(l to r: Mark, David, Dan)
This was the plan: the weekend before Thanksgiving, I’d fly from Tampa to Charlotte. Mark and Jill drive from Delaware to Charlotte. We’d meet up at Dan and Jenny’s house Thursday night. The next day, we would leave for Pisgah National Forest, a three-hour drive into the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. We’d camp out two nights, with a 15-mile hike on Saturday to the top of Cold Mountain.
It was Dan’s idea, and we had to do it. The three of us are tightly knit, but separated by hundreds of miles and have three very different lives pulling us in a thousand different directions—even in our twenties. We hadn’t done anything together, just the three of us, in at least ten years, if ever. If not now, when?
So we packed as lightly as possible Thursday night. We waited for Dan to finish his half-day of work Friday, and we hit the road—two Eagle scouts and a dropout Webelo (me).
With dusk upon us Friday, we entered the gate to Pisgah. Not ten minutes in, we realized the car was running on empty. With 15 miles of steep uphill driving we had no choice but to soldier on to set up camp before dark.
We made it to the top—barely—with a nearly dry gas tank. We passed rivers and waterfalls, and later cliffs adorned with icicles. It was getting really cold. Mark pulled into a parking lot alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway, turned off the engine, and we stepped into a whipping wind. A small group of hikers with long beards emerged from a trail, heading to their car to go home. “Have you done this before?” they asked, casting funny looks as we rushed to unload our tent and backpacks.
Far below the parking lot, perhaps a half-mile away, was a stream 20 feet wide in a valley. We hauled the gear we needed for the night, left what we could in the car, and hustled down to the campsite as the daylight waned. We agreed camping near the stream would give us a scenic backdrop, despite the bear tracks we passed on the trail. Mark was on fire duty and started collecting wood while Dan and I set up the tent.
We didn’t see a soul for two hours after setting up camp. The stars were brilliant.
After foil dinners around the fire, we concealed all traces of food and went to bed early to rest up for the long hike the next day. My borrowed heavy-duty sleeping bag was made for temperatures as low as 30F. It wasn’t enough.
Saturday morning the car lurched two more miles uphill to the trailhead for Black Balsam Knob. It was 8:30. We left the heavy camping gear in the car and set out carrying daypacks with food and water. The terrain was very rugged and the wind continued to punish us amid a thick haze. Mark tested out a ski mask for a while. After a couple hours the haze lifted, it started to warm up and we were able to shed some layers. We were having a blast. We also realized before long that the terrain was too rugged to do the full 15-mile hike to the top of Cold Mountain and back, so we adjusted our goals to turn around sooner.
Other hikers were few and far between. By late morning, we reached a clearing in Shining Rock Wilderness and Dan pulled out the topographical map again. The trails thus far were not marked well, so we had to check our progress fairly often. We got our bearings and continued on the Art Loeb Trail in the direction of Cold Mountain.
Or so we thought.
The hike was beautiful and I was savoring the crisp mountain air, with plenty of brotherly banter along the way. But by around 12:30, I had a gut feeling that we were no longer on the Art Loeb Trail. Instead of climbing toward Cold Mountain, we were somewhere else—we had been descending, mostly, for two hours, without seeing another soul. There were peaks on either side of us, and we could hear a river getting closer.
Adrenaline began to flow through us. The Eagle scouts huddled over the topo map. All I could contribute was my iPhone compass. After 15 minutes of tracing their fingers over the peaks, rivers and trails on the map, they felt they had an idea of where we were.
In the heat of the moment, our personalities surfaced. I wanted to make sure we made an educated decision by 1:30, and I was leaning slightly towards playing it safe and turning around. Dan didn’t want to retrace his steps and wanted some new scenery, and analyzed every hill and dale—even the direction the river flowed. Mark wanted to risk it, forging ahead on the trail he thought he knew, so we could cross a couple rivers and take a shortcut to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
By this time we’d also decided we were too exhausted to camp out a second night. We would drive home once we reached the car. But if we didn’t want to spend Saturday night huddled in a lean-to, we had our work cut out for us.
At 1:15, we agreed to cross the river and forge ahead for another 15 minutes to see if we could verify our location by 1:30. If not, we would turn around. We weren’t certain that the trail crossed the river—Mark figured as much because there was a snapped metal cable indicating an old crossing. We hopped over rocks—some more gingerly than others—and I slipped and came two inches from falling in.
But on the other side, at first, it didn’t look like a trail. We had all but decided to turn around when I spotted a trail about 10 or 15 feet above us, running parallel to the river. We took it, rounded a bend, and saw the sign we needed to locate ourselves on the map: two rivers coming together. We paused for lunch and crossed the second river. No lean-to for us, thanks!
Within another hour, we had reached the Blue Ridge Parkway. We knew we’d reach the road four miles away from where we parked, so our plan was to hitchhike back if we could get a ride. We had walked a mile uphill on the Parkway, thumbs extended, when a young couple in a hatchback slowed down. The man, driving, made a large hand gesture as he slowed as if to say, “But there are three of them!” and sped off around a bend. A minute later, they had turned around and we rejoiced as they rounded the bend again.
They were friendly, from Asheville, modern-day hippie types with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker. We explained our wrong turn and our 10-mile hike. “But this,” I said with pride, “is our first time hitchhiking.”
“Well, you didn’t look too scary,” he replied.
By the way, our car miraculously made it out of the forest, going downhill in neutral the entire way in a scene reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine.
No, things did not go as planned. We returned home after only one night in the wilderness, but Jenny and Jill, to their credit, did not taunt Dan and Mark for it. Jenny fixed us all burgers that night. And I thanked God for being alive, and for blessing me with two intrepid little brothers who push me to be more unpredictable.
gratitude challenge, day 30 - Thank you, God, for a gift I could never have imagined: three sons!
They are a source of pride, humor, inspiration, and fierce love.
And thank you for reminding me this month of your never-ending blessings.
(Huge thanks, David, for writing this post! And Dan & Jenny for sending the photos.)
