As beautifully defined by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, trail magic describes “acts of generosity in [the] wild and primitive setting of the Appalachian Trail [which are] often received with a heightened sense of wonder and gratitude by hikers.”

Trail angels are those who exhibit extraordinary generosity and kindness by providing trail magic for hikers. They include people out day hiking, people local to the trail, former thru-hikers, and simply people who want to involve themselves in the AT community but for whom hiking is not really their thing.

Due to my lack of real research, this was a phenomenon I arrived on the trail completely ignorant of. As such, encountering it quite positively blew my mind. I cannot begin to express how much magic there was. Innumerable rides offered when hitching in and out of town, and so many meals and drinks that I devoured with voracious relish.

The following is a selection of the magic I received through the trail’s first half (the 1,100 miles south of the half-way point, Pine Grove Furnace). Much to my chagrin and shame, I do not know the names of many of the places. More egregiously, the names of these most magnificent angels have long since slipped my mind.

But I do remember how they made me feel, and how positively they shifted my perspective about the world.

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I think it was the third day on the AT. I’d just come over Blood Mountain, a gnarly, steep and well-tracked section of trail. There were hundreds of day hikers out. It was a Saturday and something like 20 degrees celcius (albeit with snow still on the ground).

I stopped at the top of Blood Mountain, to eat a tortilla wrap in the sun. I spoke with a family who had young kids, and they gave me an energy gel packet. On the way down I spoke with a troop of Boy Scouts, and they were absolutely floored to have met a thru-hiker in the flesh.

I came across a family, stopped on the end of the mountain. Their two sons – probably fifteen and eighteen – had a kind of emo vibe. Prototypically alien to the trail, they actually looked extraordinarily at home, sat in a hammock they’d erected between two trees. Their Dad asked if I was thru-hiking, and after I’d answered in the affirmative, passed me a miniature bottle of Jameson, and the ever-present “Happy Trails”.

Descending off the back, one arrives at Neals Gap, the first real pit stop on the AT. There’s a tree on which are strung hundreds of boots, as there is an outfitter there (that must make millions). They sell pizza too, and ice cold Gatorade. A road dissects the col, bringing up tourists from the town below.

A couple pulled up next to me, and gave me a cream-filled chou bun, far bigger than my head. They said they had got it from a German-model-village down in the valley somewhere. I had no idea what they were talking about. But man was it delicious.

…

The following day I met the archetype of trail magic. Bob, a man of fifty, had a few years before been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. He’d never been hiking before, but feeling desperate and hopeless went for a walk over Blood Mountain.

Whilst on the mountain, God came to him and spoke to him. God said, “Do not worry Bobby, everything will be alright. I will take care of you and cure your cancer. In return, I’d like you to go and look after the hikers”.

Bobby’s cancer was indeed cured, and Bobby did indeed go to help the hikers.

Every other weekend, for the entirety of the thru-hiking season, Bobby and his wife Betsy set up camp at a parking lot that dissects the trail. Their friends often joined them, and together, they built a trail magic set up that was quite simply astounding.

Coffee, tea, hot chocolate; cucumber, tomatoes, and quinoa salad; limitless snack bars, of every variety, and potato chips I could have sworn were glowing orange. They had camping chairs for hikers to sit in, blankets for our knees, and encouraged us to stay as long as we liked. Most amazing was Betsy’s homemade cream cheese pound cake. As sublime as it was rich.

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Freshgrounds… He needs a whole article (or five) of his own. To be brief here, he is the GOAT of trail magic. He has many thousands of social media followers, and every year receives thousands of dollars in donations from kind people on the internet – “Feed a hungry hiker” – with which he does just that.

In his van – the Leapfrog Cafe – he follows the first ‘bubble’ of hikers up the Appalachian Trail. It really is a story for another time, but we (Little Engine and I) ended up seeing Freshgrounds a lot of times. He just kept on popping up. He was a cool guy.

And his food was just to die for.

The first morning I met him, I think we were still in Georgia, and the temperature was way below zero. Around the corner we came, and there he was, cooking eggs, bacon, pancakes and sausage over a flame. He made coffee, using (you guessed it) Freshgrounds, and fried everything in gallons of butter.

A secondary fire was placed for warming our legs, and he’d make you as many plates as you so desired. For a hiker, who is hungry and cold, and existing solely on ramen and tuna, such pleasures exist in a realm beyond heaven.

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Hiking out of Hotsprings, NC, I was by myself in the woods. I think some of my buddies I was hiking with at the time were an hour ahead. The trees were still barren, the woods still grey, and I hadn’t seen any signs of civilisation for a while.

