Led by Faith to Conquer the Appalachian Trail

By Bill Irwin , Burlington, North Carolina

As appeared in

November 8. We'd been on the trail for two and a half hours that freezing morning when I had to stop to thaw out my feet. Orient, my dog, curled up for a quick nap and Dave McCasland, my companion for this final tough stretch in Maine, heated water for cocoa. I yanked off my hiking boots and rubbed my throbbing toes.

There are basically three types of Appalachian Trail hikers: the ones who walk on it just to say they've been there; the ones who hike it in modest stretches; and that driven breed, like me, who try to "thru-hike" from Georgia to Maine, a grueling 2,143 miles of unforgiving terrain that defeats 90 percent of thru-hikers who attempt it. And those were hikers who could see.

For the thousandth time since I left Springer Mountain, Georgia, on March 8, I asked myself what in heaven's name a 50-year-old blind man and his Seeing Eye dog were doing out on the trail. All I wanted now was to reach the end at Mount Katahdin, less than 200 miles away, so that I could go home and stop hurting.

But we had to keep moving if we were going to cover the remaining 15 miles to the town of Monson, our ambitious goal for the day. Yesterday we'd made only 5.3 miles. Ice on Moxie Bald Mountain had given me and Orient fits. I was a mass of scrapes and bruises.

I laced on my boots and called for Orient. "We'll never make Monson at this rate," I grumbled.

Late in the afternoon we reached the confluence of Bald Mountain Stream and the West Branch of the Piscataquis River. Rain and snow had swollen the waters to a torrent. Dave said the river was divided into three branches, each about 30 feet wide. I could hear the roar of the rapids not far downstream, where the three branches joined.

I unharnessed Orient and told him to find his way across. He was a good strong swimmer. "See you on the other side, boy," I said, patting his flank. With arm's linked and backpacks loosened in case we had to lose them in a hurry, Dave and I inched into the icy water, using our hiking sticks for stability. We managed to reach a marshy island safely. But halfway across the next section, waist-deep in the surging current, Dave lost his footing and went under. I heard him sputtering and thrashing. An instant later I was swept off my feet and sucked downstream.

I bobbed to the surface, clawing at the water. Dave had managed to reach shore and was yelling to me. I heard Orient whining anxiously. But I was making no headway toward their voices. In desperation I went to the bottom of the stream and tried to pull myself along with my hands. Each time I shot up for a gasp of air, Dave would frantically try to guide me. Yet his voice was getting farther away and the thundering rapids closer and closer.

I dug my fingers deep between underwater rocks. I was literally crawling underwater. Finally, with my strength about to give, I thought I sounded close enough to grab Dave's outstretched hand.

"Come on, Bill!" he screamed. "Right here!"

I lunged toward the steep bank but all I grabbed was air. I began slipping back into the current and downstream again. Suddenly I hit a branch and held tight. Dave was able to clutch my arm and pull me through the mud and onto the riverbank, where I lay gasping and choking. Orient ran to my side, quaking with fear.

We needed to get warm fast. We had an hour till dark and less than that before hypothermia would begin playing its strange tricks on our minds. We forded the last fork then struggled up a long ridge for half an hour before Dave found a spot to pitch camp. Progress was slowed by our numb fingers, and there was not enough dry wood at hand to build a fire. Finally we got the tent up and ate some food, calories our bodies desperately needed to generate heat.