Hiking Through: One Man's Journey to Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail Read online

  © 2010, 2012 by Paul Stutzman

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Original edition published 2010 by Synergy Books

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3811-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided only as a resource; Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  To protect the privacy of those who have shared their stories with the author, some details and names have been changed.

  To Mary

  Our family still misses you so much,

  and we look forward to the day we’ll be reunited.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  1. The Big C

  2. The Plan

  3. The Narrow Path

  4. The Narrow Way

  5. My New Life

  6. A Cold, Rainy, Miserable Mess

  Photos 1

  7. Butterflies

  8. The Smoky Mountains

  9. Let’s Go Left

  10. Words Have Meaning

  Photos 2

  11. Instead, I’m Happy

  12. Choices and Consequences

  13. It Is What It Is

  14. Chasing Dreams

  15. The Storm

  Photos 3

  16. Pilgrim’s Progress

  17. Summer Solstice

  18. The Pharmacy Shelter

  19. Kindness and Courage

  20. The Path to Freedom

  Photos 4

  21. Golden Days

  22. The White Mountains

  23. The Maine Event

  24. Trials and Tears

  Photos 5

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Back Cover

  Author’s Note

  Additional photos from my Appalachian Trail adventure can be viewed at my website, www.hikingthrough.com. I hope they add to your enjoyment of this book.

  In this book, I’ll only be using “real” trail names if their owners have given me permission. This gives all you hikers opportunity for plausible denial when your spouse reads some of these adventures and says, “Hey, honey, that sounds like you. You did what?” You, my guilty trail friends, can just act innocent and say, “Nope. Not me. I would never do anything that dumb.”

  Prologue

  Cautiously, I stepped on the narrow boards traversing the bog. Two weeks of almost constant rain had brought the water to the top of the wooden walkway, and at several points the path was completely submerged. A tenuous passage, this was the only route available through the swamp that stood between me and the peak of the mountain.

  I was nearly to the top of Mt. Success in New Hampshire, and after crossing this bog and summiting the mountain, I would be less than two miles from Maine, the fourteenth and final state in my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

  The click, click, click of my hiking poles was the only sound I heard as I crossed the shimmering quagmire. Over the years, rain had accumulated here and created a primordial soup of water five feet deep, seasoned with decaying trees, vegetation, and insects. As I planted my left hiking pole on a half-submerged board, the tip of the pole slipped away and the momentum of the thirty-pound pack on my back destroyed my precarious balance. I heard my own shrill scream of “Oh God, no!” and the bog added a weary hiker as another ingredient in its murky depth.

  I sank up to my backpack in the muck. Like a drowning man flailing for a lifesaver, I scrambled to escape, grabbing the board where I’d been walking just seconds earlier, leaning forward over its steadfastness, slowly wriggling my body out of the bog’s grasp. As I lay frightened and gasping on the narrow wooden path, I saw the picture of myself covered in decaying muck and slime, and muttered, “Congratulations, Mom and Dad, it’s a boy.”

  I lay there for several minutes, contemplating the journey that had brought me to this lonely spot where I was exhausted, indescribably filthy, and facing who-knows-what around every bend. I could have been warm and dry and well-fed at home. I could have been back at work, in a safe routine, productive, earning a paycheck. Oh, wait—I gave all that up so I could be out here alone in this cold, rainy, godforsaken bog.

  It always happens to someone else. A knock on the door late at night while parents lie in bed wondering why a child is not yet home. A call from the hospital saying a spouse is waiting in the emergency room and heart-wrenching decisions must be made. For me, it had always happened to someone else; death’s bony finger had lifted people out of my sphere, but so far that grim reaper had only worked at the periphery of my life.

  That all changed with one phone call.

  My wife, Mary, called me at the restaurant I had managed for seventeen years. Her strained voice said, “It’s malignant.”

  My mind raced—benign, malignant—which was good news, which was bad? I couldn’t remember.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have cancer.” The words jerked out between sobs. I told Mary I was coming home, hung up the phone, dropped my head into my hands, and for the first time in years, wept.

  The daily calendar on my desk caught my eye. On that day, August 30, 2002, the meditation came from the lyrics of an old song I had often sung growing up in the Conservative Mennonite Church, “God of Grace and God of Glory.”

  I ripped off the calendar page, thinking that I was indeed going to need the wisdom and courage spoken of in the song; but I did not know how desperately I would need help in the coming months. That page is still tucked away in my Bible.

