Reasonable people do not find a taxi in the remote wilderness of Maine’s Baxter State Park, but I desperately needed a ride both times after my respective companions and I finished our climb of Katahdin, known among AT hikers as “the Big One” because its summit, Baxter Peak, is the AT’s northern terminus. At a snail’s pace of about a mile an hour, we had hiked, and sometimes crawled, up and over the ten extremely strenuous miles of the massive granite hulk the Algonkians appropriately named “Greatest Mountain.” Having descended the Big One by a different trail than one we had ascended, our next challenge was to make it back to our campground fifteen miles away. Our watches said 5pm, and none of us wanted to add more walking miles to an already grueling day that saw us set foot on the trail around 6:30am. We would have to get a ride, but if we could not, at least the walking would be on a fairly flat, gravel road, not over car- or sofa-sized boulders. Finding a ride became an exercise in desperation with prayer thrown in for good measure.
Most people who complete their northbound hike of the AT reach Baxter Peak by going up the Hunt Trail, which doubles as the AT, and return the same way. But multiple trails lead to Baxter Peak from different sides of the mountain, the most (in)famous accurately called “the Knife Edge” for the 1,500’ drop on either side of the narrow, jagged trail. The year before I summited Katahdin with my friend Eli, my backpacking partner Karen summited with her husband Jeff, who was completing his second hike of the AT, while I took care of their seven-year old daughter, Sarah, at our camp in the primitive Katahdin Spring Campground conveniently located at the base of the mountain where the Hunt Trail begins and the AT continues. I could not summit with Karen that year because I had had knee surgery that made such a climb impossible, though I could backpack the 100-mile Wilderness which led to the foot of the mountain. Karen could climb with her husband Jeff and could finish the entire AT first by summiting the Big One, then by hiking the 100-mile Wilderness to finish the entirety of the trail at Katahdin, though in a slightly different way.
Around 2pm on the day of Karen and Jeff’s summit, Sarah and I were taking a nap in our tent, when we awoke to a voice at the door saying, “Knock, knock, knock. Are you Heather?” The voice belonged to a young, long-haired, bearded man who wore a red bandana, a sleeveless t-shirt, hiking shorts, and boots—the tell-tale look of a thru-hiker. Indeed, he had just completed his hike, going up and coming back down the Hunt Trail-AT. After I congratulated him heartily, he reported that he had a message for me from someone named Karen, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of his shorts. A note said: “Meet us at Roaring Brook Campground at 4. Taking different trail down. Karen.” By car the trip covered fifteen rough, graveled miles and took nearly 40 minutes with little between except a campground 3 miles down the road from us and the main entrance gate five more miles at midway. When Sarah and I drew close to Roaring Brook, traffic steadily streamed in the opposite direction as people who had finished their day hikes departed from that place where a number of trail heads led up the mountain, among them the one to the Knife Edge. When we spied Karen and Jeff, the reunion was joyous. Filled with “Oh, my gosh!,” “Hard!” “Beautiful!” “Spectacular!” “Hand-in-hand the last yards!”, and the rest of the tale overflowed, including the explanation of why we were picking them up there. When Karen and Jeff reached the top, other hikers told them there was as an easier way down, relatively speaking, called the Saddle Slide Trail (“slide” as in rock slide) that intersected with the Chimney Pond Trail, and ended three more rock strewn miles down at the Roaring Brook Campground and Parking Area. The hikers told Karen and Jeff that the drop would be slightly less precipitous; they would not need or see rebar handholds to get down a rock face; they would still have to deal with boulders, but not have to squeeze around or belly down them with a drop off of hundreds of feet on one side. The Saddle Slide—what an improvement! The sticking point is that they would have to find a way back to their campground. For Karen and Jeff that posed no problem because I had the car…and the keys; they only needed a courier to deliver me the message.
No friends or car awaited when Eli and I finished climbing Katahdin. By the time we reached Roaring Brook Campground, traffic departing to the main gate had already begun to thin. Nevertheless, I set in motion part one of our plan to get back to our campground and collapse: we would hitch a ride back to the main gate, the first leg. Eli and I each started to approach anyone with a pickup truck and asked if we could ride in the back to the main gate. On my third try, a gentleman kindly agreed to give us a lift. Down the bumpy road we went, absorbing the extra hard thumps whenever we hit potholes. At the main gate we hopped out of the truck and thanked the driver for his trouble.
