A Walk in the Woods

By Edith McClintock

Normally I associate a great summer read with the word trashy. Preferably a sprawling family saga with sex, power, money, international intrigue, and of course a nice love story. But the Pacific Northwest is paradise this time of year, and I’ve been outdoors this past week celebrating my coming birthday with friends and family and wasting my free time watching the Olympics, so I’m going to recommend a different kind of great summer read.

Today is my birthday and I am hiking somewhere in the North Cascades of Washington, two days out on a hopefully grizzly-free, five-day trip. Last year on my birthday I was hiking in Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park in the Republic of Georgia—an over-night trip that unfortunately included too many rounds of birthday cheers and vodka shots with a group of Georgian, German, Estonian, French, and American hikers. Drinking and hiking is an experience I will NEVER repeat, but in honor of out-of-shape, alcoholic hikers, unfathomable gear, and the pleasures and pains of meandering mountain passes, I’d like to recommend one of my favorite books: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.

The book chronicles Bill Bryson’s return to the United States after twenty years living in Britain and his trek along the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from the other Georgia to Maine. Bryson offers plenty of ecological and historical perspectives on the trail, but the best parts are his hilarious descriptions of his hiking buddy, a recovering alcoholic childhood friend from Iowa, their shopping excursions for gear, and their general ineptitude along the trail. It's a classic, and if you haven't read it yet, there's no better time than summer.

Here are a few excepts:

“So I decided to do it [hike the Appalachian Trail]. More rashly, I announced my intention - told friends and neighbors, confidently informed my publisher, made it common knowledge among those who knew me. Then I bought some books... It required only a little light reading in adventure books and almost no imagination to envision circumstances in which I would find myself caught in a tightening circle of hunger-emboldened wolves, staggering and shredding clothes under an onslaught of pincered fire ants, or dumbly transfixed by the sight of enlivened undergrowth advancing towards me, like a torpedo through water, before being bowled backwards by a sofa-sized boar with cold beady eyes, a piercing squeal, and slaverous, chopping appetite for pink, plump, city-softened flesh.”

“Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice, "Bear!" before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness.”

“Finally with a weary puff, you roll over, unhook yourself from your pack, struggle to your feet, and realize—again in a remote, light-headed, curiously not-there way—that the view is sensational: a homeless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction. This really could be heaven. It's splendid, no question, but the thought you cannot escape is that you have to walk this view, and this is the barest fraction of what you will traverse before you've finished.”

“But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.”

Lost in the Woods

By Edith McClintock

When I was eighteen, I hiked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for three weeks with a group of college students, a trip organized out of Montreat Anderson College in Ashville, North Carolina. We crossed 140 miles on land, 26 of them by bike, and another 42 by canoe on lakes and rivers and rapids. I summited five of the 10 highest mountains east of the Mississippi, rock climbed and rappelled two scary peaks called the Camel, and spent three days fasting alone in the woods.

For much of the trip, we were lost, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes it was only for a few minutes, but at the beginning, it was often for days at a time.

We carried everything on our backs, and slept under tarps. We received basic training on low impact camping and reading topographic maps from our two leaders, one an older college student, the other a teacher in the college’s outdoor recreation department. They were there to guide us emotionally and spiritually. Physically, they did little beyond pointing to a tiny spot on a map of green lines each morning and making their recommendations: “You need to camp there tonight,” or “You need to pick up your canoes here at noon.” Eventually, they left us completely.

Each morning, we picked someone from the group as the day’s leader, responsible for guiding and making decisions. At the beginning, I didn’t pay much attention to studying the maps, learning how to read my compass, or taking a turn scouting. I figured others knew how to do it better and would take charge. It wasn’t until I was wandering the side of a mountain in the dark, long after midnight, nearly 10 hours without water, deliriously searching for signs of our destination that I realized I had to change.

The rest of the group had sipped their water slower, even shared with me, and given up for the night, laying out their tarps and sleeping bags on the trail. I continued wandering in the dark, one of our leaders following. It was early enough in the trip that I thought if he saw my delirium from dehydration, my desperation, he would point out where I could find water, maybe share his own, if he had any. He didn’t. He was there only to make sure I didn’t tumble off the side of the mountain, or collapse in hysteria atop a blackberry patch. Eventually, I too had to give up, and I fell into a fitful, obsessive sleep on the trail, dreaming only of water.

It was the closest I came to an emotional breakdown. And it continued through the next morning, when I considered stealing a day-hiker’s water hidden behind a bush off the path. I didn’t, and eventually, late that afternoon, we found our destination, along with a pathetic stream of water dripping from a rock, which I sucked down joyfully.

After that, I learned to read the maps and compass, to take responsibility for scouting and paths taken each day, to negotiate decisions. To hoard water. We all grew stronger. Several who were prone to crying and collapsing in self-pity on the trail miraculously stopped; another, who had a bad knee and walked with a cane the first week, began taking the lead on hills.

But even after a week, we didn’t always make our destination. One night, after a day of hiking, biking, and canoeing, trying to catch up on several previous days we’d spent lost or moving too slow, I fell asleep in my canoe, my body giving out. Luckily, I had a partner who steered us to a forested island, although it still wasn’t our official destination. We crawled up the dark bank, and I fell asleep in a mound of pine needles, too tired to attempt food.

