Date: Fri 01-Sep-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDREA

Quick Words:

Steve-Grant-Appalachian-Trail

Full Text:

A Natural Talent For Tales Of The Outdoors

B Y A NDREA Z IMMERMANN

There was an early morning thunderstorm threatening. I was walking alone. It

was very quiet...[and] really quite dark when I walked into a hemlock forest.

Up ahead I saw what appeared to be two families of wild turkeys - three or

four adults and ten to fifteen young scurrying about. And they weren't making

a sound...

Steve Grant has a natural talent for story-telling. He also has a penchant for

fun in the great outdoors. That might explain why the Hartford Courant's

natural science writer came up with an idea that evolved into a 2,158-mile

relay adventure for five east coast newspapers.

On March 5, journalist/photographer tag-teams laced up their boots, strapped

on packs, and embarked on a journey that would take them from Georgia to Maine

as they followed the famed Appalachian Trail. Since that time, readers up and

down the coast have anticipated the next in a series of weekly features about

the hiking experience, history, geology of the areas, and issues relating to

the outdoors.

"Just the fun of doing it, was part of it," said Mr Grant, who lives in

Newtown, and just completed his apportioned 259 miles of the trail during the

most brutal weather in our area this year. "But we thought it was an

opportunity to write about some of those things that don't ordinarily get into

a daily newspaper. It was a look at the Appalachian Trail, which is a quite

famous trail, but one that still is little understood by most people."

The Appalachian Trail is the longest marked footpath in the world. Benton

MacKaye's vision of a recreational trail primarily for city-dwellers living on

the east coast was published in Journal of the American Institute of

Architects in 1921. Two years later, the first section of the Appalachian

Trail, the Palisades Interstate Park, was completed. The trail is now a

National Scenic Trail under federal administration.

Each newspaper agreed to send a journalist and photographer to cover

approximately 470 miles of the trail in its geographical area. Representatives

of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the News & Observer of Raleigh, the

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Portland Newspapers, and The Hartford Courant met

first at the Courant's Washington, D.C., bureau, and later in New Hampshire to

finalize plans and attend workshops held at the annual meeting of the

Appalachian Long Distance Hikers. Courant journalist, Susan Campbell is now

working her way through Vermont. All of those who planned to hike a portion of

the Appalachian Trail met at Springer Mountain, Ga., and hiked the first 32

miles together; they will meet at the base of Mt Katahdin, Me., around October

1 to share the final steps of the journey.

"It's very simple what we do," explained Mr Grant. "We arrange our itinerary

so we come off the trail on a Tuesday, late in the day, and go to a motel

closest to the trail. We get a room and we immediately take a shower - usually

the first one we've had in a week. A lap top computer had either been Fed-exed

or hand delivered to this place; we don't have to carry it. And we're all set

to write."

The reporter must file the story via modem by noon on Wednesday, so it can be

edited and available to the other four newspapers by 5 pm that day. A dozen

photographs are also scanned into the computer which allows the photo editor

at each publication to make a selection. The Courant publishes a story every

Sunday, and has archived all the pieces thus far on its Internet Website

(http://wwww.atlantic.com/ctguide/news/courant/).

Putting It In Writing

How does a group of journalists prepare for such an undertaking? By sharing

ideas, making a plan, and doing a lot of research while breaking in their

hiking boots.

"We thought, as we walked the trail, we'd be able to address issues involving

hiking, nature, the outdoors," said Mr Grant. "One of the pieces has talked

about safety - people have been murdered on the Appalachian Trail. We did a

piece on the geology of the Appalachians...I did a piece that wove in some

material on hi-tech hiking. There are people showing up now in shelters on the

trail with cellular phones or tiny little portable televisions. Some hikers

frown on that and others think, `Hey, if the technology exists, use it.'

"All of these things we very consciously set out to bring up in what we hoped

to be a `reader friendly' way - in the context of somebody actually being out

on a trail and writing about what it feels like to hike," he said.

Mr Grant spent about a month of work-time coordinating the project, gathering

information, and doing interviews with experts and those instrumental in

establishing the trail - all of which he could sprinkle throughout the pieces

he wrote. Evenings and weekends he spent reading more than a dozen books on

the trail including "everything written by Benton MacKaye."

"You can't write with authority unless you've done some research, even on this

kind of a thing where the whole point really is the hike, and what you see and

feel," he said. "It's so nice if you can buttress all that with history and

fact. We did a lot of research - all of us."

