Days 18-20 – Canaan Valley to Clarksburg, WV – 85 miles

On Thursday night, I lounged in bed, satisfied with a couple of days of strenuous but lovely hiking through Dolly Sods, when America took a sudden turn. In a jarring chain reaction, one social institution after another shut down; somehow, the shuttering of sports leagues, professional and collegiate alike, made the reality of the emerging public health crisis more palpable than any of the calls to alarm that preceded it. My school announced an imminent closure, beating Oregon’s public schools to the punch by hours, and then that trend continued to spread across the country. I watched the news late into the night, transfixed, and then jolted awake at 4:30, scoring a couple more hours of cable news. 

Other countries, of course, have been facing this reality for weeks at this point, and some US states, like Washington (where all of my family is located), have also been at the forefront of the emergency. And yet, on the road, it has largely been an exercise in abstraction for me. As I watched emails fly at work, as colleagues scurried to prepare for an online learning eventuality, I merrily clicked command-D and moved on with my walk. Nobody mentioned the coronavirus in Delaware, aside from a conversation I had with Fritz while walking. Not a comment about it on the C&O canal. Certainly not a shred of attention devoted to it in West Virginia, which remains the lone state in the union without a recognized case of the virus.

But suddenly, on Thursday night, the American public collectively choked down the red pill.

I descended to the lobby of the Canaan Valley Lodge on Friday morning and saw a ghostly scene. Small clusters of people were sprinkled around the cavernous space, engaged in whispered discussion. The night’s rains hadn’t quite abated, so I settled in to kill a few minutes and soon found myself eavesdropping on a conversation, as a staff member hissed nervously into her phone. Despite the dearth of cases, she wondered, should she be closing down? With the last ski weekend of the year on their doorstep, and natural snow actually falling Saturday night, and a disastrous season coming to a close, how could they possibly miss out on one last meager payday?

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It was 9pm, the end of a very long, very busy day, one spent having traveled to Córdoba, Spain from Madrid, via high speed train, and then returning after a long visit. We were just over a month into a huge European trip, with nearly 3.5 months of travel planned. It was my first time outside of the US and Canada. Before crashing, my friend Jon and I repaired to a nearby Internet cafe, so that he could send his daily email to his girlfriend. I typed a few generic sentences on our trip blog, when suddenly Jon sprinted over to me from his computer across the room. “You’re not going to believe it!” he declared.

It was September 11, 2001. The world had changed, but we didn’t get the memo. The blog forgotten, I started altavista-ing as fast as that dial-up connection could go, frantically trying to learn about what had happened, hours removed from the event, but still deeply within the foggy immediate aftermath. I wouldn’t actually see the full video of the attack for months, until I returned home.

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I spent Friday almost entirely alone. I hiked to Blackwater Falls, one of West Virginia’s more dramatic natural sights, realizing after I made it to the lodge that the falls were actually back the way I came. Cursing, I stashed my pack in the lodge–along with my camera–and jogged to the falls. The hike then led me along the ridgeline overlooking the Blackwater River, a mighty rivine deeply filled with trees. A dirt road gave way to a footpath, eventually returning me to a different dirt road. It was a strenuous walk, as the boggy terrain of the previous days continued, with occasional downed trees to surmount adding a bonus challenge.

It was a relief, then, to finally join a paved road alongside the Cheat River, which brought me to the small town of Hendricks before passing me off to a paved rail trail. I was laboring heavily at this point, well and truly wiped out. At long last, I was delivered into the town of Parsons, the cheeriest and homiest place I’ve yet come across in West Virginia. A bright and colorful riverside park greets the tired walker, before yielding to a commercial zone. I zombied through the supermarket, buying supplies for the next walk (a banana, a $1 box of fake pop-tarts, and an extra liter of fluid), noting the abundant supply of toilet paper, and then plopped myself down in the neighboring Subway to grab a sandwich. Inside, a group of old men were gathered together, chatting quietly over dinner. Satiated, I stumbled over to the riverside campground, which was largely abandoned. The friendly host drove over to meet me, expressed concern about whether they’ll be able to have their bluegrass festival later this year, and helped me situate myself in their vehicle storage shelter, between two RVs and an empty wagon. It was a perfect windbreak. As she left, I quickly dropped into the bivy and whimpered myself to sleep.

The alarm sounded at 5:40am. McDonald’s opened at 6am and I was going to be there right after the locks clicked open. I was ready for some coffee, but I also needed juice. The Subway in Parsons didn’t have any power outlets. The campground’s power was shut off for the winter. I arrived, ordered, and quickly surveyed the restaurant. A large group of old men–different this time–was gathered around a pair of tables on one side, but the place was otherwise empty. It was also, however, empty of outlets. I looked at my cell/gps: 49%. Not ideal. I had already exhausted my solar charger, so I was flying without a net. This meant strict rationing. No audiobooks. Minimal photos. I didn’t want to get caught in the hills without directions. As I tidied up my table, a group of young guys walked in, grabbing breakfast before a full day of fishing.

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A few days later, Jon and I were in Portugal. We were still enjoying the trip–it’s hard not to be excited when you have amazing new things to see every day–but we were also troubled. Despite the fact that neither of us knew anyone personally harmed in the attacks, we felt like a deep harm had been perpetrated upon not just our country but all of the people in our lives. Something profound, something historic had occurred and continued to unfold, and we were absent from it. Indeed, we were doing something utterly frivolous!

