By Mary Ann Zehr, contributor
A monthly column by a local teacher and reader about connecting with books and taking in Harrisonburg’s literary scene.
~ Carpenter, Steve. The Allure and Peril of the Appalachian Trail. Falcon Guides, an imprint of the Global Pequot Publishing Group, 2026. ~
Only a couple of times in my life have I hiked with a backpack and supplies and slept overnight in the woods. I’ve enjoyed the woods mostly as a day hiker, and more recently as what Harrisonburg author Steve Carpenter calls a “gentle walker.” I go to the woods to connect with nature. I listen to water swirling around rocks in a stream or observe a woodpecker searching for insects through binoculars.
Carpenter considers people who go to the woods for a short hike when the weather is fair to be one of the audiences for his book about the AT.
At the same time, The Allure and Peril of the Appalachian Trail is for serious hikers who are section-hikers of the AT, as Carpenter is, or thru-hikers, as are many people he has encountered on the trail, who hike the AT in one season. The thru-hikers typically average about 20 miles per day.
The book is a guidebook, memoir sprinkled with journal entries, and encyclopedia, on all things AT. Because the AT runs through Harrisonburg’s backyard of Shenandoah National Park, and many Harrisonburg residents are hikers, the knowledge Carpenter has compiled from archives and shared from his own hiking experience is relevant to our community.
The book features the subculture of people who share a passion to experience adventures afforded by the AT–the longest footpath in the United States. The section-hikers and thru-hikers have created their own vocabulary and traditions. People who stick together for days on the trail call themselves “tramily.” Hikers assume trail names and take advantage of many of the same photo-ops. For example, many hikers take a photo of themselves with an extremely weathered wooden sign stuck into a pile of rocks at the summit of Mount Katahdin. That’s Maine’s highest mountain and the northern terminus of the AT.
A question that the author explores, which kept me reading, is: What motivates someone to be a section-hiker or thru-hiker of the AT–to walk about 2,198 miles from Georgia to Maine?
The answer to that question by one thru-hiker whom Carpenter meets is that he wants to have a meaningful adventure with his family while his children are young. The hiker is a physician who has taken a one-year absence from his job to hike the AT with his wife, 11-year-old son, and 13-year-old daughter. “I didn’t want to sacrifice my family for a career, and there is a narrow window when the kids are interested in hiking the AT,” the man explains.
Carpenter runs into many long-distance hikers who are going through a major transition, such as divorce or adjusting to life without a spouse who has died. Quite a few hikers recently graduated from college. Increasingly, Carpenter says, people hike the trail after retirement.
Carpenter reflects on what motivated him to hike about half of the trail over 15 years. The first two motivations on his list, illustrated by many of his journal entries, are for camaraderie with his friend, Vince Ackermann, and other hikers who became part of his “tramily,” and for a physical and mental challenge. “Nothing else in my life is as demanding as the AT,” he writes.
Ackermann and Carpenter are in their 60s when they do a lot of their hiking on the AT. In 2017, when the men are hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in autumn, Carpenter notes that rather than hike 100 miles in a week, as they do typically, Ackermann plans a hike of about 60 miles over six-and-a-half days. “It would have been better to do the Whites when we were younger. But we didn’t, and so here we are,” writes Carpenter, as they take on the challenge.
Their strength and stamina may be gradually waning, but these two friends return to the trail year after year, usually in spring and autumn, to complete another leg of the journey. It’s quite impressive how, burdened with heavy backpacks, they ford several rushing streams in the “Hundred Mile Wilderness” in Maine.
Carpenter and Ackermann interact (usually) without judgment with people of all ages and dispositions on the trail. My favorite social moment with hikers that Carpenter describes in his journal is when they meet Sarah Rose, an author whom Carpenter heard interviewed on National Public Radio. She wrote the 2010 book, For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. A hiker downloads her book on his Kindle, and Rose reads aloud a chapter to them after dinner.
I can picture Carpenter, an avid tea drinker, sipping hot tea while listening to the read-aloud in a cabin in the woods.
Some of Carpenter’s interactions with hikers are more pleasant than others. Carpenter notes that he and Ackermann feel uneasy as a group of young people pass a marijuana pipe around a circle one evening. One hiker in the group brags about using a more powerful drug in another setting. Another one has what Carpenter calls “an attitude.” Carpenter notes: “One on one we enjoyed them, but collectively they were a bit too much to handle.”
In 2023, Carpenter and Ackermann trek to the top of Mount Katahdin. For Ackermann, reaching the top of the mountain completes his 24-year quest to hike the whole AT. Ackermann achieves his goal 10 days before his 70th birthday.
To mark the occasion, they have a photo taken of the two of them standing by the weather-beaten wooden sign stuck in a pile of rocks at the summit.
Because of Carpenter’s storytelling, even though I never plan to set foot in that same spot on Mount Katahdin, I have some insight into what it took for the men to get there.
At 6 pm on Wednesday, May 27, Steve Carpenter will speak about The Allure and Peril of the Appalachian Trail to the Charlottesville Hiking Club at the Great Outdoor Provision Co., an outdoor sports store at 1137 Emmet Street North in Charlottesville. From noon to 2 pm on Sunday, June 7, Carpenter will sign books at the Winchester Book Gallery at 7 N. Loudoun St. in Winchester.
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