As a regular day-hiker, Mr Grant was familiar with some of his portion of the

trail, so he didn't "preview" the route before he officially set out. But he

did have to build up his muscles and endurance.

"I think everybody on Boggs Hill Road has seen this odd duck walking up and

down this road with a backpack all winter and spring, wondering who I was," he

laughed. "For the month or so before I left, I was walking almost every day, 6

miles, and many of those days with a full backpack with about 50 pounds of

weight in it."

But this was not the journalist's first escapade in the great outdoors for

work. Four years ago, Mike Waller, then editor and now publisher of the

Courant , found out that Mr Grant wanted to spend five weeks canoeing the

entire Connecticut River, from Canada to the Sound. He read over the proposal

and was very enthusiastic about the idea. "They simply said to me, `Go out, go

do it, have fun, don't get hurt, and make the stories good,'" said Mr Grant.

And he did.

The readers loved it. So he's done a similar project each year. He completed a

700-mile walk and hitchhike along the New England coastline, and traversed 300

miles to retrace the steps of Connecticut's Leatherman.

"One of the joys of backpacking or canoeing is experiencing all of nature. You

can go out for a day hike - on a nice sunny day - and see nature under a

certain set of circumstances and it's enjoyable," said Mr Grant. "But if you

go out for a week, you're likely to be confronted with different kinds of

weather - a thunderstorm, a whole day of rain. You'll see nature in a

different context and it's still wonderful."

Right after a rain, the woods might be very still. Then the birds return, and

the sunlight streams in, said the journalist. "And as the woods get dark at

night - they're not really frightening. It's pleasant to sit in your tent and

just listen...There were several nights on the trail when the whippoorwill was

all over the woods. You'd hear it till you finally fell asleep. It's nice to

experience nature in those other moods."

But the heat wave posed special challenges. As Mr Grant traversed parts of New

York and Connecticut the thermometer climbed to 103 degrees - 24 degrees above

the monthly average for that area. "We became preoccupied with water," he

said. "It was so hot for so many days. Many of the brooks were dried up

completely - no water whatsoever - there were just stream beds."

Although he often carried five liters of water, Mr Grant ran out at one point

in Connecticut. "We weren't in any serious danger - there was reliable water

another three miles away. But another three miles is another hour and a half

over rugged terrain," he said. "When you climb up a mountain on a 90 degree,

humid day with a fifty pound pack, you just sweat profusely. You've got to

drink a lot of water. I'd drink close to two liters an hour in those

conditions."

While hiking, Mr Grant felt a real tension between having to complete a

certain number of miles and wanting to notice and enjoy his surroundings. He

noticed thru-hikers usually focused on mileage and destination. But then there

were others, like the group of 50-plus year-olds called the Mountain Marching

Mamas, who hike a piece of the trail each year with the goal of completing all

2,158 miles. They, however, are less concerned with amount of ground they

cover.

"I really have a great deal of respect and admiration for them," said Mr

Grant, who crossed their path near Bear Mountain and was so impressed he spent

an hour interviewing them for one of his pieces. "To me, they are what

backpacking is really all about. They have a great attitude, they enjoy the

outdoors, and they take it in pieces that are nicely manageable for them...

They immerse themselves in the outdoors. It's difficult, they get wet, they

get cold sometimes, get hot sometimes - all of those things. But they make

sure they have a good time."

Solitude vs Companionship

"There is some real enjoyment and oneness with nature when you hike alone,"

said Mr Grant. "I see more detail. I will become 'lost' in the trail when I'm

by myself. There is no conversational distractions. And I find I fall into my

own pace."

But there is also a joy to sharing the experience with someone, he said. "The

most special part of the whole thing was hiking with my daughter, Allison," he

said. "We had a really special three days together. We walked along, we talked

a little bit - not a lot, we watched. And she would ask me things about the

trail, about nature. And we would talk about the difficulty of doing it - all

the things you talk about when you're hiking. It was a very pleasant

experience hiking with her. And that's true when you're hiking with a friend."

People hike for all kinds of reasons, but thru-hikers tend to be those who are

facing some life changes - such as the end of a relationship or job, "want to

see what's out there," or view it as a great adventure.

"[By hiking] over an extended period of time, you start to see and feel things

that you wouldn't in a short stint in nature," said Mr Grant. "The woods start

to get different, the trees. You'd go from mostly oak in New Jersey and get up

to Salisbury and start to see white birch and lots of hemlock with white pine

mixed in...

"If, instead of walking just 6 miles or one day, you walk 300 miles or 30 days

- you are going to see the landscape evolve before you."