It started with an older man named Sam Waddle who drove ten miles, five of them bone-rattling, in his old jeep up a deeply rutted, pot-holed dirt road to reach the three-sided shelter he maintained on the Appalachian Trail. The Jerry Cabin shelter, built on the remaining foundation of a cattle herder’s cabin, sat 24 miles north of Hot Springs, North Carolina and 25 miles south of Erwin, Tennessee—in the middle of nowhere. I had read in the official Appalachian Trail magazine about Sam and the hour-long, body-and-Jeep-jarring trips he took for the upkeep of the shelter. The story also described the warm welcome Sam extended to long-distance hikers he met on his regular trips there and the deep care he gave to the Spartan structure. Among the hikers he had met was a blind thru-hiker named Bill Irwin who hiked the entirety of the trail as a faith walk with his seeing-eye dog Orient under their combined trail name alias The Orient Express. As I read the article, I decide that I would read Bill Irwin’s book and that the next segment of the AT my husband Bill and I hiked would include a night at the Jerry Cabin shelter. Gift like, the next 70- to 80-mile section north from where we ended our previous section-by-section sojourn of the AT would take us past the Jerry Cabin shelter.
We set out on a steamy summer morning. We broke out into a sweat within a few steps, but the tree canopy overhead made it bearable. On day five, Jerry Cabin was our goal. The morning greeted us with sunshine and a heavy dew. Down, down, 1,100’ down we went from the Spring Mountain shelter where we had camped for the night, eventually down through a pasture-like meadow where we reached a road crossing that was also a gap. For hikers, “gap” is a four-letter word because it means you have just finished a steep descent and you are going to begin a steep ascent, the gap being the lowest place between two mountains. The day was heating up at the lower elevation and we were feeling it. Ahead of us lay a demanding climbing over six miles. Up, up, up we plodded as the sun, too, went up, up, up and cooked us whenever the trees gave way to open stretches. About five miles later, marked by several stops for water and snacks, we finally reached the Little Laurel shelter for respite. The heat, humidity, and constant pounding on the trail had sapped our energy, particularly the last mile. Bill and I both felt quite drained, and knowing that we had nearly six more miles to go caused our spirits to flag. The temptation loomed large to stay at Little Laurel. The spring at Little Laurel, however, was slow and its pool meagre. We ate lunch, took a deep breath, and in light of the sad spring decided to press on. Besides, staying at Little Laurel would mean changing our itinerary and miss staying at the Jerry Cabin Shelter, one of the big draws of the section.
No guidebook truly conveys how trying the steep sections of the trail can be. The last leg of the ascent tested my mental stamina to a degree I had not been tested before: 1,400’ in 1.3 miles, more than one hundred feet per tenth of a mile. As a fellow hiker once said, a thesaurus does not have enough synonyms for “grueling” to describe this kind of hiking. The tread way presented stretches of periodic red clay baked to brick-like perfection where no shade fell, making it hard going on our feet and legs. The gnats loved the open, sunny spaces, riding the mini-thermals and swarming around my sweaty face for the heat that I radiated. The enjoyment of the mini-thermals belonged entirely to the gnats. When a gnat plunged into my eye, I called for a halt. The time had come for bug repellent, the strongest kind available—100% DEET. DEET repels bugs because of its bitter smell and its oily texture. It is not attractive to humans either, and is so strong that it can dissolve some synthetic fibers and plastic. Although I had tried other repellents that smelled better and were less destructive, they were no match for the gnats. “Bug juice” applied, we trudged on. I flicked sweat from my forehead before it trickled in my eyes, and I tried not to inhale gnats as I huffed and puffed up the mountain. Bill and I stopped again to drink water and decided it was time for a serious intake of salt and fat: out came the Slim Jims, thin sticks of dried sausage which we only eat in dire times.
