The trail descends, as stony as a streambed but never smooth, for these rocks are angular, unworn by steadily running water. They're ankle turners under the best of conditions. In the rain they're downright slick. Talk ceases as we give them their due and step carefully.
"Look at this," Kampmann says, breaking the silence a bit later. He bends down and gathers in his cupped hand a tiny lizardlike newt, bright orange with dun-colored spots on its back. Hiking the Appalachian Trail, he's encountered other wildlife: deer, moose, bobcats, and black bear. He's even lost a T-shirt to an inordinately hungry squirrel.
The trail climbs steeply, levels off, and soon delivers an approaching hiker. The man says he retired from the U.S. Army after 45 years and set out on the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina in May. He hopes to make it as far as the New Hampshire border before winter -- and maybe finish the trail next year. He and Kampmann talk weight. Then they introduce themselves, in the way of the eastern woods.
"What's your trail name?" asks Kampmann.
"Mine's Crusty. What's yours?"
"Trail Thoughts."
Before parting, the hikers exchange previews of what lies ahead. Kampmann shares his Appalachian Trail memories of Vermont: "Vermont is very long, and you're in the woods a lot like this, but it's more beautiful than this and much higher, and there are some real climbs."
Kampmann set his sights on the Appalachian Trail after bagging his last 4,000-foot peak, in 1996. First he finished the 40-mile section of the trail in New Hampshire that a sprained ankle had prevented him from hiking in 1967. Then, sometimes hiking with his children or enlisting friends, he completed Connecticut and Massachusetts and, in June 2001, checked off Vermont. In recent years his longest stay on the trail totaled four days. Maybe on 60% of the treks, he's hiked alone. As the miles piled up he envisioned completing the entire New England portion of the trail.
"If you've done the Appalachian Trail, you've done something significant, and I think that within us all is an eternal longing to achieve something in life that is significant and positive."
But Maine, his one remaining New England state, is a bear. Its portion of the trail stretches 281 miles, and section-hiking it in small chunks from Connecticut poses logistical problems. Which explains why Kampmann started pulling out New Jersey Appalachian Trail guides this past summer. Better, he decided, to get out regularly on the trail than to stubbornly try to cross off New England.
"I think we need these kinds of pursuits," he says after we bid Crusty good-bye and continue on. "We live in a time of enormous plenty. That's a great blessing but also a curse, because it's very easy to lose sight of the limited amount of time we have to use our lives well. It's very easy to fall into the rut of allowing one day to slide into the next. Suddenly, you wake up, and you're 50 years old, and you say, 'What have I done with my life?'
"I think what's been valuable about the trail for me is that it provides me with a sense of a goal, to get to the end of it. But that's not what it's really about, because it's not really finishing a section that you remember but the people you've run into and the things you've experienced."
Kampmann has been lost off the trail for as long as four hours. Snowbound and short of his destination on a winter hike, he spent the night in his superinsulated sleeping bag on the side of a mountain atop a makeshift bed of leveled snow. On such occasions especially -- but really each time he heads out on the trail -- he's stepping out of his normal comfort zone. He sees value in that. "Every time you leave home to go on one of these trips, it gets you out of the pattern of your everyday life and reminds you of the element of risk that's in your life. You don't know where the next step is actually taking you, who you will meet, what you'll come up against. I've sat many nights in the woods alone," he says. "I think the greatest inhibitor for most people is fear. It's fear that holds us back from being who we should be. And fear that often afflicts businesses, that keeps them from remaining vital."
Kampmann believes that hiking helps him "come up with clearheaded, appropriate" business strategies. "Somebody who does this is likely to establish some distance between a situation and themselves," he says. "I think being on the trail gives me perspective, which is not the only point of view that you need, of course. You need the up-close, too. But perspective oftentimes leads to wisdom, and wisdom is making the right choices at the right time."
Arriving at an overlook, we notice that the rain has stopped and the sun is starting to poke through. A rocky ledge, we decide, will do fine as a lunch spot. We break bread, literally, and share some cheese, looking out over a lake and a broad valley. Kampmann spots a hawk circling high overhead. Then another. And another. Six in all, each effortlessly riding the thermal updrafts.
I ask if the Appalachian Trail has become like a home in the country, one without mortgage payments and water pipes to drain. Kampmann agrees but puts a finer point on his response. "I think because we don't have a weekend home it allows me to do the trail," he answers. "If you have a second home, you're obligated to go to that home. That's where you'll be. It sounds funny, but in order to appreciate the mountains, you have to drive to them. If you're already there, you're probably going to just look at them."
After lunch, on the return loop, Kampmann offers a broader reason that people hike the Appalachian Trail: "Doing the trail, either in sections or in its entirety, has become a culturally accepted goal. It has elements of the outdoors, elements of perseverance. There's a purity to it. It's a big task. And everybody you talk to understands it. I don't think I've ever met anybody who doesn't know what the Appalachian Trail is. If you've done the Appalachian Trail, you've done something significant, and I think that within us all is an eternal longing to achieve something in life that is significant and positive."
When we return to the trailhead parking lot, we meet a couple fresh off a different trail. They inquire how far we hiked and when we set out. Six miles in ... six hours? They shake their heads a bit dismissively at our pitiful pace. But pace, of course, was the least of it.
John Grossmann, a frequent contributor to Inc, has hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail in three states.
The Inc Life
Find Trail. Hike. Repeat
Returns: Rational Pessimism
Spoils: Collecting Inspiration
Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.