  At home, Mary and I held each other and determined to battle the disease together—my wife, with her faith and spirit, and me beside her every step of the way.

  After my high school graduation in 1969, I worked as an orderly at a local hospital. Every morning, the night shift gave us reports and updates on the patients in our care. The charge nurse’s habit was to use the letter C whenever cancer was in a report, so that became our lingo, never using the actual word cancer.

  That word strikes fear in people from all walks of life and all economic brackets. However, if caught early and given proper treatment, many types of cancer can be cured or controlled; a diagnosis of cancer today is not always a pronouncement of imminent death. For Mary, it was breast cancer, and we would soon become all too familiar with its statistics. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. It sounds more optimistic to say that seven out of eight women will never suffer with this disease. Yet almost everyone will surely know someone—maybe someone dear to them—diagnosed with breast cancer.

  Unfortunately for Mary, the diagnosis came too late. With cancer in her family history, she had been faithful in yearly checkups and mammograms. Several years before, her mammogram showed a spot, but we were told it appeared to be only a calcium deposit.
In retrospect, we should have sought another opinion, but regrettably we did not. We were oblivious to the growing danger, until menopause reared its ugly head.

  Mary’s difficulties during menopause had become frustrating, so she sought the counsel of a doctor recommended as an expert on menopause. But the menopause nuisances suddenly became secondary when the doctor learned about the abnormality in Mary’s latest mammogram. She immediately ordered another test, followed by a biopsy.

  And now the results were in: that big C was written on the chart of Mary’s life. My wife was now that one woman in eight.

  ———

  Our children must be told. The two oldest were living at home and were soon informed. But our youngest daughter was three hours away, at college, and Mary decided to drive to western Ohio and spend the weekend with her. Realizing that mother and daughter needed the time together, I decided to stay at home.

  That meant a weekend apart from my wife, and we’d been dealt a numbing blow. I found myself reverting to one of my own stress-relievers, dreaming about hiking in the woods without a care. For years, one of my favorite daydreams had been about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT). I nursed the dream tenderly, but never thought it could become reality. Mary knew how much I loved hiking, and I had often shared my dream with her. So with my wife’s blessing, I did more than daydream. While she visited our daughter, I spent my weekend at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the headquarters for the AT.

  Harpers Ferry is where abolitionist John Brown raided the U.S. Armory in his fight against slavery. Today it is also the location of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The state of West Virginia has only four miles of the 2,176 that make up the Appalachian Trail, and those four miles of trail go right through this little town.

  I explored a small section of trail in both directions from town. A short distance south is Jefferson Rock, a high stone outlook where Thomas Jefferson once stood and admired the view of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers rushing together in the valley below. I walked a little farther south to where U.S. Highway 340 crosses the Shenandoah River. There, the Appalachian Trail disappears up into the surrounding hills. What was up there, around the next bend, over the next mountain? I stood for a long time, contemplating what it would be like to hike the thousand miles from Harpers Ferry to Springer Mountain, Georgia, the trail’s southern terminus.

  I promised myself that one day I would come hiking out of those woods and down into Harpers Ferry. I’d cross town and follow the trail across the footbridge over the Potomac River and hike along the C&O Canal Towpath northward into Maryland, exploring every bend in the trail, soaking up every scene, with my sights set on the AT’s northern terminus, mighty Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park, Maine.

  Someday.

  After stopping at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, where I picked up some valuable trail information, I wanted to visit one more historical site. St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, built in 1833, was the only church in Harpers Ferry to escape destruction during the Civil War. Its steeple soars above the little town, and the trail passes within several feet of the church’s front door.

  I’d never been inside a Catholic church in my life. But I felt compelled to enter this church to pray.

  I was the only person in the sanctuary. I knelt and prayed for Mary and our family, for strength and wisdom for the journey ahead. I believed that God could heal my wife if He chose, and I pleaded with Him for that healing.

  This Conservative Mennonite boy was on his knees in the old Catholic church, knowing how much we needed what only God could give.

  We would fight. We determined to learn everything we could about breast cancer. We knew that the right treatment increased the survival rate for breast cancer patients. We were hopeful that would be the case for Mary. We researched, looking for the place to get the best treatment. We soon learned that health insurance coverage would define our choices.

  Discussions with Mary’s doctor and the insurance company determined that a mastectomy was necessary. The next week was full of meetings with staff and surgeons, one of whom was the plastic surgeon who would immediately construct a new breast, using both an implant and muscle tissue from Mary’s back.

