A Walk in the Woods

Unluckily for them, they were the wrong kind of people. In the 1920s, sociologists and
other academics from the cities ventured into the hills, and they were invariably appalled
at what they found. Poverty and deprivation were universal. The land was ridiculously
poor. Many people were farming slopes that were practically perpendicular. Three-
quarters of the people in the hills couldn't read. Most had barely gone to school.
Illegitimacy was 90 percent. Sanitation was practically unknown; only 10 percent of
households had even a basic privy. On top of that, the Blue Ridge Mountains were
sensationally beautiful and conveniently sited for the benefit of a new class of motoring
tourist. The obvious solution was to move the people off the mountaintops and into the
valleys, where they could be poor lower down, build a scenic highway for people to cruise
up and down on Sundays, and turn the whole thing into a great mountaintop fun zone,
with commercial campgrounds, restaurants, ice cream parlors, miniature golf, and
whatever else might turn a snappy dollar.
Unfortunately for the entrepreneurs, then came the Great Depression, and the
commercial impulse withered. Instead, under that dizzying socialist impulse that marked
the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the land was bought for the nation. The people were
moved out, and the Civilian Conservation Corps was put to work building pretty stone
bridges, picnic shelters, visitor centers, and much else, and the whole was opened to the
public in July 1936. It is the quality of craftsmanship that accounts substantially for the
glory of Shenandoah National Park. Indeed, it is one of the few examples of large-scale
human handiwork (Hoover Dam is another, and Mount Rushmore, I would submit, is a
third) anywhere in the United States that complements, even enhances, a natural
landscape. I suppose that, too, is one reason I liked walking along Skyline Drive, with its
broad, lawnlike grass verges and stone retaining walls, its clusters of artfully planted
birches, its gentle curves leading to arresting, thoughtfully composed panoramas. This is
the way all highways should be. For a time it looked as if all highways would be like this.
It is no accident that the first highways in America were called parkways. That's what they
were envisioned to be--parks you could drive through.
Almost none of this spirit of craftsmanship is evident on the AT in the park--you
wouldn't expect it to on a trail devoted to wilderness--but it is agreeably encountered in
the park's shelters, or huts, which have something of the picturesque rusticity of the
Smokies shelters but are airier, cleaner, better designed, and without those horrible,
depressing chain-link fences across their fronts.
Though Katz thought I was preposterous, I insisted on sleeping at shelters after our
night at the spring (I somehow felt I could defend a shelter against marauding bears) and
in any case the Shenandoah shelters were too nice not to use. Every one of them was
attractive, thoughtfully sited, and had a good water source, picnic table, and privy. For
two nights we had shelters to ourselves, and on the third we were just exchanging
congratulations on this remarkable string of luck when we heard a cacophony of voices
approaching through the woods. We peeked around the corner and found a Boy Scout
troop marching into the clearing. They said hello and we said hello, and then we sat with
our legs dangling from the sleeping platform and watched them fill the clearing with their
tents and abundant gear, pleased to have something to look at other than each other.
There were three adult supervisors and seventeen Boy Scouts, all charmingly
incompetent. Tents went up, then swiftly collapsed or keeled over. One of the adults went