Chapter One A Wild River Man "If you can't beat them, you don't have to join them." --Warren Doyle I stooped over a thin stream seeping past clumps of dead leaves and earth as thick as coffee grounds. My hands were grasping my shins and my eyes were filled with tears. I looked up and found myself directly in his shadow. His full beard and round belly absorbed the rare rays of light that penetrated the canopy above us. His presence was unmovable, overbearing yet completely mute. Why doesn't he say anything?! I thought. Why won't he try to motivate me or at least place his hand on my shoulder to comfort me? I wouldn't be out here if it weren't for him. I'd already hiked the entire Appalachian Trail(AT) twice. But this time it was different. This time, I was trying to become the fastest person--male or female--to travel the 2,189-mile footpath. I was aiming for a fastest known time. It was day seven and I had already traversed almost three hundred miles of the unforgiving yet alluring terrain. Maine--that dark, full-bodied beauty--had taken more than her fair share out of me. Now, just a few miles into New Hampshire, I was exhausted, filthy, and crippled by shin splints. I longed for a quick, dignified end to the shooting pains, the relentless discomfort. My current audience wasn't hiking with me. Instead, he had come in by a side trail to check on my progress. I couldn't decide whether I was grateful or angry to see him. I vacillated between crediting him with my progress and blaming him for my near demise. At least his presence gave me a reason to catch my breath. Through heavy breathing and repressed sobs, I asked him, "How do you know when to quit?" There was a drawn-out silence. Just when I'd convinced myself he wasn't going to respond, Warren said, "There's a difference between quitting and stopping." I looked up at his backlit silhouette, then I returned my gaze to the ground. Next to his thrift-store sneakers, he had displayed a selection of vending machine junk food and neon-colored sodas. None of it appealed to me. Finally, I let out a deep breath filled with congestion and unreleased emotion, picked up a purple vial of synthetic energy elixir--the kind of unregulated ooze they hawk at gas stations--then continued hobbling down the trail. Because we knew that if I stopped, I would be quitting. I was a week into my record attempt on the Appalachian Trail, and with just one-seventh of the trail behind me I'd already wrestled with the greatest hurt that I had ever felt. The pain from the shin splints was sharp, stabbing, and hot, but the ache of covering nearly fifty miles a day was widespread, dull, and throbbing. It was an all-encompassing agony. I doubted I could make it to the end of the day, let alone the end of the trail. But with Warren by my side, I felt pressure-mostly positive pressure-to keep going. We were two people who shared the same questions. What was my capacity for endurance? Was it good enough to set a fastest known time? And could I outperform all the men who had come before me? Because I could still drag one foot in front of the other, I knew that I had not yet found those answers. Warren's watchful eye held me accountable to this very personal and painful scientific query. A week earlier, I had set off from the summit of Katahdin with a spring in my step. I descended just over five miles on a steep, boulder-strewn path to meet Warren and my husband, Brew, at the base of the mountain. Lots of folks wished me well, or said they believed in me, but these were the only two men willing to drive to the heart of Maine, a place filled with blackflies and bogs, to begin this experiment by my side. With each road crossing Warren and Brew marked my progress. "You made it here this fast," said Brew. "You are this far behind the record," said Warren. "You have this far to the next road," said Brew. "You should leave now to get there," said Warren. After hiking 150 miles in three days, our team arrived at the banks of the Kennebec River. Trying to use every minute, I decided to ford the river. Alternatively, I would need to wait one hour to take advantage of a canoe ferry. Steered by a seasonal employee of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the canoe ferries afford hikers a safe, mostly dry, transport across the dam-controlled artery. Warren had crossed the river numerous times on foot, so I followed his sturdy calves into the water. His strong legs moved sideways against the forceful current until they disappeared. Then his waist waded past the white ripples on the surface of the water. Soon he was immersed up to his armpits in the cold, flowing channel. I kept my eyes on Warren and struggled to keep my toes anchored to the large, smooth stones at my feet. Breathless from fear and the chill of the water, I tried to stay in his wake. My sports bra changed from a light purple to a dark violet as I forged deeper and farther into the river. I listened to Warren as he voiced a steady and concise refrain. "Feet down. Feet down. Feet down." I repeated the chorus in a murmuring echo, hoping to drown out the profanities swimming through my