I came round the corner, across a dirt track, and saw a sign pointing down a hidden driveway that read, “The Southern Cookie Lady”. What in the name of Hansel and Gretel?

Curiousity combined with cookie got the better of me, and against my better judgement I walked down the drive to explore. Outside this house was a tray, in which were stacked trays of cookies in paper bags.

A dude, probably sixty five, walked up the mosquito-screened door frame and just looked at me. After a few awkward seconds, I smiled, and he smiled, and we got talking.

His wife, dubbed The Southern Cookie Lady (I think there was a Northern one first) bakes 3,000 cookies every year, just to pass out to hikers walking by.

If I remember correctly, they didn’t even know they were moving onto the AT after they bought the house. When they realised, his wife started baking cookies and she hasn’t stopped since. I guess that’s why I didn’t meet her too.

He seemed only, maybe, 64% enthused about the whole thing. But he seemed happy his wife was happy, and told me I could fill my water bottles up around the back.

The cookie was, as you’d expect from someone who makes thousands a year, impeccable. A snicker-doodle, that seemed to be a fused block of white chocolate, caramel, butter, and more sugar. Woof.

…

Trail magicians would work their magic, but the time always came for them to go home. In their place, they often left a cooler filled with snacks or drinks. I always thought this was such a cool thing to do.

There is an unspoken kind of transaction with trail magic. Of course, no money is ever exchanged, but you are providing people with conversation, excitement, stories, and a proper good glug of adventurous spirit.

In leaving a cooler filled with chocolates and cereal bars, they don’t get to see your smile of elation, or how you run down a switchback to get their faster. But they do get to drive home, knowing that they have made someone’s day regardless.

Thank you, Red Panda, and all the other beautiful trail magicians who did the same.

…

I spent a week (or two?) hiking with two of my favourite ever hikers – Blink, and 109. Everyone prior to catching them had been mile-obsessed. How far, how fast, how close. They taught me a new way of hiking.

Slow. Many breaks. Infinite trail side quests. Always a reason to stop and look around, not just once in a while. 109 was Floridian, and lived a life before the trail that no one would ever believe had you not met him. Blink was Tennessean, and had a compassionate and yearning soul.

Now into Virginia, and 550 miles in, we followed the trail through a living museum. There were buildings, machinery, gardens preserved exactly as they were 150 years ago. At the end of this walking time capsule, was a building called the 1894 Schoolhouse, of which we had heard the owners allowed thru-hikers to sleep in.

An unbelievably cool place to spend the night. We pushed the school benches together, laid out our sleeping pads, and spent the evening laughing and talking and laughing some more.

In the corner was a huge “hiker box”, filled with trail magic, as well as other things former passing hikers had left. In there I found some Sea to Summit Wilderness Wash, which cleaned me and my clothes in rivers and streams, for hundreds of miles ahead. One man’s trash is another man’s come up.

I think I also found a dehydrated chilli con carne, which usually retails for $12. Absolute gold dust.

Magic on magic on magic. The angels who trust hikers to respect the space. The good folk who left food in the hikers box. And the hikers who had passed on what they didn’t want, rather than discarding it. Unreal.

…

A few days later, Blink and I stopped at a roadside diner, in the mountains, that sold burgers and milkshakes and fries. There was no one in there, but we ate and we ate and we ate.

On coming outside, a couple pulled up in a super tricked-out camper van. They were spending a few days in the mountains of VA, and had stopped by at a Dollar General to get some food for any hikers they saw. Cool.

They just said to take what we wanted, from a bag filled with various shapes and textures of sugar.

The (warm) iced coffee was phenomenal. As were the PK hydrate electrolyte mixes. Thank you.

…

A couple hundred miles earlier, I first met Blink on a freezing night in Tennessee. Lil’ Engine, Blink and I slept in a shelter on a ridge, and began a skip down into Damascus, VA, where we ended to take a “nearo” day.

On our way down, we came past two older men, and stopped to say hello. Quickly we came to understand that they were not together – the older one, at least seventy, had began his hike just the day before. His gear was not warm enough, he’d spent the night shivering and not sleeping, and he was hypothermic.

The other gentleman had found him, and had called 9-1-1, who had dispatched a team to come up. We asked how we could help and this gentleman asked if I would carry his pack down.

It weighed at least 60 lb ( double that of mine) and the next 6km were a struggle. On our way down, we passed mountain rescue, who were wheeling up a giant wheelbarrow with which to take the man down in.

There had apparently been a delay in them arriving, as it was a Sunday morning and the man had been found on the NC-VA border. The two separate emergency departments had argued back and forth who should go, with the eventual solution being they all came.

