Confessions of another ill-prepared person who thought it'd just be 'A Walk in the Woods'

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

I was still in my 20s, still willing to jump chest-deep into a newspaper assignment without asking a lot of questions. 
Besides, the Marines called me. My country needed me. How could I refuse? 
And that’s how I found myself “embedded” 15 years ago — long before there was such a silly journalistic term — with six Camp Lejeune Marines and a Marine’s wife, hiking the Appalachian Trail. 
When I agreed to go, I had thought I was in decent-enough shape to do a little hiking in the woods. I figured we’d trek up a steep hill, then enjoy the scenery at the top. “La, la, la — look at the lovely wildflowers,” I might remark. I’d carry my backpack and have my hands free to jot down notes as we meandered along the mountain summits. 
I could not have been more wrong.
I barely made it up the first ascent before my lungs were screaming for oxygen, my legs wobbling beneath me. I carried my own backpack for maybe 20 minutes, tops. I was scared, I was overflowing with regret, I was embarrassed, and I was plotting my escape the entire first night in the forest. ​

I was the wrong person for the job. These were actual mountains, not hills. The air was thin. The mountains went way up, then way down, then way up, then way down. You get the picture. Or at least you think you do. There was no happy hiking along my imagined radiant ridge of wildflowers. The climbing was torturous. 
The Marines kept me alive, and they never once mentioned the 28-year-old writer-shaped albatross they had brought along to slow their pace. At least not within earshot, as my husband would point out. “You let them CARRY YOUR PACK?!” he said to me when I returned. The poor man was mortified by proxy.
A few months later, I read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” which happened to be about another woefully unprepared person who hikes the Appalachian Trail, and I laughed my way through the book. It was so familiar, so true. Bryson made me feel a little less foolish, and he made me realize my constant fear of bear attacks wasn’t absurd after all.  
“A Walk in the Woods” is the 2014 choice for Clinton County Reads, our community reading program. It is both amusing and informative, and it made me laugh again as I re-read it recently.
I spent only a few days on the Appalachian Trail, but the terror and exhaustion coursing through my veins in the form of adrenaline and lactic acid ensured I won’t ever forget that particular adventure.
After I made it back to North Carolina, still alive, I wrote the story about a former Marine, Jay Platt, hiking the Appalachian Trail from north to south to raise money for VHL Family Alliance, a nonprofit support group for people with the same disease that caused him to lose an eye, a rare form of cancer called von Hippel-Lindau disease. 
I wrote about the Marines who drove nine hours from North Carolina to Georgia to hike in solidarity with their buddy. I wrote about the loyal bonds of their brotherhood.
The Marines even presented a commendation to me afterward, with their ceremonial Marine Corps flair. I still have it. 
I wrote nothing, however, about my personal struggles, my own travails. As a newspaper reporter, I’d been taught to leave myself out of the stories I wrote, certainly news stories but also features. The fact was that I was just there to observe, no matter how personally challenging or enlightening.
Not writing in first person had never been a problem for me until I sat down that day, post-Appalachian Trail, and tried to write. It was one of the toughest challenges I’d faced as a writer, but I was proud of myself for staying out of the story. 
In fact, I’ve never written about it before now, even though I can clearly remember so many details. 
I remember whole-body shivering in my sleeping bag in one of the more “luxurious” shelter houses at Deep Gap in the Chattahoochee National Forest. I was thinking that night of the “rat guards” and their necessity. I was plotting how I could slip out of the shelter and find my way to the nearest town, where I would locate a pay phone and call my husband, who would have no moral choice but to drive to Georgia and rescue me from my folly.
I remember watching Jay Platt, who had more than 2,100 miles of hiking under his belt by the time I met him, glide through the treacherous mountain trails as if he were rollerskating on smooth pavement. He was so fast by then that most of the Marines couldn’t keep up with him. 
Platt was one of just a few hundred people to ever complete the north-to-south journey; most people start in the south and build up to the more challenging terrain and weather in Maine. Platt went on to complete other herculean feats of physicality and is an author, motivational speaker, trainer, and coach.
I remember standing on a ledge on top of Tray Mountain, where Platt’s former sergeant major presented him with the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal as the setting sun cast shadows on the mountains, which formed a beautiful backdrop to the impromptu ceremony. 
I remember the stars, from the mountain vantage, looking more like low-hanging fruit; I hadn’t known the elevation would change their appearance so dramatically.
I remember being slightly more brave at the second campsite, out of sheer exhaustion, until I heard what I am still certain was a bear. Fatigue overtook fear rather quickly, though, and I all but dared the bear to come put me out of my misery. 
I remember the last steps of the last descent, when I could see our trusty white steed (a panel van, actually) waiting for us in a parking lot, our ride back home to a hot shower and a cool mattress. I wish I could say that it was a bittersweet ending. But it was actually just sweet.
Eileen Brady is a member of the Clinton County Reads steering committee.