A Walk in the Woods

"Eight miles! Lord. And how far'll you go this afternoon?"
"Oh, maybe another eight miles."
"No kidding! Sixteen miles on foot? With those things on your back? Man--ain't that a
kick." He called across the lawn: "Bernice, come here a minute. You gotta see this." He
looked at us again. "So whaddaya got in there? Clothes and stuff, I suppose?"
"And food," said Connolly.
"You carry your own food, huh?"
"Have to."
"Well, ain't that a kick."
Bernice arrived, and he explained to her that we were using our legs to proceed across
the landscape. "Ain't that something? They got all their food and everything in those
packs."
"Is that a fact?" Bernice said with admiration and interest. "So, you're like walkin
everywhere?" We nodded. "You walked here? All the way up here?"
"We walk everywhere," said Katz solemnly.
"You never walked all the way up here!"
"Well, we did," said Katz, for whom this was becoming one of the proudest moments of
his life.
I went off to call home from a pay phone and use the men's room. When I returned a
few minutes later, Katz had accumulated a small, appreciative crowd and was
demonstrating the use and theory of various straps and toggles on his backpack. Then, at
someone's behest, he put the pack on and posed for pictures. I had never seen him so
happy.
While he was still occupied, Connolly and I went into the little grocery part of the
complex to have a look around, and I realized just how little regarded and incidental
hikers are to the real business of the park. Only 3 percent of Shenandoah's two million
annual visitors go more than a few yards into what is generously termed the backcountry.
Ninety percent of visitors arrive in cars or motor homes. This was a store for them. Nearly
everything in the store required microwaving or oven heating or scrupulous refrigeration
or came in large, family-sized quantities. (It's a rare hiker. who wants twenty-four
hamburger buns, I find.) There was not a single item of conventional trail food--raisins or
peanuts or small, portable quantities of packets or canned goods--which was a little
dispiriting in a national park.
With no choice, and desperate not to eat noodles again if we could possibly help it
(Connolly, I was delighted to learn, was also a noodles man), we bought twenty-four hot
dogs and matching buns, a two-liter bottle of Coke, and a couple of large bags of cookies.
Then we collected Katz, who announced regretfully to his adoring audience that he had to
go--there were mountains still to climb-- and stepped valiantly back into the woods.
We stopped for the night at a lovely, secluded spot called Rock Spring Hut, perched on
a steep hillside with a long view over the Shenandoah Valley far below. The shelter even
had a swing--a two-seater that hung on chains from the shelter overhang, put there in
memory of one Theresa Affronti, who had loved the trail, according to a plaque on its
back--which I thought was rather splendid. Earlier visitors to the shelter had left behind
an assortment of canned foods--beans, corn, Spam, baby carrots--which were lined up
carefully along one of the support rafters. You find this sort of thing quite a lot on the