My strongest memories from that trip are of the physical hardships, and occasional pleasures. The 24 hours without water, my lips parched and cracked, my tongue dry. A juicy peach found in a wild grove on the side of a mountain ridge, a taste so sweet and pleasurable it will never be matched. The pain and tedium of step after step, switchback after muddy switchback, on blistered feet. Sinking into a cool river following five days of sweat and adversity in the hills above. Sleep more deep on the cold hard ground than I have experienced before or since in a lifetime of comfortable beds. The rush of sliding over a rapid and being sucked under water, losing my grip on my only paddle. Sunset over the gently rolling green mountains.

But when I read my journal from that trip this past week, there was little about the physical hardships. That night lost on the side of the mountain with no water that looms so large in my memory received only one sentence beginning with “hellish” in a 50-page journal. The pages, which I haven’t read in nearly 20 years, instead track the emotional and spiritual journey of those three weeks. It starts with my unhappiness during my previous semester in college, my impatience and dislike for several members of my group, fights and recriminations of trails not taken and who should not have been allowed on the trip.

The tone changes by week two. We begin to work together as a team, picking up on each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We learn to love and respect each other too, despite our differences. We get lost less. I learn patience, to enjoy each day as it comes. To not always hurry to the destination, as I did the first week. To not dismiss someone who can’t hike as fast, or who breaks down in tears. I learn their reasons, their stories. I learn to be kinder. And I also learn about myself, that I have an endurance to keep going, no matter the obstacle or pain, that I can take the lead and trust my instincts, but I can also walk at the back and help.

During my solo, the three days fasting alone in the woods at the end of the trip, I wrote a letter to myself to remember to take quiet time out of each day to sit and reflect or pray. To find contentment, joy, and appreciation in all situations and circumstances, and so many other things that I won’t go into here. Many lovely ideas, goals, and hope learned while lost in the woods.

But then I returned to Miami and a summer waitressing between my freshman and junior years in college. And I think I forgot a lot of what I’d learned, at least on a conscious level. Deeper, I think I’ve carried the lessons of those three weeks, though I still have to work on the patience and finding contentment and joy in everyday life. And most of all, remembering to read a map.

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

Tehran’s Gateway to the Mountains

Many travel guides to Iran offer this advice when it comes to Tehran: Get out of town as soon as you can. Seek out the prettier spots the country has to offer.

Bad advice, in my opinion. Sure, Tehran is humongous, overcrowded, and noisy. The air is practically unbreathable. Crossing the chaotic streets requires nerves of steel and a strong sense of calculated risk. (Drivers don’t stop just because a pedestrian happens to stand in the way). But Tehran offers a fascinating blend of tradition and modernity, from the chic European-style boutiques on Vanak Square to the traditional (and fragrant) spice markets in the bazaars.

The Tehran neighborhood that best represents this blend of old and new is Darband. Once a separate village, whose name means “closed gate,” this district has long since been incorporated into the metropolis. It is a maze of narrow streets, snack shops, and restaurants wedged tightly between the city proper and the Alborz Mountains. A tourist paradise, Darband is also a popular destination for the locals, particularly the young, hip crowd. But watch out for the enterprising shopkeepers who try to charge for premium curbside parking spots. The fact that the streets are public doesn’t stop them from trying to make an extra, not strictly legitimate profit.

The higher reaches of this sloping neighborhood mark the starting point of a popular hiking trail that winds up the side of Mount Tochal, crossing streams and bordering deep ravines. Tehranis are big on exercise in the fresh air, and nowhere in the city is the air clearer and cleaner than in Darband. Tehran is the only city I know of where you can walk straight from the city into the mountains without driving long distances into the countryside.

Lower down, the trail is lined with restaurants that the locals call ghaveh-khaneh sonnati, or traditional coffee shops. Don’t be fooled by the name; you’re more likely to find tea than coffee served here. The tables, known as takhts, have no chairs, and you sit right on a carpet spread over the top (shoes off, please). Tea arrives on round trays and comes with saffron-scented nabat (rock candy on a stick), and a side of fresh, syrupy dates.

My favorite time to visit Darband is at night, when the lights of the coffee shops on the mountain twinkle far above your head and the air is filled with the crackling of charcoal fires and the smoky aromas of grilling lamb and chicken kebabs. The glow of lamplight from snack shop doorways, where tables are piled high with jars of brined fresh walnuts and dried berries glistening in a bright red syrup, adds a festive spark.

I like to find a takht next to the stream that runs beside the trail and engage in my favorite hobby: people watching. The flow of humanity along the trail is a cross-section of Tehran society: conservative women in black chadors, who amazingly manage to avoid tripping over the hems of their voluminous cloaks and go tumbling into the stream. The young and hip also manage to negotiate the rough path safely in stylish heels, brightly colored headscarves, and clingy, thigh-length tunics—just barely within the parameters of Islamic modesty laws. The lovers at the next table hold hands and feed each other sticky dates (a no-no in an Islamic society where dating is officially banned, and yet couples  routinely ignore that particular rule). Nearby, a group of friends, men and women mixed, share an apple-scented smoke from a ghalyan, or hookah, which is also banned, yet readily available for rent from any teahouse. Rules can be flexible in this part of Tehran.

On a recent trip to Darband, I saw a sight that expressed everything this neighborhood means to me. A donkey, staggering under the burden on its back, stood outside a small refreshment shop. A man was busy unloading its cargo of plastic water bottles for sale in the store, necessary refreshment for those hikers off on a trek into the mountains. It was winter and the mountain trail covered with snow, but I yearned to grab a few supplies, shoulder my day pack, and head for the hills.

Do you know a favorite spot that perfectly reflects the character of a particular city or region?