A little about the writer
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Andrea
on the AT
“There is a certain
malady, commonly termed ‘big head,’ with which a larger number of otherwise healthy people are afflicted. Prescription: Stand upon the
brink of the Grand Canyon, gaze down, and still further down, into
its awful depths, and realize for the first time your own utter
insignificance.”
---Mrs. Mary E. Hert,
M.D, Grand Canyon hiker register, June 5, 1895
“I fully agree with
the above, and desire to register this statement: a pleasant lady adds much to the enjoyment
of the trip.”
---J.J. Shaum, same hiker register, very next entry
I’d like to think that, despite my penchant
for noir, I’m a pleasant lady and the perfect hiking partner.
First of all, I may not be bright, but I can lift heavy things.
Secondly, I have a Southern accent and a Southern upbringing, but, to my father's
horror, I grew up to be more like Davy
Crockett than Scarlett O'Hara. Thirdly, I've got legs, and I
know how to use them.
I've spent most my life learning the lessons only the woods could teach me. I have a degree in Forestry from the UT-Knoxville. For twelve years I worked as an NPS park ranger, performing law enforcement, search and rescue and life-saving wilderness medicine in some of the biggest, busiest parks in the world, including Cape Hatteras, Zion, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.
While employed by the
National Parking
Circus, I performed many bureaucracy-defying feats. I chaperoned baby sea turtles to the sea, caught
wildlife poachers red handed and jumped into helicopters bound for
the heart of the Grand Canyon where I plucked the damned from the
jaws of the abyss. I won arguments with bears. I dodged lighting
bolts. I pissed on forest fires. I slept with a few too many
rattlesnakes.
Then I threw my government retirement to the wind and became a walkaholic. Within two years, traveling over 5,000 miles by my
own power, I kayaked from Miami to Key West,
mountain biked from Utah to Mexico, cycled from Fairbanks to the
Artic Ocean and thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail.
I agree with St. Augustine, the patron saint of brewers, who once said, Solvitur ambulando, “It is solved by walking.”
But I must confess. All that hiking and biking and paddling has taken a toll on my body. Just ask my husband. When I climb stairs, the bones in my knees, legs and feet crackle and creak so loudly, he calls me “the Corpse Bride.”
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