Chapter 1: Alone on the Trail
I knew I was in trouble when the chilly water rose above my ankles and I could no longer see the trail.
I was on, or rather near, the Florida National Scenic Trail, returning from an out-and-back one-nighter in the Osceola National Forest, on a stretch known by experienced backpackers to be wet, but I had attempted to find the wrong way past the wettest part. I had crossed this stretch the day before on a boardwalk, but its northern end had washed out halfway through and I needed to bushwhack through a dense thicket of palmetto and thorny vines beside the rest of this submerged stretch of trail. I had to bushwhack again at the beginning of the same stretch this morning, but I picked the wrong side of the trail, and now it was too late to turn back.
Before even leaving this part of the trail, I had already fallen twice when thorny vines tied my legs, and I soon again felt the stinging and tearing of more needly thorns as I panted again through the brush. My stomach began to wretch as I realized the predicament in which I had become entangled. To get through this stretch quickly, I had gone too far too fast to see a way back, and the water was getting deeper.
I struggled in vain to find higher ground to peer over the morass of jungle and black water to look for an open section that looked like the trail. I finally found a fallen tree, but its bark melted off like the candy coating of an overheated M&M when I stepped on it, and I fell into the swamp backpack-first. The icy chill of swamp water on my waist and chest froze my nerves as panic began to creep in. I finally managed to balance myself by using a branch as a wobbly cane, but I could see nothing but swamp in every direction. My spongy glob of a map was worthless. I sighed as I attempted to open my soaked cell phone with my cold, wet fingers to no avail. I suppressed the urge to childishly whimper a cry for help to a forest of cypress that would not answer.
It was at this moment that I thought, I’m glad I took my Prozac this morning.
Five months earlier, I could not have imagined sleeping in a tent, much less lugging more than 30 pounds to and from a backcountry campsite. But I had come a long way since then.
So I took a deep breath, patted myself on the back for getting this far, and started wading in the general direction of the trail. I used my walking stick to swat away the thorny vines, and as the water rose above my waist, I remembered noticing the day before that the water had run toward the boardwalk. I therefore followed the current, hoping the water was too cold for snakes. After I rounded a dense patch of trees, the boardwalk appeared on the far side of a black stream that was technically the Florida Trail. I muttered a pitiful “Yes!” as my terror quickly turned to relief.
The water was too deep to cross, so I slogged with pulsing legs parallel to the boardwalk back to where it began, crossed the stream, climbed onto the boardwalk, and dried off my electronics. The phone eventually sprang back to life; the nicotine vape was now a snorkel. As the swamp water cooled my adrenaline-fueled sweat, I told myself that I’m now a real backpacker.
I then continued down the five remaining miles of trail to my car, with a big shit-eating grin on my face the whole way.
* * *
I love longleaf pine trees.
I enjoy lying atop a picnic table or bench at a backcountry campsite after a long hike, covered in sweat, panting with exhaustion, and staring up long branchless trunks, until you reach the canopy at its apex where a pyramid of crispy boughs covered in pine needles stands like a summer Christmas tree. I walk beneath them on the trail and search for pinecones, using their size to determine whether they are longleaf, loblolly, or scrub pine. I laugh at myself when I try in vain to throw the rope for my bear bag to one of their lower limbs and test my patience for twenty minutes, hoping that the weighted end will finally catch a limb and fall within grasping distance, so I can stop swearing and sweating in frustration. I admire newly grown pines where the Christmas trees that eventually rise above the rest of the forest have already bloomed and will remain with the trees as they grow; my wife calls them pom-pom pines. It’s thrilling to see some with thick trunks and wondering how many souls still alive today were around when their pom-poms first sprouted from the sandy forest floor. And I especially note when they grow from the middle of live oaks and are split by lightning, wind, or the ravages of time.
I also love live oaks. I’m revere their huge trunks that part near the ground and their limbs and branches that grow in every direction, like animated characters from a Tolkien fantasy. I love thinking about how British sailors ventured deep into Florida’s forests before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, to seek out their massive V-shaped trunks that were better for building curved parts of their ships than arrow-straight planks. I’m relish how bromeliads, pink lichens, and especially blankets of moss cling to their branches and hang over the trails I hike and perfectly frame the rays of the rising sun. And the birds that nest in their canopies and begin singing as those rays of morning sunshine begin bathing their nests. I especially cherish sleeping beneath their boughs on a rainless night with the rain cover of my tent rolled back, staring at the stars and an occasional meteor through their protective arms. You have never lived until you have slept beneath a live oak.
