Prologue
April 4, 1948 began like most others. Around the globe, depending mostly on where the planet’s perpetual spinning caused the ever-present sun to touch, people ate, slept, worked, procreated, became victims or predators, wept or laughed, or shoved against Fate to latch onto a better place in the pecking order. The most significant event to make the front page that day happened at a baseball spring training camp in Orlando, Florida, when the 84 year-old manager of the Phillies, Connie Mack, challenged the 78 year-old owner of the Senators, Clark Griffith, to a race from third base to home plate. Amazingly, the race ended in a tie. On that same morning, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., barely days out of their mothers’ wombs, were just beginning to learn how to manipulate the business end of a bottle between their impatient lips. Up in Dayton, Ohio, Orville Wright’s coffin had barely begun to settle into the spring-thawed sponge six feet under. And down in Georgia, another drama that would have far-reaching consequences on generations to come began to unfold.
A bone-chilling wind swept across Mount Oglethorpe and sent shivers rippling across the lone intruder’s body. It had been a tough proposition, crawling out of the skimpy sleeping bag and into the damp predawn chill that permeated the rickety leanto, which he had called “home” the previous evening. He had planned to spend the night on Oglethorpe’s summit, close to the diamond-shaped metal marker—the first of hundreds of metal and white-painted blazes that would be his guiding beacon over the next few months. But the brutally cold wind had quickly thwarted his plans and chased him off the summit, back down to the old leanto that he had passed the previous afternoon on his way to the top. Crumbling and sagging under years of neglect, it wasn’t much to look at. But it had served its purpose.
A strong gust pushed him toward the battered sign that marked the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, as if to say, “get going…time’s awastin’.” Restraining his eager legs, the hiker gathered his thoughts and tried to fix the moment firmly in his memory, a picture to bolster him through whatever lay between where he stood and a distant mountain in Maine. Impulsively, he reached out and touched the nearly invisible fog-shrouded statuary that adorned the summit—the tall monument that had been chiseled out of a massive block of “white gold” taken from Sam Tate’s marble quarry. Georgians had erected the obelisk in 1930 to the memory of James Edward Oglethorpe, the state’s founder.
A quiet moment of reflection. A picture of his childhood friend rose, unbidden, from somewhere far within, buried these past three years in a private place seldom visited. Walter Winemiller, his hiking companion in the carefree days before the war. Walter, forever gone, one of the 6821 Americans who never left the blood-soaked ashy soil of Iwo Jima. Walter, who had planned to be at his side on this dismal morning. The hiker swallowed his rising grief, then pushed the picture back into its private place and softly murmured, “This one’s for you, Walter.”
Time to go. Without further ado, twenty-nine year-old Earl Victor Shaffer from Shiloh, Pennsylvania, shifted his military issue rucksack into a more comfortable position, squared his shoulders, and set his jaw. Taking a deep breath, he pointed his moccasin-boots toward Maine—and walked into history.
No newspaper reporters came to Mount Oglethorpe that historic morning to pepper the young man with questions about why he was attempting to do “the impossible.” At least that’s what the hikers “in the know,” those seasoned, venerable folks who had built the Appalachian Trail, called a continuous hike from Georgia all the way to Maine. Earl didn’t even give it a thought. More pressing things bothered him—mainly, how to get his mind straightened out after nearly five years of combat duty on Jap-infested atolls in the South Pacific, where hordes of bandy-legged soldiers had tried to get him in their rifle sights. Down deep, Earl sensed that this journey of 2000 miles would act as a catharsis and purge the nightmares from his dreams.
Thus began the “Lone Expedition.” Soon people he met began to question his good sense, and Earl began to refer to himself in his “Little Black Notebook” as the “Crazy One” (and the tradition of trail names was born). Came days spiced with meals of oatmeal or cornmeal mush cooked over a wood fire—no stove—and always liberally doused with brown sugar. Came endless nights spent at whatever place twilight found him, huddled beneath a Marine-issue poncho draped over a logged-out tree top, stoically enduring whatever Ma Nature had decided to serve up. And always came the twenty-mile plus days, constantly up and down, up and down, ever moving north.
On August 5, 124 days and 2050 miles after leaving Mount Oglethorpe, Earl Shaffer climbed mile-high Mt. Katahdin and proved the doomsayers wrong. A smattering of reporters latched onto his “impossible” achievement but gave it little space. No matter, for the nightmares had disappeared and Earl was ready to go on with his life. The demons had been laid to rest.
And for a generation of future hikers, infants even then sucking sweet milk from swollen breasts, the way had been made ready! An era had begun!
