Naughty Trail Stories

It seems they got cut :(

This week’s Play column is about Sarasota’s Bill Walker, who wrote a hiking book: “SKYWALKER: Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail.”

Walker told me he had to cut lots of things out of the book, for space, including some naughty bits about life on the trail. There was this fiftysomething guy on the trail who was in the habit of asking female hikers for, um, favors.

Then there was the hiker called Stilts who was more successful in romancing women on the Appalachian Trail. The next day, though, he would hike away at a rapid pace.

“He was known as the most dangerous man on the trail,” Walker said, laughing. “He left behind a trail of tears.”

I guess if I ever write a book about the Appalachian Trail, I will have to write really well about that couple who were having sex in the shelter next to me last year. It was not the first time people having sex woke me up on the Appalachian Trail either.

I googled around and found an article about the hiker and his book. Definitely worth a read. It turns out I met him when I was staying with the Twelve Tribes in Rutland VT in 2006. He was hiking the long trail. I bet it is a good read.

In "SKYWALKER," Walker writes of mock struggles with size-14 boots, extra-long sleeping bags and hostel beds that are way too short. He found it easy to step over trees lying across the trail, but hard to duck under low branches.

Much more serious were his bouts with hypothermia.

At nearly 7 feet tall and barely 200 pounds, Walker didn't carry much insulating fat on his lean frame. He struggled to keep his body warm on mountaintop trails.

On one of his first nights, a cold, driving rain battered his lightweight tarp.

"All the concerns and paranoia of the last few hours morphed into a full-fledged fear for my life," Walker wrote. "As cold as I was, I didn't think I could survive a night exposed to these elements."

This Amazon review gave the book a good review.