head. I noticed goose bumps on my skin as my stomach muscles rose above the surface of the water. Soon my thighs slashed through the dark grips of the Kennebec, and after a harrowing and invigorating twenty-minute crossing, I stood dripping wet on the opposite shore. My eyes turned to meet Warren's approving gaze. I smiled and let out a half whimper, half giggle. Warren responded with a deep, bellowing laugh. Then he struck a pose and shouted, "I may have the face of a sixty-one-year-old and the belly of a couch potato, but I've still got the legs of a WILD RIVER MAN!" Here stood my ferryman: the person who had taught me the difference between stopping and quitting, the man who believed that I could be the first woman to set the overall record on the Appalachian Trail, and the individual who showed me how to keep my feet down and not get swept away by the current. The year 1973 marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. It was the year of the controversial Roe v. Wade verdict in the Supreme Court. The Watergate scandal infiltrated the ranks of the White House. Warren Doyle was twenty-three years old. He was aware of the civil unrest and he was becoming a proponent of social justice. As a child, he had witnessed his father, a veteran of World War II, struggle to find work and support his family. As an undergrad, Warren spent a summer volunteering in the mountains of Jamaica. Most of the locals there lived in corrugated metal shacks. When his mother came to visit, he refused to stay in the hotel with her. The disparity between the wealth of the tourists and poverty of the natives was so unsettling to Warren that he preferred to spend the night with the homeless street kids rather than sleep on clean white sheets. The summer after his senior year, he volunteered at a folk school on the edge of the West Virginia coalfields, where he saw the same type of injustice and economic disparity that he had witnessed in Jamaica. Here he met the Appalachian poet and activist Don West, who quickly became an inspiration and mentor. Warren was the first member of his family to attend college. After receiving his undergraduate degree in elementary education, he accepted a University of Connecticut fellowship that aimed to help schoolteachers understand and implement desegregation through a prestigious doctoral program. He was learning about society and he was learning about education, but he still didn't know who he was. "I still had questions," he said. "Was I a product of society or was I an individual? I wanted to do something that didn't have an extrinsic reward. I wanted an ultimate challenge--a cleansing." It isn't uncommon for a young adult to question his identity and the culture in which he lives. But Warren was unlike many of his contemporaries who were drawn to drug-infused music festivals and social protests. As the youngest grad school student in his program, he was an achiever, and he tried to respond to injustice and uncertainty by excelling in his academic field. After reading of the walkabouts and pilgrimages so important in other cultures, Warren decided that he would hike the Appalachian Trail. But because he didn't like to waste time or money and because he wanted to know how much he could take-and how much he could give-Warren decided to complete the trail in under seventy days. Warren wasn't always driven. In fact, in middle school, he was a mediocre student; social survival trumped academic achievement. "I was scared to raise my hand in class. I didn't want to stand out. I was afraid if I knew the answers, I would get beat up." Then one day his fifteen-year-old sister, Colleen, his only sibling, developed a bad headache. Three days later, she died from an undetected brain aneurysm. "I remember my parents' grief more than my own," said Warren. "I can still see the look on their faces as they came up the stairs to tell me the news. Their expressions were full of suffering. And now they had to put that aside and find a way to try and comfort me, their son, the only child they had left." When a person is affected deeply by the passing of another, he can choose to die, too. He can turn to self-destructive habits and let his emotions become shriveled and cynical. On the other hand, a grief that deep can also awaken something in a person and motivate him to live life more fully. "I never wanted to see my parents hurt that much again," said Warren. "I vowed that I would make my life count double." In May of 1973, Warren's parents drove him south from Connecticut to Springer Mountain, Georgia. Recent heavy rainfall in the Southern Appalachians had caused rivers to flood and roads to wash out. When they stopped on their route to drop a resupply package off at the newly built Nantahala Outdoor Center, the coursing waters of the Nantahala River lapped at the wooden buildings on its banks. In a week's time, Warren would need to pick up his cardboard box filled with several days' worth of rations and replacement gear in order to continue his journey. He left his box of foodstuffs at the outfitter, hoping that his provisions and the building would be there when