.  I see vultures riding the thermals high in the blue sky above me and know that in the end they will feed on animals of the earth; I hear a train’s whistle and clack in the distance and know that it transports coal that has been taken from the earth.  I snap at all the experiences of this day, hold them fast in my beak, and take them home to offer to those whom I would hope to feed with my words.

  

Response essay by Carolyn Copenheaver to Appalachian Trail Hike in Maryland

 

Date: September 22, 2001

Location: the AT in Fredrick and Washington Counties, Maryland

Weather: sunny and warm

             This morning we got lost.  Not lost in the woods, but lost trying to find the woods.  At 8:40 a.m. we stopped at the West Virginia Tourist Information Center in Boliver, West Virginia to ask directions to the Appalachian Trail.  The woman at the information center told us to follow Rt. 340 to Rt. 671 South and the trail would cross Rt. 671 after a few miles.  I had the map and Lisa was driving.  I kept looking at the map and even though I could see that Rt. 671 and the AT never intersected we drove south on the road for several miles past the Virginia/Maryland border because as Lisa said, “She spoke with such authority.  She sounded like she knew what she was talking about.”

            After deciding to save West Virginia for another day and hike in Maryland, which had an easy access point to the AT, we drove back through Virginia, back through West Virginia, and into Maryland.  Some of the AT in Maryland runs along an old canal towpath.  The canal and towpath is part of the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park.  Construction on the canal began in 1828 and the full 184.5 miles of the canal was completed in 1850.  The canal served as a transportation route for goods and raw materials between the Ohio Valley and the port cities along the east coast.  The canal follows the Potomac River, which is the only river that travels through the Appalachian Mountains in their northern stretch.  The canal was put out of service in 1924 and was acquired by the National Park Service in 1938.  Today, the canal serves as a recreation area for walkers and bicyclists.  And if our hike along it was typical, the park is heavily used.  We saw older couples out for morning walks; families with moms and dads slowly cycling behind crazed kids cycling left, right, and center across the path; tourists spilling over from Harpers Ferry; an entire uniformed troop of boy scouts including two leaders; numerous joggers; and many young couples out for afternoon bike rides.  It was impossible not to interact with our fellow hikers and bikers—the woman from Maryland who helped us identify pokeweed; the young couple that asked us what the pretty purple flowers were along the path (they were phlox); the two young men, completely outfitted in spandex biking gear, who asked us how to get to the bridge that crossed the Potomac; and the bored Park Service employee who had been called to rescue a fawn that had fallen in the canal.  My eyes and ears were tired within a mile of walking.

            After lunch we sat on the rocks next to the Potomac River and I tried to look more closely at my surroundings: mud spattered rocks; a few fresh-water clam shells; a crack in a rock sheltering 115 seeds—each seed was furry and brown with a six-sectioned ovary and they were 1 mm long by 0.7 mm wide; a pile of Pistachio shells left by some previous hiker; a sycamore sapling (2.6 meters tall from root collar to top leaf); a silver maple seedling (0.8 meters tall from root collar to top leaf); toad skin lichen growing in the crevice of another rock.  Then, just as I began to lose myself in my surroundings, a man and his daughter (in a bright pink bathing suit) approached me on the rocks.

            It is very strange to me to be in the woods in such a populated area.  Usually, I spend 8 hours at a time in the woods and see no one but my own reflection (while trying to get a black fly out of my eye with the mirror in my compass).  At times this can be scary—like the time I got stuck in the sand on a small two-track in Oscoda County, Michigan.  I knew there would not be anyone down that road for possibly several days and therefore, it was up to me to figure out how to get out.  I dug around my tires with an old cottage cheese container I used to measure soil and stuck broken sticks and blueberry branches under the tires, but my car just kept digging deeper into the sand.  Eventually, I ended up cutting an old blanket from my trunk in half with my Swiss Army knife and putting one long strip under each tire.  It provided enough traction to get the front tires out and back on the road.  I learned a valuable lesson about never taking your driving wheels off the road.  But, what lessons can I learn from a trail full of people?  Lisa mentions, after the hike, that she was nervous about the “suspicious-looking” man who was following us closely for about a half a mile but then disappeared off the side of the path when the Park Service truck pulled up to ask us whether we had seen a fawn stuck in the canal.  Do we learn fear?  When I work in rural or remote areas any person that I encounter is a welcome respite from the solitude and we usually exchange waves if we are driving or stop and talk if one is walking.  But here, I have to admit the commonness of the people makes them less interesting to approach; unless there is something unusual or interesting about the people or their behavior.  My bright orange cruiser vest with its 9 pockets stuffed with field guides and equipment elicited numerous comments, as did our stopping at quarter mile intervals to identify plants with my ever-present field guides.  I guess humans must always be drawn to the unusual and today what was unusual was solitude.  We had little of it. 

 Conclusions

            Knowing that we plan to write an essay from each hike has influenced the way we perceive the natural world.  The act of writing the essays has changed our hiking trips from experiential (living in the moment) to communicative (how can I tell others about what I’m seeing and experiencing).  Although Carolyn was used to communicating with others about the natural world, she did this in a highly technical fashion.  This project has caused her to struggle with communicating her professional view of the forest in less technical language.  Lisa was used to writing about emotional, interpretive experiences, but she learned quickly that her writing needed to include more concrete details about what she was seeing.  The essays from this project give us a place to discuss nature across our separate disciplines, and we have each developed a new vocabulary that allows us to communicate to those outside of our academic fields.

 

Carolyn Copenheaver is an Assistant Professor in the Forestry Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  Her B.S. is in Biology from Juniata College in Pennsylvania; her M.S. is in Forestry from the University of Maine; and her Ph.D. is in Forest Resources from The Pennsylvania State University.  Her current research interests include dendroecology, forest succession, and perceptions of nature.

 

Lisa Leslie is an Instructor in the English Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  Her B.A. is in English from Texas A & M at Corpus Christi; her M.A. is in English Literature from Appalachian State University in North Carolina; and her Ph.D. is in English Literature from the University of Liverpool in the U.K.  Her current research interests include the Shelley literary circle, composition theory, and perceptions of nature.