I met Isaiah last weekend when my dog Finn and I spent three days and two nights on the Appalachian Trail. Isaiah is an interesting chap. Definitely not the kind of person I would usually hang around with. The introvert voice in me told me to get away from this guy as quick as possible. For once, I didn’t listen to that voice and I’m glad I didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have got to have an experience that took me out of my comfort zone but in the end felt rewarding. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.

Right now I am back in VA for a couple of weeks due to a work thing. Michelle is not with me because she had to have knee surgery when we were in Texas and she is recovering at my parents house. My dog Sawyer is keeping her company there while Finn and I drove up in the rig to Virginia Beach. Last weekend I decided to take Friday off and head up to the AT near the West Virginia and Maryland border in order to get some miles in each state so I could add them to my tattoo. The first day we hiked north into Maryland and camped at the Ed Garvey Shelter. There were a few other people there when we arrived. Most of them decided to tent out around the shelter and one couple was bedding down on the upper deck (sometimes they have two decks) of the shelter. Finn and I spread our stuff in the corner of the lower deck of the shelter. Finn wanted to sleep on the second deck but after trying and failing three times to get up the ladder, he settled for the lower. Later on, several of us were sitting around the picnic table in front of the shelter cooking our dinner when a young guy with bushy hair and beard showed up. Here, I’ll show you a picture of him.

That would be Isaiah. He was wearing some camo pants, hiking boots, and a tee-shirt. He also was carrying a back pack. I wondered about the tee-shirt because it was already in the lower 40’s (Fahrenheit, if you want Celsius google it) and it would be getting into the 30’s during the night. Didn’t seem to be bothering him though. He told us this was his first day on the trail and that he planned on hiking all the way to the southern terminus in Georgia. He didn’t seem prepared for an extended hike of that type. As a matter of fact, all he had for food was a bottle of honey and a pack of chocolate cookies. He offered to trade some of his cookies for other food items. I traded him a beef jerky stick for a cookie and a few of the others traded him some of their food items as well.

Another thing about Isaiah, he had a boundless supply of energy. He talked almost non-stop and flittered from one spot to the next with an overly optimistic view of everything he encountered. It was entertaining at first but began to wear on everyone after a while. Because of this, the ones not staying in the shelter retreated to their tents, and the one couple staying on the second deck ascended and withdrew from any conversation. That just left Isaiah, me, and Finn on the lower deck. We were on one corner and Isaiah took the other. He was a big animal lover and Finn took to him right away. I let Finn hang out with him in his corner for a bit before I finally called him back over to bed down for the night. When I saw Isaiah open his pack, I noticed there wasn’t much in it. He pulled out this blanket and wrapped himself in it. No, sleeping bag, or pad, or coat. I was wearing thermal underwear, a thermal shirt, a regular shirt, a puffy down jacket, and a wool ski cap. All that, and I still was a little chilly. I mentioned his lack of warm clothes and he said he didn’t need all those things. That God would keep him warm. More about the God thing later, as it will play a prominent roll in this story.

There were so many questions floating around in my head that I didn’t think I could get to sleep without knowing the answers. So I asked Isaiah for his story. This is what he told me. He was 22 years old. A couple of years ago he had developed some type of YouTube streaming music service that had made him quite a bit of money. He said he was talked into investing that money in another project and ended up losing a million dollars. When that happened he kind of lost it and started wondering the roads. He walked across the country from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Florida, to Maryland. While in Florida, someone stole his cell phone. In Maryland, someone had stolen his bible. He never knew where he was going to sleep at night, and he never knew how he was going to eat. It just somehow managed to work out. He met a couple of ladies in Gaithersburg that heard his story and they suggested that if he was going to walk back down to Georgia, he might want to do it on the Appalachian Trail instead of roads. Isaiah loved this idea and the ladies gave him a ride to a trailhead. So without a map, or much understanding of the trail, he started walking south until he ended up with us at that shelter. Now did I believe all this? I had some doubts but who was I to question? The thought did cross my mind that maybe he had some mental problems and I better beware. I could wake up without all my stuff in the morning, or even worse, dead. Two years ago, a mentally disturbed man stabbed two people on the AT, killing one of them and seriously wounding the other. While that was a rare occurrence on the trail, it did happen. I didn’t get any sense of danger from Isaiah but I did keep my camp knife close to me that night, just in case. Isaiah heard me say earlier that Finn and I planned on hiking back south into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He asked me before we went to sleep if he could hike with us. I was hesitant but I didn’t want to seem rude so I said sure. He asked me when I was planning on getting up and I told him around 6 AM. He was kind of shocked at that and told me he would probably sleep past that. Well that was my out, I thought. He’ll still be asleep when we head out. That was the introvert voice in me.

