In early 2019, Taylor Griggs told her mom she wanted to hike a segment of the Appalachian Trail. She was about to embark on a four-year commitment to serve as a missionary in Ecuador.
The request didn’t exactly come out of the blue. Andy and Jennifer Williamson had taken their four children camping and hiking throughout their childhood.
Younger sister, Ivy, signed on.
And so it was on a cold, windy February morning, Andy drove his three girls to Springer Mountain, Georgia, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. He would hole up at a motel for three days and await their call.
This was their first such hike.
“Those hills were kicking our tails,” remembers Jennifer.
Though they only covered 15 miles in three days, they were all nourished by the experience.
“It’s beautiful,” Jennifer said of that stretch of trail. “The views are non-stop, even when you’re coming down. It was life changing for us all.”
Life changing for Jennifer, 49, means she goes hiking every chance she gets. She’s taking the Appalachian Trail in segments and hikes the Pinhoti Trail, a tributary of the AT that begins in Alabama.
Her longest sustained trek has been 150 miles on the Pinhoti. It took her two weeks and 20 pounds to cover the distance. Normally Jennifer’s hikes are shorter and with a companion.
“If you’re the least bit interested (in hiking), I’m going to rope you in,” she says. “I want as many people as possible to experience it.”
Her ideal hiking companion is one who doesn’t talk much.
Jennifer says when she is on the trail, day-to-day concerns evaporate.
“You forget about everything else. You forget about the bills you didn’t pay; the calls you didn’t return; the cake you’ve got to bake next week.
“You’re focused on where you’re gonna sleep; if you have enough food to eat; where you’re going to get water and where you’re going to the bathroom.”
Husband Andy, who usually provides shuttle service for his wife’s treks, is quick to acknowledge that he is not a hiker.
“(In a sleeping bag), I can feel every rock and root. I’ll look over there, and she’s sleeping like a squirrel.”
When questioned about the propriety of his wife hiking alone on the trail, Andy has a ready answer: “We’ve got a great relationship. We’ve been married 30 years. Sometimes I worry about her. I pray for her, but she’s doing what she loves, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
As anyone who actively engages with nature will tell you, there can be unanticipated life-threatening situations.
Like the time Jennifer got between a mother bear and her cub, a situation she quickly rectified.
Then there was the January hike she took with Michelle Huff, a church friend now living in Florida.
The two women set out on a 12-to-15-mile trek on the Appalachian Trail. They planned to sleep in a shelter near the trail.
It had been unseasonably warm, and they had no reason not to expect more of the same.
Shortly after they began, the first signs of a winter storm rolled in. By afternoon it was sleeting. By nightfall it had started to snow. The temperature dropped into the single digits.
“I realized we were in a lot of trouble,” said Jennifer. “The wind was blowing so hard, the snow was horizontal. We were not prepared.”
Convinced they wouldn’t survive the night, Jennifer called her husband from the shelter.
“Tell the kids I love them. I’m going to send you a picture to use for my funeral.”
She didn’t want an open casket containing a once-frozen corpse to be family and friends’ final memory of her.
“Set up your tent in the shelter,” Andy counseled his wife. The three-sided shelter offered no protection from the cold. “And the two of you get in the sleeping bag together.”
“It was rough,” Jennifer said.
The next morning their drinking water was frozen. So was the fuel for their propane stove.
The two women packed up their gear and set out. They hiked all day to Neel’s Gap. There, an outdoor shop near the trail was still open. They went in and asked the clerk for a ride to their car, which was parked nearby.
He asked where they spent the previous night.
Jennifer told him, Woods Hole Shelter.
“That’s where everybody goes to die,” the clerk said. The two women required no explanation.
It’s easy to see how such a harrowing experience might dampen one’s enthusiasm for the open trail and its unforeseen challenges. Not so for Jennifer Williamson for whom it has fostered a confidence that informs her everyday life.
“You have a sense of accomplishment,” she says. “I’ve been out in the middle of the woods, and I say, ‘I can do this.’”
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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