Neither Jon nor I were on this trip to make connections with others. It was a missed opportunity, for sure, but at that point in our lives we had one overriding concern–to see cool stuff. And he wanted chocolate. And yet, in the days following 9/11, we were beneficiaries of an outpouring of spontaneous, genuine support. A man in Portugal approaches us on a train, recognizing–as Europeans seem specially equipped to do–us as Americans. Struggling to marshall his limited English, he overcame a few false starts and finally settled for simplicity: “Portugal good. America good.” And then an earnest nod and a firm handshake. He seemed on the brink of tears. Before we left the US, we had been advised by some to sew a Canadian flag patch to our packs, to avoid any association with the US government. But now, Europeans from one country after another sought to convey their solidarity. We were all connected.

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I departed Parsons in darkness, climbing steadily uphill. My timing was ideal; the sun broke the horizon just as I crossed the hilltop, before descending once more. That was the day in a nutshell: a sustained ascent followed by an immediate drop. West Virginia does indeed have many, many hills.

An hour later, I saw an old woman emerge from her valley home. She had flat, steely gray hair, a significant hunch, and an intense expression. She gingerly climbed two steps up towards the road, clinging fiercely to the railing, and then retreated to her door. I saw a newspaper in her box and offered to carry it down. That harsh visage suddenly opened into a wide smile and she nodded. It was a brief exchange, but it buoyed me over the next mile.

Around mid-day, I emerged from an old dirt road, largely overgrown, and stumbled in front of an older man in a UTV. (It seemed like all West Virginian men in the area spent their weekends either fishing or riding around in UTVs.) He asked me what I was up to. I told him I was walking across the USA. “You must be a good man then,” he determined, and then rolled on down the road.

This trip is supposed to be about connection. The goal is to meet with people from all across the country, to learn from their experiences, to have them meet someone from a corner of the country as laden with stereotypes as any other. And yet, it increasingly feels like connection is irresponsible. Walking without the blessed distraction of audiobooks for hours and hours, there was time aplenty for every possible agonizing thought to cut through my head. What if, I wondered, I’m already carrying the coronavirus and managed to infect those older residents as I strolled past their homes, like a perverse sort of Johnny Appleseed?

Once again, as the world is shifting profoundly, I am absent from home, engaged in something personally satisfying, something I intended to be of greater import, but is this self-indulgent and irresponsible in light of changing conditions?

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Despite misgivings, Jon and I remained on the road for six or seven more weeks. The trip was the opportunity of a lifetime and we weren’t going to give it up so easily. We learned details in bits and pieces. A picture of the falling man in a Spanish newspaper. The identification of Bin Laden’s responsibility in a Portuguese internet cafe. The initiation of military action, watched live on a television on an overnight boat from Crete back to mainland Greece.

After a brief, striking moment of absolute solidarity, Americans coming together, the world coming together with Americans, we opted for vengeance, lashing out in multiple directions. Some of it was almost certainly necessary. Other parts were, to put it generously, ill-informed. Many voices called for decisive action, but only some were heard.

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I’ve recently been listening to Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. In one chapter, he bemoans the decline of the public intellectual and their replacement by “thought leaders.” The university-based academic is out of fashion. Liberal elites, he notes, have instead taken to sponsoring and nurturing their own brand of idea people, who tend to offer feel-good theories that are utterly non-threatening to elite privilege. The ultimate manifestation of this is the TED Talk–a tidy, easily digested thought morsel with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Everyone can look pensive and concerned, while emerging unscathed.

In the process, I’ve been reminded once again of Tom Nichols’s The Death of Expertise, in which he explores the decline of social regard for subject matter experts, a phenomenon that is more noted in conservative circles, but extends to all parts of contemporary society.

In the era of fake news, we have turned hard against experts. The reasons vary, and some harbor a fair share of validity, but the effects are the same. We don’t know who to believe and we’re more than willing to “both sides” the hell out of a dispute between a credentialed expert and a keyboard jockey.

Public health experts have been sounding the alarm for weeks. But we–and I include myself firmly within that–weren’t listening. There was, after all, a lot of competing noise. Now that we are acting, late as it is, will we enact policies that are in keeping with best practice, that are purely oriented towards our wellbeing? Will we listen to voices calling for actions that seek to capitalize on the crisis?

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Today, I walked out of Grafton early. A storm hit the area last night, dropping snow in the hills, and a final misting persisted through the walk’s first two hours. Near the end of town, a public health center had a message board with a very short statement: “It’s not too late…” Down the road, a church projected a short message of its own: “Don’t panic, pray.” On this Sunday morning, nearly every church parking lot was filled to capacity.

I arrived in Clarksburg just after mid-day, grateful for an easy walk after a grueling four-day stretch. I strolled over to the nearby Kroger. The salad section was well stocked. They were overflowing with vegetarian protein options. 

And yet, the toilet paper was long gone. Large yellow signs announced restrictions on how much milk and bread could be purchased.

West Virginia still doesn’t have a known coronavirus case. Yet. And I’m still walking. For now, at least. And when I’m not walking, I’m sequestered, along, social distancing as much as possible.