As the trail flattened out into the town, we were greeted by five fire trucks and forty firemen. Happily, we found out some days later, the man survived. We gave his bag to the emergency services, and walked the last mile into town.

Walking down the main road, we found the most American diner I have ever seen. The place was heaving, with it being a Sunday morning and all the locals coming for breakfast after church. We found a table and set to ordering. Coffee, grits, eggs and biscuits. Real Southern food.

As we finished, bellies full and our hearts singing, we went to pay, but the server said it had already been paid for. We asked who had done so, and smiled very broadly whilst feigning protest. Eventually, she pointed behind her notepad at a table of four ladies in their eighties who were sat right beside us.

We smiled at them, and they smiled back. So many words said and not a single mouth opened.

…

Words inevitably fall sinfully short when I try to express the presence that Lil’ Engine was during my time on the Appalachian Trail. We met on the fifth day and (apart from a couple of weeks in Virginia) hiked the entirety of the rest of the trail together.

She was a peerless trail companion, and incomparable friend. We were a two-person tramily, immeasurably supportive, patient and understanding of one another. One can never know the counterfactual of how an alternate timeline would play out, but I know with certainty my AT experience would have been impoverished without her by my side.

This particular day, we’d hiked up and over and through three enormous ridges and two enormous valleys. Virginia was baking, and we were absolutely blasted by the heat. I think we did something like a 22 mile day. Coming off the final ridge, as the sun was beginning to dip, I was talking to Navigator, a Russian professional poker player who had retired at the age of 30. Another cool guy.

The three of us came around a final corner, into the valley floor, and found this man sat on a log.

He was, like so many others, a difficult vibe to read. He was sat drinking beer, and we began talking. He said he lived just up the road, was asking a bunch of questions as to where we were staying, and I remember the heckles rising on my neck as I tried to work out his deal.

His deal, it quickly became clear, was that he was an intensely sweet man. Jason, that was his name. I cannot remember his story, but he had the air of someone who has seen far too much.

The four of us drank a beer together, he wished us happy trails, and we wished him a good life.

By complete coincidence, I saw him two days later in a gas station. He gave Lil’ Engine and I a ride down the road to the post office (and, of course, back) in the flat bed of his pick-up truck. He spoke deeply and fluently about theology and politics, and I remember feeling intensely that he would someday find peace.

…

I hitched a ride into town one morning, from a guy in a red speedster, who was a young guy working in construction, who’d plan was to revolutionise the U.S. healthcare system. He was impressive.

The town was Glasgow, VA, and I’d heard that there was a shelter in the town itself in which you could charge your devices. How promising.

I arrived, and there were three homeless men occupying the shelter, who seemed to live there on a semi-permanent basis. They began stirring once I turned up, and the sketchy feeling of the whole thing didn’t abate. I said hi, they said hey, and I began helping them build a morning fire.

Later, a policeman turned up and told us to put it out, but he was friendly, and they were friendly to him. It felt like a scene which probably plays out every morning.

We spent the rest of the morning talking. I gave them some food I had, and they gave me their stories. We spent the rest of the morning talking and smoking rolled up cigarettes from a 1lb bag of pipe tobacco. They were generous, and kind, and kind of kooky, but very cool too.

A unique kind of trail magic. But no less special than all the others.

…

By mile 800 both of my £100 Black Diamond trekking poles had snapped. I wasn’t happy. They sent me a brand new pair, under their amazing warranty, but I did not know that would be the case at the time.

Just after doing so, I camped on the banks of a river. As I was going to sleep, a man who was with his dog shouted across “Hey bud! I’m parked up across the road and I’m making pancakes in the morning”.

He had thru-hiked the trail a few times – he couldn’t have been older than thirty five – and he was wise.

His pancakes were phenomenal too.

…

I was hiking through the Shenandoah National Park, with three men called Doordash, Doser, and Fortune. They were older and I loved hiking with them.

Fortune seemed to have dodged death and disease in miraculous ways, many times over, and since than has been thru-hiking America’s great trails. You can find on YouTube.

Doordash, probably 50ish, had spent his life in the coastguard and had retired somewhere tropical. He had been doing really slow miles at the start of the trail, until Doser – probably 50ish, a hugely successful software entrepreneur, also recently retired – picked him up, and they’d been crushing huge miles ever since.

One day, Fortune got picked up by some trail angels who’d been following him, to give him a day of comfort and luxury (I think they went to a brewery, where there was live music, and ate burgers). He’d been ahead of us by a few hours, and the three of us came across this sign and this magic. Far out.

