Two-Heel Drive

Sgt. Rock, keeper of the Hiking HQ discussion board, has retired after 22 years in the Army and is heading north on the Appalachian Trail. I started thumbing through his trail journal when this part from a post in early January stopped me in my tracks:

The plan was to get up early to make up some miles I missed yesterday. So I went to bed early and set an alarm for 0700. But something happened. This morning at about 0200 I heard a rifle shot really close. As I lay there thinking that was too damn close I heard two more with the crack that comes when a bullet gets close to you. Then there were large explosions and I looked into the draw I was beside where a low hanging smoke was drifting. I could see helmets of soldiers in the smoke and moonlight and heard voices yelling at soldiers. Then machine gun fire and someone saying “Up there on the trail”. I was worried it was me so I tried to get out of my hammock as a machine gun opened up. I couldn’t move or speak. I was getting in a panic trying to get out of that hammock so I could hug the ground. Finally I bolted straight up.

All was quiet. There was no smoke or soldiers. No gunfire or explosions. Just a quiet night. I lay there sweating, my heart pounding away. I realized it was just a nightmare and tried to go back to sleep. I lay there for hours playing it over in my mind. It seemed so real - I could actually smell the smoke and hear a radio plus what sounded like voices talking in Arabic. I finally passed back out at 0400, but I ended up sleeping through my alarm and getting up late.

I used to hang around at the Sarge’s site a lot more but had gotten a bit out of the habit … I never realized all the while he was keeping his site and helping out with Whiteblaze.net that he had never actually hiked the AT all the way — though it makes sense, it’s hard to get six months off to go hiking when your employer is the Pentagon, which has better plans for you in exotic climes.

So anyway, here’s to the Sarge living his dream. And hoping the sleeping gets better.

His Trail Journal is here.

Tags: Appalachian Trail, Through-hiking

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Appalachian Trail, Through-hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.