We continued up what the guidebook called “a graded” trail—in other words, no switchbacks to lever us up the mountain. I resorted to counting footsteps, telling myself to walk just fifty more steps and then I could stop for a breather. Putting myself into low gear, I looked at my boots and willed the next step with each number I counted. As I reached he fortieth step, my paced picked up a little, eager to reach my mini-goal. But, oh, when I took that first step on the way to the next fifty, my leg lifted a boot of concrete.
Suddenly we crested and reached the ridge, entering a different world with a glorious blue sky and white puffy clouds, and a cool, late afternoon breeze. The trail now had grass; short trees and bushes lined our way. Several steps along I saw peculiar tiger lily-like flowers that seemed to bloom mistakenly upside down. The petals curled backwards to form a sphere, and the long white stamens with dangling anthers pointed down as deliberately as any other flower’s stamen pointed up. The strange flowers fascinated and delighted me. They were Turk’s cap lilies, lilium superbum—superb indeed with their petals resembling the turban-like head covering allegedly worn by Turks centuries ago.
As taken as I was by the lilies, we had to move on to reach the shelter and set up for the night. Blessedly, the tread way allowed us to make such good time that we seemed to fly even as the ridge narrowed. We raced along until, I suddenly stopped still and yelled, “Snake! Snake!” Smack in the middle of the path was a copperhead in a coil. I quickly backed up making sure not to startle it and have it spring at me. Bill caught up and I spoke quietly as if to startle it less, “Maybe if we wait here a little bit, it will move on.” Bill nodded in agreement. We waited and waited. After a while longer, it was clear that the snake was holding its position. I did not want to stay there the rest of the afternoon or all night and whispered to Bill, “I will throw a rock at it. The snake might get mad, but it might move along.” Bill nodded in agreement again. I stooped over, found a rock, and threw—a direct hit. The snake remained tight in its coil. “That snake should have moved,” I said. I picked up another rock and landed a direct hit again. The snake did not flinch. The time had come to use a stick—a very long stick. I found one, and trembling, slowly approached the snake holding the stick straight out like a spear. As I closed in, the snake did nothing, not so much as to move its head ever so slightly from side to side. Fearful, I took a last step and poked. I sprang back ready for the snake to snap, but nothing. The snake had apparently it had died in its coil. Still armed with the stick, I quickly scampered around the snake giving it as wide a berth as I could. I pitched Bill the stick and he did the same. Who could have imagined a snake dead in its coil in the middle of the wilderness? Even as we continued along the trail, I irrationally looked over my shoulder a few times to see if the snake slithered behind.
The Jerry Cabin shelter stood beautifully situated on the ridge at 4,100’ with a view over endless eastern “high country” mountains. Above, the beholder could almost touch the bottom of the white clouds passing overhead. Across the path to the west, trees stood sentinel, and the spring less than 100 yards away formed a sweet pool that made for easy our filling of water bottles. Sam Waddle had worked his charms to make the three-sided structure homier for modern backpackers. He had placed a light with a pull chain and a phone on a wall of the shelter, and although they did not connect to a power source, the closest one being miles away, they gave warmth because of the humor and their familiarity. Next to the phone some wag had left the message, “Order pizza here.” Sam had also mounted a mailbox on the wall. Curious I opened the mailbox and found the shelter register in which hikers record their visit. I spied a Bible, too. I scowled initially at the Bible, viewing it as a chief “no-no” because as a rule, paper of any kind left in shelters easily turns into fodder for mouse nests and attracts more mice. No one wants mice scampering over them in the night. Nevertheless, eager to set up for the night, I let go of my judgmentalism. Bill and I unrolled our sleeping pads, put our sleeping bags on them, and stuffed our bags with the items we would need for the night—flashlights, warm clothes, and a few other accessories. Bill fetched water, and when he returned I prepared one of our favorite trail meals: for our starter, instant soup; the main course, ramen noodles, tuna, and dehydrated peas; for dessert, granola bars. The long summer evening and picturesque sky gave us a sense of calm and wellbeing. When Bill returned from washing the cups and cook pot, we sat and reminisced about the day while making notes. We each pulled out our books (secured from mice and rain in Ziploc baggies) and began enjoying an evening read.