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One day I found an apple on a post. It was dew-soaked, and the most cripsy, delicious, perfect, gigantic apple I ever ate. I had seen a raccoon for the first time only ten minutes before. That was a good day.

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Also in the Shenandoahs, we came across some guys who parked up there every year (for three days or so) and fried smash burgers for thru-hikers. They were awesome, and so was their food. I think I had four burgers.

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Perhaps the most surreal trail magic I ever received. I was hiking up the back of a mountain (still in Virginia – you can’t escape Virginia) when I went to overtake two day hikers.

A man and a woman, probably early thirties, they were perhaps the two most attractive people I’d ever seen. And they embodied the stereotype of LA-living, Erewhon -shopping, new-age West-coasters who are clearly enormously wealthy.

We started talking. They said he was a photographer, and they were climbing to the top of the mountain to take some naked photographs of her. They felt so out of touch with anything I’d call reality, and they were absolutely delightful. Inquisitive, absurd, passionate, and inadvertently hilarious.

When I eventually went to leave they completely emptied their day packs, giving me all of their food. Phenomenal.

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The most serendipitous trail magic we ever stumbled upon.

Little Engine and I were hiking with a guy called Dr. Jones (because he was from Indiana). He was my age, super fast, and insanely athletic. I was great to hike with.

We were hiking together one morning, whipping up a real pace, and enjoying the vast expanses of trillium (these beautiful little flowers, always with three leaves), that were blooming before us.

Looking to stop soon for lunch, we debated back and forth about making a 0.6 mile trek off trail to a shelter (i.e., adding an unnecessary mile to our day). Jones eventually buckled, and the two of us and Little Engine began the walk down to the shelter.

Completely in the middle of nowhere, we had zero anticipation of what we found. Thirty or so first-generation South Korean Americans, who lived in Washington D.C. and had formed a hiking club. Every couple of months, they’d drive into the country, walk for a few hours, and then cook an absolute banquet of a Korean barbecue over an open fire.

They welcomed us over with open arms and treated us like family. We laughed together, and although spoken communication was limited, we all spoke the universal human language of smiling and delighting in food.

Pork belly, kimchi, seaweed and steamed rice. They fed us again and again and again, and when we eventually left, they filled plastic containers with even more. No words for such magic.

…

In Pennsylvania, I stayed in a church hostel, in a very small town a few miles off the trail. They had converted the back room into a bunk room for hikers, and charged a very low nightly rate.

These people were amazing. I’ve long been critical of organised religion, but this represented the best of it. In a town where there is nothing, and very little to occupy one’s mind with, this church forms the backbone of many people’s lives.

They meet together here, at least four times a week – Wednesday is a cook up, Friday is a Christian film – and absolutely love it. They are unwavering and unquestioning in their faith, completely faithful believers, but that is not the reason they come and meet so often. They come for the community, and the company, and the friendships.

I ate with them, spoke with them, and laughed with them. They didn’t open the hostel to make profit – they opened it because it was a nice thing to do, in line with their religious beliefs, and interesting for the many who would call that church their home.

I think I stayed there for two nights. In the time I did, they gave me the best slice of pecan pie I ever ate, as well as a completely new understanding. Proper magic.

…

We were deep into PA, Lil’ Engine and I. I think it was early in the afternoon, and we still wanted to do a bunch more miles. The half-way point was reachable before sunset if we pushed hard.

This was when we came across a hut in the woods.

There were two guys there, who’d driven up in a truck, with an older lady. One of them had thru-hiked years before (both the AT and the PCT) and had rented this little house out for the night, to come and do some trail magic with his best mate and mum.

Any plans for more miles that day went swiftly out the window.

They’d brought a frisbee golf net, dozens of burgers and many more beers. As we sat around the fire, talking through the afternoon, more thru-hikers caught up.

There were four of them, all whom I had not met before, but all who became significant characters in my Appalachian Tale from the weeks and months here on out.

Lighthouse, so named because he’s very tall and once wore a headlight in the evening. The other Frodo – actually, there were many more, but we were the only ones of each other we met. Oz, a guy dressed in all red who had a proper funky handlebar moustache. And Moonshiner, the most gloriously Southern woman I ever met, who was named as such because her family were moonshine criminals during prohibition.

We all had a truly merry time together. Laughing, and listening, and sharing stories and experiences. A roaring success.

Towards the end, our “host” decided he wanted to drive into town, despite being completely wasted. I think the motivation was both “get some more beers” and to “find some college girls”.

He crashed off a bank as he was reversing out, and we spent the next half hour rescuing the car.