he arrived. In north Georgia, the forest service road leading up to the trail's southern terminus was in such poor shape that Warren insisted his parents turn back. Without knowing exactly where he was or how far he had to walk to reach the trailhead, Warren buckled his pack over his blue jeans, slung a two-quart metal canteen over his shoulder, and started hiking. When Warren reached the top of Springer Mountain, his first thought was for his parents' safety. He doubted their ability to drive down the gravel road without incident. He envisioned the soft shoulder giving way, his parents' car sliding off the side of the mountain. The first three miles of his hike passed quickly as Warren worried about his folks. But when he arrived at the Three Forks stream crossing, he started to worry about his own predicament. The mountain stream was swollen and the bridge had been washed away. Warren knew he would have to ford the stream, but he didn't want to get his new leather boots wet. When he unlaced his left boot and heaved it into the air, it barely cleared the opposite bank. He then removed his right shoe and threw it with even more oomph, but the added strength caused the boot to hit a low-hanging hemlock branch and drop straight down into the water. The current swiftly carried it downstream. In a panic, Warren threw off his pack and plunged in, body surfing around boulders and fallen branches until he was able to reach out and grab the nearly submerged boot. With his free hand, he pulled himself up on the bank. Once on terra firma, he dumped the water from his boot and laced it up below his sopping wet blue jeans. After navigating a maze of rhododendron branches upstream, he finally buckled his dry pack onto his dripping body and plodded half shod through the raging waters of the Three Forks to where the other boot was waiting. Warren had exited the mainstream. He put on his shoe and kept walking. On the second day of his journey, Warren summited Blood Mountain before descending to Highway 19 at Neel Gap, where there was a small roadside store and hiker hostel. He took his boots off, hoping against hope that they would eventually dry out, then he used the pay phone to confirm that his parents were safe. Less than a week later, Warren found his resupply package right where he'd left it at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Then he worked his way through Great Smoky Mountains National Park and over the Southern Appalachian high points, Unaka Mountain, Roan Mountain, and Mount Rogers. Three and a half weeks into his hike, Warren made it to Pearisburg, Virginia. He'd come more than 625 miles. To celebrate his progress, he went straight to the town's Dairy Queen, where he consumed french fries, a cheeseburger, and ice cream. He felt a little queasy, but he ordered a few more menu items for good measure, placing them in his pack before walking back to the trail, where he set up camp. The next morning Warren woke up, broke camp, and polished off the carton of orange juice, jug of milk, and other treats he'd been saving for breakfast. Hiking out of Pearisburg on Route 460, he started to cross the bridge that spans the New River. He only made it halfway. He was suspended sixty feet above one of the oldest rivers in the world when his stomach churned and started cramping. He thought about turning back, but it was too late. Maybe he could make it across if he took his time. He took a step. Then he froze. He clenched every muscle in his body, but it didn't matter. There was nothing he could do. Almost a third of the way into his record attempt on the Appalachian Trail, Warren Doyle stood on the shoulder of a bridge in Pearisburg, Virginia, shitting himself. Warren waddled back to town feeling physically depleted and emotionally ruined. He stopped at the first motel he came to and asked about a room and a shower. When the desk attendant saw him, she immediately called an ambulance. At the hospital, Warren receivedan IV, and once he started to feel better he called home with an update. When his father heard that Warren was in the hospital, he got in the car and drove south. Warren Doyle, Sr., a toll collector on the Connecticut Turnpike, made arrangements to take as much time off as possible so he could support his son on the trail. As a parent who'd struggled financially and couldn't put his child through college, this was a very physical way for a father to help his son. With his father's support, Warren got back on the trail and began to make up time and miles. And with his father carrying the majority of his provisions in a station wagon and meeting him at road crossings, Warren could travel farther and more efficiently than before. It didn't take long, however, for Warren Sr. to learn just how difficultit is to offer support on a long-distance hike--especially to someone you love. Not only was he responsible for having the proper gear and food at hand, but he also had to navigate the unmarked forest roads of rural Appalachia with handheld maps. Even more difficultwas the emotional toll of supporting his son. When Warren hit the mid-Atlantic, the summer temperatures