I love the birds that fly among the pine and live oaks. The startled hawks that often greet me on the trail by swooping down from a nearby branch, passing mere feet over my head to perch on a branch further down the trail, seeming to stare at me with disdain for the disruption. I enjoy my embarrassment when I ignore a vulture perched atop a pine tree near my campsite (vultures are ubiquitous in Florida), only to realize that the ugly scavenger is actually a beautiful bald eagle. I venerate the ospreys and the nests they build atop dead pine trees and discovering those nests by seeing the telltale droppings and feathers at the base of dead trees I pass on the trail. And I cherish the owls—I rarely see them, but I always hear them calling to each other through the forest in the early morning before dawn, first four hoots, then an answer with three hoots, and I’m occasionally lucky enough to listen to them all night long.
I admire the mammals I see on the trail. I prize the white tail deer that I see all over Central Florida that are easy to find at sunset and sunrise in open forest, especially the ones who frequent heavily toured state parks and therefore do not even twitch when you surprise them on the trail. I love the wild hogs, those temperamental snorting vacuum cleaners that raise the heartrates of informed hikers who find them binging on the trail with young who they defend aggressively. I treasure those few black bears I have been lucky enough to see away from state park dumpsters, with their you-can’t-scare-me ambivalence and dark black eyes and fur. I adore the wild horses that freely roam Paynes Prairie and the cows that moo through the night near Lake Kissimmee State Park, just to let me know that I’m only so far from civilization. And I am amused at the armadillos and opossums that startle me on the trail or attempt to rummage through the firewood I leave lying on the ground, even when they ignore my firm instructions to go away while I pound my walking stick on a nearby tree, although I don’t particularly enjoy them rattling through palmettos less than 10 feet from my tent while I’m trying to sleep.
I even enjoy the scaly reptiles for which Florida is famous, although it’s more fearful respect and admiration. I chuckle at the mild strokes I suffer when surprised by black racers darting across the trail inches from my boots on morning hikes, or the substantially more severe strokes I suffer when I see a copperhead or an eastern diamondback along the trail. And I even like the alligators I see during the summer in swamps and on the banks of creeks and spring-fed rivers (after all, I did spend my formative years at the University of Florida), with their opaque shot glass sized teeth, remorseless stares, and thick body armor, and presumably also a few household pets in their bellies. But I hope I never see one again beside me on the trail.
I especially treasure sunrises and sunsets. Growing up in Florida, I’ve appreciated them for a long time, and certainly became more enamored with them while visiting my wife’s parents’ bayside home in North Redington Beach for decades before I began solo backpacking. For years, I’ve stayed at old school hotels in St. Pete Beach, watching the sun melt into the Gulf of Mexico after dinner and the sky change color like a Turner painting as the last rays fall beneath the western horizon (I call that the suffering). I really came to appreciate sunsets and sunrises after my wife put a pool and patio into our backyard with my ambivalent approval, after which I began reading for an hour each morning before beginning my workday. Especially when depression and anxiety returned, I found comfort watching the sun setting over my neighbors’ roofs.
But I had never experienced sunrises until I began awaiting their arrival while holding my full bladder in my coffin-sized tent beneath the live oaks. Or until I started eating freeze-dried backpacking dinners with a spork while watching the sun set behind ponds near backcountry campsites, and then watched the sun climb down the waterside pine trees the next morning, first inching slowly down the tree tops, then the trunks, then finally hitting the glassy water as cranes searched for breakfast.
And I adore the stars. The hundreds of stars that you can never see near theme parks or cities that whitewash the night sky. I like staring at Orion’s belt in the winter and being able to see the rest of the archer with taut bow that I had never noticed before I slept in the forest alone. I love understanding what Brandon Boyd of Incubus meant when he wrote that the sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it. I enjoy tending a campfire and scaring away opossums without turning on a flashlight, seeing the furniture of my campsite illuminated by nothing but the stars and the moon gleaming down like a spotlight.
