Angels Among Us

MST. Chapter 9. Segment 17 (Part 2)

Aug 14, 2023

This is my serialized story of hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST), a 1,175-mile route that crosses the state of North Carolina. I’m hiking west from Jockey’s Ridge near Nags Head on the Outer Banks of the Atlantic Ocean to Kuwohi (formerly Clingmans Dome) near the Tennessee border in the Great Smoky Mountains. If you’d like to start at the beginning of my story, click here.

See the Mountains-to-Sea map at the bottom for reference.

Day 7. A heart-to-heart meeting with my support team (my wife and daughter) back in Ocracoke convinces me to change my plans and take a day off, called a “zero day,” to recoup and recover from the eighty-two miles of walking the beaches and roads of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. I had planned to walk eight days straight and finish Segment 18 (the Outer Banks), Segment 17 (what they call the Down East) and Segment 16 (the Neusiok Trail and Croatan National Forest) before finishing this part of my journey on the MST, but an incoming weather front calling for five days of rain - along with an ongoing forest fire in the Croatan Forest (33,000 acres burning and only 30% contained) - as well as the support team’s less than enthusiastic response to my preparation for walking two days in a swamp forest featuring all sorts of bugs, ticks, and poisonous snakes - in addition to the very real possibility of facing alligators and black bears for the first time on the Mountains to Sea Trail - made me rethink my adventure. The Croatan National Forest will have to wait

In my 27-mile walk to Oyster Creek Campground - which serves as the trailhead for the Neusiok Trail and the MST entry point into the Croatan Forest - I realize my journey, then, is coming to an end. As I walk in the early morning light, I feel the exhilaration of having completed two sections of the MST and the desire to keep going into the next day and the next and the one after that. Prudence here makes sense, though, and after hiking in rain for a week on the Camino, one has to learn what it means when the rains are coming.

My early morning departure from Davis, with the rising sun casting my shadow onto the cordgrasses of the marsh, I recognize how grateful I am for the opportunity to see this part of North Carolina. Down East is usually a point in passing - passing through - a quick glance out the car’s side window on the racing over-the-speed-limit rush to get to the beach. Here though, flatboat fishing and duck hunting blinds are still a way of life, as is digging for oysters, clams and scallops.

The simple but elegant Baptist Church in Williston attracts my attention, and as I stand in front to take a picture, a neighbor named Bob steps over from his mailbox and shows me the plaques on the right side of the parking lot, saying nobody ever sees them. I would have missed them altogether if not for Bob. I decide Bob is a good man to take time to talk to me and his story of the town’s history providing hundreds of thousands clams for Heinz canned Clam Chowder is fascinating. Williston is the canned clam capital of the world. Who knew!

I enjoy, as well, meeting a woman named Elizabeth in the tiny village of Smyrna who is standing in front of her store as I walk past. She calls me over and says she is a trail “angel.” She invites me inside her store where she offers me a seat at a little table, and I can see she is planning a reception of some sort. Elizabeth asks me to excuse the mess, she is helping with the wedding of a friend’s daughter who is physically incapacitated. She gives me a bottle of orange soda in case I am thirsty and a pack of tiny chocolate cookies for later when I might be hungry. As I sit and drink the soda, she talk about the people she has met hiking the MST and her ongoing heath issues and the thousands of things she loves to do for her community, like cooking Tuesday dinners for ninety in-firmed or impoverished people in the area. When I finally stand to leave, so too, she gives me a bottle of water for each side pocket of my backpack. When I thank her, she tells me to thank God for he calls on her to help the homeless and the hikers. I ask her for permission to hug her goodbye. We hug for awhile - the kind of hug you give to angels.

What a mix of flat farmland, large bays, and wide mouth rivers this walk is turning into as I hike along the side of the road singing songs of Leonard Cohen. At one point I see to my amazement a man in a wet suit and googles in water up to his neck collecting clams from the river bottom with his buddy in a flat boat bagging them nearby. Both wave when they realize I am taking their picture.

Life is full of such surprises and fortunately on this hike, I get to experience them over and over again. This day is one for the books. In posting pieces on Facebook, the son of my best friend in high school writes to me soon after my first report, to tell me that he and his family live near the MST outside of Morehead City, and they would be delighted to have me stop by for dinner, or a shower, or even for an over-night accommodation. So, with the rains forecasted to begin soon after I reach Oyster Creek, the invitation to spend the night (rather than stay at the Campground) sounds rather appealing. In the end it’s almost unbelievable, I spend two nights with his family.

Lucas, a marine biologist for the state, and his wife, Kelly, a Lutheran pastor, and their three daughters are so accommodating and gracious ( more so than I could ever be), that I feel I will be forever grateful for (and humbled by) their hospitality.

Most surprisingly, Lucas invites his father and mother down from Pennsylvania, so Russ and Barb decide to join us for the two days. This is, perhaps, the unique quality of this MST. Interacting with new friends and catching up with old friends is becoming an unexpected pleasure I never would have imagined a week earlier. Seriously, this is an incredible turn of events. I swear, angels live amongst us.

So too, is sleeping in the queen-size bed in the oldest daughter’s bedroom - rather than on the couch (or my tent) - a respite more than I deserve and allows me, once again, to reorganize my backpack, take a shower after two days of hiking, and rest my poor feet, sore from walking forty-seven miles on hard road surfaces. I have to remind myself that the aches and pains are to be expected - I am an old man after all.

With two blisters (one a blood blister on my left footpad) from walking across North Carolina’s “Down East” now serving as a counterpoint to the hundreds of wonderful memories of the Outer Banks and the Inner Coast, I realize it is time to bring this chapter of the MST to a close and for my support team to pick me up and take me home.

Heart, Hiking, Here & Now

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