When I got up in the morning, Isaiah was still sleeping totally wrapped up in his blanket. I worried for a second there that he had frozen to death, but I could hear his deep breathing and knew he was still alive. I went about packing up for the morning, which takes a bit of time. When we just about ready to hike out, Isaiah started to stir. This was the point when I needed to make a decision. Listen to my introvert voice, and start hiking before Isaiah could get ready, or wait and let him tag along. In the end, my decision to let him tag along came down to two things. One, he knew nothing about the trail and that worried me, since he planned on hiking it to Georgia. Second, I thought I could benefit from a little time spent with someone who wasn’t like me, even though it made my social anxiety scream out in horror.

It didn’t take Isaiah long to pack up since he didn’t have much to pack to begin with. We hiked out southbound and I immediately got to witness his excessive amounts of energy as he bounced down the trail, flittering from one spot to the next. He told me he had a condition that gave him enormous amounts of energy for days at a time and then he would crash and have to recover for a few days. He also told me that somewhere in his travels he had found God, and boy did he go on about that. He talked about God for at least two hours straight at one point. Anyone that has read this blog for a certain amount of time knows that I am not the biggest believer in God. I am the son of a preacher (part-time) man. I grew up in the church and what I found is that it was mostly full of hypocrites that turned me off of the whole thing so that by the time I was 18, I bowed out of that all together. I didn’t criticize Isaiah for his beliefs, but I also didn’t make it a secret that I was not a believer. This could have caused a bone of contention between us but it actually served for some interesting conversation (when I could get a word in). During all this, I managed to work in some trail knowledge for him so he could avoid some of the pitfalls. He listened dutifully and took what I said to heart but he still maintained the devil may care attitude. I thought that I had really put myself out there when we decided to give up our stick and bricks house for a full-time RV life. That didn’t even hold a candle to the care free lifestyle Isaiah was living. Even as I admired that, I started to feel a little protective of him and was worried about what was coming down the line for him. I let him use my phone so he could call his Mom back in Albuquerque, and took some pictures of him that he texted her.

Six miles later we hiked into the town of Harpers Ferry which is a neat little town with a lot of history in it. A slave revolt led by John Brown captured the arsenal there and held it for several days until they were defeated. We walked around looking at all the places with historical markers. The whole time, Isaiah was greeting everyone we passed (like Crocodile Dundee in NYC) and blessing them. Embarrassing? Sure. Entertaining as well? You betcha! We went to a place called the Rabbit Hole and I bought Isaiah lunch. I told him to get whatever he wanted because he needed to fuel up on calories to climb up and down the mountains ahead. We enjoyed a nice lunch together right on the banks of the Potomac River. While we ate I used my map to let him know what was ahead. I told him the next shelter south was 9 miles away. The look in his eyes told me that his unbounded energy had some boundaries after all. I told him if he didn’t think he had enough left in the tank to go that far that there was a spot marked on the map for a tent campsite only 4 miles away. This encouraged him and the fact that he had no tent did not daunt him in the least. He would sleep out under the stars. At least it wasn’t supposed to rain that night. This is where we parted ways. Finn and I had to hike back 3 miles north to get to where I had parked the jeep. I had planned on heading back to the Virginia Beach. We shook hands and I wished him well as he headed out.

As Finn and I were hiking back north I started thinking about Isaiah and started getting worried about him. By the time we got back to the jeep I decided to alter our plans. I wanted to stay out on the trail another night anyway, so this is what we did. I drove the jeep south to another trailhead that would be a few miles to the south of where Isaiah had planned on camping for the night. But I didn’t hike down to his campsite. Truth be told, I had had my fill of Isaiah and needed a break, even though I was still somewhat concerned for his well being. So instead, I hiked 3 miles further south to the next shelter. The night before, there had been a few people that had planned on heading to that shelter today, and my conversations with them had been interrupted by Isaiah’s arrival. I was hoping to catch up with them and then hopefully run in to Isaiah the next day when I hiked back down to the jeep. So that’s what we did. I spent the night at that shelter getting to hang with those guys, and in the morning we headed back north again to do the 3 miles to the jeep. We hiked about 2.9 miles of that trek without coming across Isaiah. I wondered what happened. Did he bail on the whole trail thing? Maybe the night did not turn out well for him. As we turned the last bend in the trail before the parking lot, there he was, trucking up the trail and signing to himself. I laughed and announced loudly that I was hoping I would run into him. He looked shocked for a second and then screamed my name and started jumping around. I told him I had a present for him and reached into my puffy pocket and pulled it out. Last night I found a bible that someone left in the shelter with a note that said to take it if you needed it. I couldn’t think of anyone that needed it more than Isaiah. At seeing the bible he became silent, something I had never witnessed before, and then he gave me a big hug and thanked me over and over. We chatted for a few more minutes. I gave him my phone number in case he ever got connected again to let me know how he was doing, and then he was on his way south, as Finn and I trekked the last .1 mile to the jeep. I’m glad I met Isaiah.

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