soared and his dad had to watch him suffer through oppressive heat.The triple-digit temperatures and suffocating humidity made it hard to eat and sleep. Warren struggled to balance his electrolytes, but he sweated so much that it was difficult to take in the right amount of fluids and salts. On one scorching afternoon, Warren came to a road crossing inthe Wallkill Valley of New Jersey. His father was waiting for him. As soon as he saw Warren walk out of the forest, he brought out a bag ofice from the cooler in the back of the station wagon. He offered the dripping bag to his son, who was now hunched over in the passenger seat with the door ajar. "Why don't you stop and take a rest? A day offwould help you get your energy back." Without hesitation Warren looked up, and with sweat dripping from his forehead and ice running down the back of his neck, he replied, "Dad, you need to push me right now. I need to be pushed ." Then he handed his dad the bag of ice, took up his pack, and started hiking away from the car. The northern latitudes and increasing elevation provided a welcome respite from the oppressive heat. As he climbed Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, he noticed the forest changing temperature and color. The chartreuse leaves of the deciduous trees gave way to dark evergreens and emerald ground moss. He breathed in smells of spruce and fir. His legs felt strong and his feet felt swift. As he reached the summit late in the day and started his descent into Vermont, he could see the sun setting over the Green Mountains before him. He kept a small transistor radio clipped to his pack, and as he strode gracefully down the dimly lit trail, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony began to play. His gait increased with the music and he started to see how long his foot could stay suspended in the air before touching the ground. It felt like flying. "I leaped as I had never leaped before. The moment was filled witha vision of hope and the strength of athleticism that comes hand and hand with struggle." He paused momentarily as he recounted the story, "I remember thinking: Isn't the distance wonderful?" This was his intrinsic reward. This is what he had come to the wilderness to find. He had obtained an answer and embraced a feeling that was made possible by a grueling journey, one that questioned his make‑up and tested his resolve. He knew he could never experiencethis joy--this nirvana--without suffering through a gut-wrenching, soul-searching inquisition. After befriending adversity for sixty-six days, Warren reached Baxter State Park, climbed the last mountain--Katahdin--and set the fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail. He left with a greater sense of self and a different perspective on society--an outsider's view. "After that, there was no going back," he said. Now, he would question everything--and everyone. I first met Warren in 2004. I was nearly the same age he was when he set his record. But back then I didn't know that the Appalachian Trail had records or that Warren had set one. I was just out of college, and despite my having zero backcountry experience, there was an immutable innervoice that said I had to hike the Appalachian Trail. In an effort to acquire some last-minute skills before my departure date and to assuage my mother's fears, I enrolled in the Appalachian Trail Institute. Warren had founded the institute fifteen years earlier in order tohelp aspiring thru hikers--individuals who hoped to hike the entire trail in a calendar year--accomplish their goal. Since Warren's first thru hike and successful FKT (fastest known time), he had returned to the trail time after time with the goal of completing the entirepath. And every attempt had been successful, in spite of the fact that the overall completion rate on the AT hovered just above 25 percent. It baffled Warren that only one out of four hikers who started the trail would complete their journey. In his mind, the low finishing rate was caused by poor emotional and mental preparation. Most aspiring backpackers spent countless hours sitting behind a computer researching gear, but they neglected to train their brain for the challenge of being in the wilderness--and away from home--for months at a time. It is easier to debate the merits of a down sleeping bag versus a synthetic sleeping bag than it is to process the reality of shivering all night when the temperature drops below the chosen bag's comfort rating, or to conceptualize the discomfort of the wet and matted stuffing draped over your body after rain leaks into the stuff sack, or to consider the rank smell of sweat and mold that will seep out of the fabric regardless of how many times you wash it. Selecting a sleeping bag is easy; using it for five months is hard. My first morning at the Appalachian Trail Institute, Warren pulled me aside after the initial classroom session and said, "The AT will change you." Excerpted from The Pursuit of Endurance: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience by Jennifer Pharr Davis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