I am enchanted by everything about tending a campfire. With a restless mind that never takes a break, I love pacing non-stop around a fire ring, turning logs with my walking stick, and dodging kernels of burning pine bark as they explode softly while soaked with soft flames. I derive twisted pleasure from struggling to start a fire in 80 percent humidity and wondering why even the paper bag in which I carried kiln-dried kindling loses the flame seconds after I ignite it with my gas station lighter, before I can lower it to the embers fighting to survive the mist. I take delight in standing naked beside a fire, choking on smoke as I attempt to dry my dirty arms and legs and sweaty unmentionables with my sweaty socks, hoping the fire stays lit long enough to coat my body odor with smoke that just might deter mosquitos and allow me to sleep in my tent. There is a wonderful sense of pride I feel when I manage to keep a fire alive for three hours by teasing the damp dead pine branches and twigs to take over the job of sustaining the fire from the kiln-dried log and kindling that I carried into camp. Often, I do not notice how that fire has also consumed my endless negativity that prevents me from falling asleep in my bed at home.
* * *
Of course, those are not the only things I love. I am thrilled by rock concerts and college football games, Las Vegas casinos, and watching drunk women flirt with strangers in pools at Las Vegas day clubs. I love playing aggressive, angry alternative rock music at 100 percent volume with distorted guitars that sound like bandsaws cutting through tooth enamel. I savor traveling to European cities and castles, art galleries, and other places far from starlit campfires, and visiting state history museums in American cities outside Florida. And reading books about history, geology, and art that are far too heavy to lug to a primitive campsite.
But few of those things give me the serenity and peace that I find on the trail, tending a campfire and sleeping beneath the stars, live oaks, and longleaf pines.
I had hiked for years in state and national parks before I began solo backpacking. My family hiked in the backcountry of Glacier National Park during a family reunion with my wife’s siblings who lived in Idaho and Montana. My wife and daughter also got a kick out of watching me pant with exhaustion during a seven-mile loop hike with more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain that I had insisted we try in North Cascades National Park. I needed the generosity of strangers and their electrolyte tablets during the descent, watching in exasperation as my daughter hopped up and down the mountain like one of the Super Mario brothers.
I would never have backpacked or slept in a tent back then. I weighed 275 pounds and had sleep apnea that caused snoring so loud that it could have triggered an avalanche. I had been overweight all my life, had weighed more than 235 pounds since shortly after my wedding in 2006, and was rarely able to lose more than 10 pounds at a time—even when “training” for annual pleasure weekends in Las Vegas.
That all changed in April of 2023. After becoming upset by a minor conflict with my wife, I continued to stew throughout the weekend after my wife and I made peace. By that Monday, I no longer had an appetite and went without any food all day Monday and Tuesday. But I continued to work from home, and after a stressful day at work on Tuesday while continuing to brood, I attempted to relieve that stress by walking three miles in my neighborhood.
I expected to feel better when I returned home. I did not. But I also expected my appetite to return, and I expected to eat a huge dinner to replace the food I had not eaten for the prior two days. I instead ate only a light meal, still bitter and brooding. The next morning, I stepped on the scale and had lost almost five pounds. I immediately realized that I may have an opportunity to finally lose a decent amount of weight, if I could just continue exercising while reducing my diet by eating only a normal person’s dinner and having only one dessert, rather than the three or four I typically ate each night before going to bed after midnight.
By that Friday, I had not yet gained back the weight and had dropped a few more pounds. I also continued to eat smaller breakfasts and lunches and reasonable dinners and only one small dessert each night. I continued to have the energy to walk three miles after work that Wednesday and Friday. Although my stomach was screaming for chocolate and pizza, my mood had finally improved, and I began feeling that most precious of commodities—self-esteem. I also had a transatlantic flight coming in three months for a family vacation, so I had good reason to keep at it. If I could only lose 15 pounds, I might be able to avoid heartburn while being crammed into the tiny coach seat with 31-inch seat pitch for nine hours. I also knew the flight was going to be worse than ever if I didn’t try something, as I had gained so much weight that I had endured my first experience two months earlier of being unable to fit into a roller coaster seat.