Part two of the plan went into effect immediately. We started walking while hoping to hitch a ride with a car or truck headed in our direction, the opposite of the exiting traffic. We would gladly take a ride to the campground three miles shy of ours because that would mean five miles less to walk, and if we averaged three miles per hour, we would be at our campsite about an hour later. If not, it meant about three more hours of walking. We would probably get back just before nightfall; then again, maybe not. We kept walking as cars zoomed by in the opposite direction, having finished day hikes with trailheads at Katahdin Spring Campground or in that area of the park. The few cars headed in our direction were filled with people or camping gear or both. After a mile of walking, the traffic exiting dwindled noticeably and the vehicles going in our direction even more. As we reached the half hour mark—1.5 miles—my spirit began to flag. With each passing minute the chances of a car coming our way decreased. Although I knew I could do two-and-a-half more hours simply because I had to, I did not think I would like myself at the end, and I feared how discouraged Eli would be because of the additional mileage and fatigue. I had even thought that if Eli needed to stop, I could press on, let him wait, then return to get him with the car. I prayed shamelessly for a ride.
We walked on, necessary step after necessary step. Several long minutes later, what looked like a maroon colored sedan appeared in the distance heading in our direction. It moved at such a clip that it kicked up dust from the gravel. I turned around and stuck out my thumb, waving it down as if I were hailing a cab. As the car drew closer, it slowed, and I saw that it had lettering on the side. I could not make it out entirely, but one of the words looked like “taxi.” “Now if that isn’t wishful thinking,” I muttered to myself. I even wondered if a mirage were possible. The car slowed even more until it stopped for us. As the driver of the otherwise empty car leaned over to the passenger side to roll down the window, I saw painted on the side, “The Minutemen Taxi 794-8700.”
The man leaned over to the window and asked, “Can I help you?”
Eli answered, “We are heading to Katahdin Spring Campground, and we would be happy to hire you to take us as close to there as we can pay.”
The man said, “I’m going there to pick up a fare, a father and son who need a ride back to Millinocket.”
Eli asked, “How much would you charge to take us to the campground?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Great!” I chimed in. “That’s exactly how much we have.” And with that we got into the back seat, having hailed a taxi on the gravel road in Maine’s primitive Baxter State Park.
When we arrived at the campground’s ranger station where the father and son waited, the two men looked surprised to see two hikers emerge from the cab. We gave them a quick explanation of what happened that left them looking even more wide-eyed. I quipped to the father, “Whoever thought that I would have found a new proof for the existence of God?—a taxi at Katahdin?” I then asked the driver if I could take a picture of him with his taxi. He said, “Ma’am, you’d better take that picture or no one will ever believe you.” We all chuckled. I snapped the photo. The men got in the taxi with Bob and took off, and Eli and I returned to our campsite, thankful beyond words. I laughed to myself over the outrageous turn of events and thought, “Grace.” I also had a chuckle over Jesus’ teaching of “seek and ye shall find.” We had been seeking, but I knew that a taxi in the wilderness was not what St. Matthew or St. Luke had in mind when they wrote Jesus’ teaching about seeking and finding. The taxi at Katahdin, however, had all the marks of the human and God relationship to make me think that “seek and ye shall find” might not be so far-fetched. Persistence on God’s part and ours? Check. God’s surprising goodness? Check. Others were included in the surprise, too? Check.
Uncannily, a similar incident happened three years later when, supported by a small grant, I took a group of six UVA students, all women, to hike the fifty northernmost miles of the AT, including Katahdin. When the time came for us to ascend the Big One, we went up the Hunt Trail and down the Saddle-Chimney Pond Trails to Roaring Brook. Again, we faced the problem of how to get back to our campground. Although we had two cars, the Park did not allow us to leave one of those cars overnight at Roaring Brook. The earliest we could leave a car there was 6:00am, but that would mean leaving our campground at 5:15am, rising even earlier, and not setting foot on the trail until nearly 7am, a late start for such a big mountain. I decided we would risk hitching a ride, with two of us seeking the hitch while the others waited.