Our peace did not last long. No sooner had we found a nice place to sit outside the shelter than we heard a canon-like boom. We wondered if it was a blast from a farm below in the little valley between mountains. We went back to our reading. Boom, a second time. The wind picked up dramatically from the west and the sky darkened rapidly. We bolted for the shelter and made it inside just before the storm broke. With such fierce wind, I worried for a moment that it would push the rain inside the shelter. I looked at the phone longingly. The rain lashed the shelter, and soon hail bounced on the ground. The sky thundered and the percussion of the thunder shook the shelter. I had been in violent mountain thunderstorms but this one raged with particular ferocity. “Oh, God,” I prayed silently, “keep us safe from a lightning strike and the wind.”
Crouched towards the back of the shelter, I said to Bill somewhat wryly, “I think this might be good time to look at that Bible.” I went to the mailbox, opened it, and pulled out the Bible. When I opened the front, on the first page was a message in large loopy cursive that said, “To my friend, Sam Waddle. From Bill Irwin. See Psalm 91 the hiker’s psalm.” I could hardly believe my eyes: I was holding a Bible that the famous blind hiker had given to Sam. He and Orient had been here. The sky continued to thunder, lightning flashed, and rain beat down.
I turned to the psalm. “He who dwells in the shelter of the most high and abides in the shade of the almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” That was us all right, in the shelter that God had provided us from the storm, and indeed I was looking to God as my refuge and fortress. Other verses rang true. “You will not fear the terror of the night…” We had camped out four nights previously, trusting in God and in what we had learned from other hikers, by God’s grace, to get us through those nights and many previous ones without incident. In that moment I turned to God, trying not to fear the terror of this night with this powerful storm. “…nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.” We had definitely faced a wasting destruction at noonday when we climbed the spirit-crushing ascent to the ridge. “…the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot” struck a chord, not because we had faced a mountain lion or a bobcat, nor had we even killed the snake. But, protection from the deadly strike of a viper that the psalmist sang about had actually happened to us. The storm continued to blow.
Another verse caught my attention for its bearing on our hike: “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand fall at your right hand…” The image clearly referred to a battle scene with combatants dying all around yet the person addressed did not number among them. In fact, the psalmist added, “but it will not come near you,”—that is, death in battle will not happen to you. It just so happened that the next day the trail would take us to marked graves where an uncle, nephew, and messenger boy were killed and buried during the Civil War. Families in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee had divided loyalties, some enlisting in the Union Army, others the Confederate. William and David Shelton had enlisted in the Union Army, and when they returned to meet their families in a cabin on Cold Spring Mountain, the same mountain in whose shadow Sam Waddle lived, Confederate soldiers, among them their own relatives, ambushed and killed them along with a boy lookout. Of the gravestones or memorials along the length of the Appalachian Trail, this was the only one that honored specific Civil War soldiers. The psalmist’s invocation of war and the thousands who had died rang with truthful eeriness in light of our proximity to the Shelton graves. Men had fallen in war, but truly, death in battle would not come near us as it had for the Shelton men and the boy.
Suddenly when I realized that we had quite literally walked into Psalm 91, I felt humbled yet secure and in awe. Gratitude suffused me, too, because God’s presence, though unseen, had been with us throughout the day in ways I had never imagined (oh, ye of little faith). The psalm met me as a Godhit, a moment of surprise in which seemingly disparate or unexpected elements of life suddenly connected. This was not something I planned or could have done for myself. It was pure gift, no strings attached, grace—of God.
I heard other words of the psalm as a promise that now had a basis in the reality: “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your habitation, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” With the rain continuing, we decided it was time for an early night. As I crawled into my sleeping bag and tightened its hood around my head, I knew that I would never forget that Psalm 91 was the hiker’s psalm. I quickly fell into a sound, restful sleep even as the rain continued to splatter around our little shelter of the most high.