Day 1: The Road to Damascus

My first day on the trail began not at dawn, but the afternoon before. Clayton dropped me off at Logap, Tennessee around 2PM, about eleven miles shy of the Virginia border, giving me just enough daylight to make it up to Abingdon Gap Shelter. I strung up my hammock and settled in, but sleep came in restless waves — an hour or two at a time — until pale morning light finally crept through the trees.

It was chilly. The thermometer hovered somewhere in the high thirties, maybe low forties, and that was reason enough to pull the quilt tight and drift off again. I didn’t rise for good until 8AM, coaxed awake not by an alarm but by the sound of hikers passing just a few feet from where I hung.

The morning was easy, almost meditative. Five miles of ridge walking toward the Virginia-Tennessee border, the kind of hiking that lets your mind wander while your legs find their rhythm. The forest came alive with native wildflowers, and among them, a dozen or so lady slippers — delicate, improbable things tucked along the trail like little surprises. The canopy shifted as I moved — rhododendron and mountain laurel crowding the understory, eastern hemlock standing tall and dark, sassafras throwing its odd mitten-shaped leaves into the mix.
I reached the state line around 12:30, and that’s where the day took its first real turn. Waiting there was Melissa, an ATC Ridge Runner working a 73-mile section up toward Mount Rogers. She snapped my photo and we talked for a while about her work on the trail — the kind of quiet, essential stewardship that keeps places like this intact. Then came my first trail magic of the trip: a few strips of homemade beef jerky, made by a friend of hers down in North Carolina. It was simple and perfect.

The descent into Damascus brought one more good encounter. I fell in alongside a couple from Rhode Island — Jack and Sue, recently retired Navy veterans. We traded stories about service, about the particular world that military life creates, and about their son, currently serving in the Marine Corps.

I rolled into Damascus right around 3PM, trail dust and all, and walked straight through town to Lady Di’s. The B&B is run by a former AT thru-hiker, which means the host understands exactly what you need when you come through the door — and exactly what you don’t need, which is anyone making you feel out of place for smelling like the woods. I’d stayed here during my 2023 hike and never seriously considered going anywhere else. Some places just earn that kind of loyalty.

A shower first. Always a shower first. Then the easy, unhurried business of settling in and letting the day’s miles drain away. It didn’t take long before I’d fallen into conversation with some of the other hikers passing through — the way you do at places like Lady Di’s, where the shared experience of the trail makes introductions almost unnecessary.

By evening we’d formed the kind of loose, spontaneous fellowship that the AT seems to manufacture out of thin air, and we wandered over to the Old Mill restaurant for dinner together. Good food, good company, and the particular satisfaction of a meal eaten after a full day on your feet.