  A mastectomy. Removal of the entire breast. But we discovered that the insurance company was required to pay not just for the reconstruction of a new breast, but also for any necessary procedure to then make both breasts symmetrical. At some point, Mary could have a nip and tuck done on her other breast. My wife was delighted—rather than focusing on losing one breast, she was excited about having two new ones. That was my wife.

  We approached her surgery, which was scheduled for the first week of October, with optimism. Mary was convinced everything would be fine and refused to even use the word cancer. The surgery seemed to go well. We sat in her hospital room afterward, waiting for her oncologist and hoping that the worst was behind us.

  The doctor arrived and took a seat by Mary’s bed. The surgery had gone well, he reported, but they had also removed numerous lymph nodes.

  Then the doctor got up, walked across the room, and closed the door. Dread washed over me.

  The cancer had metastasized to Mary’s liver. The prognosis was not good. The cancer was already stage IV, the final, extreme, worst stage of development. There would be no cure, no stopping the disease. The only thing that could be done was to contain it as long as possible.

  Did I even want to know? Regardless, I had to ask. “How much time do we have?”

  We were stunned by the reply: several months, maybe several years, depending on Mary’s response to treatment.

  The bottom dropped out of our lives.

  The doctor discussed treatments and then left us alone to hold each other and cry. But later that night in her hospital bed, Mary awoke to a feeling she described as the hand of God, reaching down and holding her. She was filled with incredible peace, and she was convinced God was going to heal her.

  Through years of surgeries and setbacks, my wife never wavered from that belief. Chemotherapy left her sick and humiliated at the loss of all her hair. Countless blood tests and treatments made it increasingly difficult to locate good veins in her arms, so one surgery installed a port in her shoulder to allow insertion of a needle. But the port only worked temporarily, so another surgery removed it. Then there was an infection around her implant and another surgery removed that. Every setback that occurred was met with “All will be well” from Mary, and I marveled at her positive attitude.

  Over several years, we adjusted to new routines. Our life was now built around chemotherapy, hospital trips, and blood tests. My wife had many good friends who helped out by driving her to tests and treatments, and sometimes life even felt almost normal.

  But early in 2006, we knew that the battle was not going well. Mary’s weight kept dropping, and she was growing weaker. It was gut-wrenching for me, a healthy man, to watch the girl I dated, fell in love with, and married, now weakening, fading away, shriveling. I begged God to either heal Mary, as we felt He had promised, or take her home. Mary never lost her faith in God or her belief that she would be healed. How I admired her courage.

  The day came when the doctor called our family into his office and advised that it was time to consider hospice care. And wow! What a reaction from Mary! She informed us all that it was not going to happen, since hospice care was for people who were dying. Not until the final week of her life did she relent, and even then she declared she did not need it, but if we needed help, then she would allow it.

  The first week of September 2006 was so very painful, as one by one, friends and relatives came to say their good-byes. Thursday evening, September 7, surrounded by myself and our three children, Mary took her last breath and then was gone from our lives.

  What a harsh reality. My wife of thirty-two years was no longer alive. It had happened, but I almost couldn’t comprehend the reality of it. I had watched her body deteriorate, but always I clung to the hope that God would heal her
, that her dying and leaving us would never actually happen.

  As our family sat and cried together, waiting for the funeral home to pick up Mary’s body, I could not help but wonder what glorious things she was seeing. As a Christian, I believed that she was finally at rest, totally healed, seeing things and experiencing a life that my mind could not comprehend or imagine.

  ———

  The following days were filled with the decisions we all postpone thinking about: choosing a coffin, finding a gravesite, writing an obituary, setting details about visitation and the funeral service. To make these decisions before your own passing is a great consideration for those you leave behind, who must deal with all those details at a time when thinking is numbed.

  My family was on autopilot, moving through the days and decisions because we had to. Friends, family, and church surrounded us with care. On Sunday, September 10, we held a graveside service, followed by a memorial for Mary. It was an emotional time, and I realized how important the church family was to us and how fortunate we were to have a pastor and his wife who cared for their flock.

  Reality hit that evening, after everyone had left my house. I knew then I was alone—completely, utterly alone. I had depended so much on my wife, and already I missed her terribly. In despair, I went to God. I knelt by my bed and thanked God for giving me thirty-two years with Mary. I asked for wisdom as I went on alone. And I prayed I could help others facing similar sadness and grief.

  I did not know then what direction God would take me in. I only hurt.

  But when I finished my prayer, the seed of an idea had been planted along the edge of my mind. That seed held the small beginnings of a plan.