Early in the ascent we discovered that half of the group was considerably speedier than the other. To keep from becoming grossly separated, we arranged meetings spots along the way at such noted sites as “The Cave” and the start of the “Tableland” at the top of the breathtaking (in more ways than one) “Gateway.” We decided to hike the last mile together, having our slowest person lead the way, a woman who had a knee injury but loved rock scrambles and was undaunted in her climb of Katahdin. Within steps of the summit, on the count of three we all touched the sign at the top. After a round of pictures, we stepped away for other hikers to have their turn and for us to eat lunch. Food and celebration followed. Over the five days of backpacking, the women had come to appreciate the rigors and wonders of the trail, even developing their sense of trail humor. Sitting a few feet below the summit, we brainstormed characteristics of a “true AT hiker.” “You know you’re an AT hiker,” they said, “if you are so dirty you can sit anywhere”; “you know your three R’s—rocks, roots, and rain”; “duct tape is your foot’s best friend”; “a bandana is more than a fashion accessory.” We laughed yet again about our trail names, the aliases that long-distance AT hikers adopt or have assigned them by fellow hikers: Radiant Sunshine Head (positive attitude), Prime Con(sumer)(could eat a lot), Princess Peach (from Georgia), Squash (her favorite color and the color of her rain jacket), Toadstool (fondness for sighting mushrooms in the wild), Firefly (loved to build fires), and P-Dub (mine, for Prayer and Work). With the noon hour upon us, four to four-and-half more hours of hiking ahead, and the hitch back to our cars in mind, I told the three faster women to press on, gave them the assignment of getting the hitch, and instructed them in how to do it in two stages. I thought that the faster group would make it down the mountain sooner and increase the chances of getting the needed rides.
I hiked with the slower team because I was the leader and went slower anyway being older. As my group and I slid and scrambled down the rock strewn Saddle Trail, we wondered how far ahead the fast group was and how they were managing the descent. Half-way, we visited the shore of the glorious, glacial Chimney Pond cradled in the dramatic basin of Katahdin, the top of its sheer cliff wall forming the Knife Edge over 1000’ above. Although we wanted to linger, we needed to move on, because we already had a long day and clouds started to move in. None of us wanted to walk in the rain over those rocks unless absolutely necessary. We huffed and puffed down the mountain, periodically wondering if the faster members of our group had found a ride yet. Two hours later we arrived at trail’s end.
Around 6:00pm, after waiting for the better part of an hour at the all but empty parking lot, just as rain started to spit on us and we had donned out our rain jackets, one of our cars appeared, slowing as it drew to a stop. Radiant Sunshine Head sat at the wheel. As we piled in gushing about how glad we were to see her, she exclaimed, “Have I got a story to tell you!”
She began with a yarn about two laughs they had coming down the mountain. The first happened shortly after they started out when they were singing more loudly than a fellow hiker liked. Granted, the song was a bit of doggerel we had made up the night before to the tune of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.” The next thing they knew, a man approached them and asked, “Where is your chaperone?” They snickered, and hiked on singing not quite so loudly. The second laugh—this time nervous, bordering on the terrified—happened about a quarter of a mile farther along. The trail turned into inches-thick, gravel-like rock that slid a fraction with each step. Over to the right, twenty- to twenty-five yards away, the mountain dropped off sheer—about 2,220’—gorgeous but frightening. With each step the women took along the slightly unstable path, they tittered, “Ah, the shifting ball pit of death.”
Four hours later, with ball pits of death, boulders, and scrambling behind them, they reached the parking lot and successfully got a ride in the back of a pickup truck to the main gate. The hard part of the hitch to our “home” campground came next. As with Eli and me, they started walking and saw cars zoom in the opposite direction, filled with smiling people on the way to the exit. Suddenly fewer cars went in their direction, and those that did were full. They kept walking. Radiant Sunshine Head said that she finally became so determined and desperate to get a ride that she declared to her two companions, “I don’t care if the car is going in the opposite direction, I am going to flag it down.” And that is what she did. The car, a simple sedan, was heading out of the park to the main gate, not in towards our campground. Nevertheless, as Radiant Sunshine Head recounted, she stepped into the middle of the road and waved down the car. The driver, an astonished woman, stopped and politely asked, “Can I help you?” Sunshine Head rapidly explained: “We are from the University of Virginia, and my professor told us we had to get a ride back to our car at Katahdin Spring Campground because we just climbed Katahdin and the rest of our group is back at Roaring Brook waiting for us to get them.” “UVA?! The University of Virginia?!” the driver responded incredulously. “Yes,” replied Sunshine Head. The driver said, “Get in. You won’t believe this.” They piled in, and as they buckled up, the woman said, “I did my clinical psych fellowship at UVA, some of it at Student Health. So, yes, I will take you to your campground.” With that the driver turned the car around and off they went. “Can you believe it, P-Dub?! Can you believe it?!” Sunshine Head kept exclaiming to us as we drove along the gravel road. We all agreed it had to be a God thing. Again, it put a new twist on “seek and ye shall find.” Sunshine Head in her shamelessness, desperation, and determination had sought and found a ride. The lift, however, amounted to more than a car with a couple of empty seats, more even than a generous driver willing to turn around and take the threesome to the campground. What started out as seeking a ride turned into the joy of being found—all of it in a quirky moment of grace with yet another “taxi” ride at Katahdin. Persistence on God’s part and ours? Check. God’s surprising goodness? Check. Others were included in the surprise, too? Check.