smoky mountain rain
I’ve walked hundreds of miles in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park over the years, and it seems there is always rain. I remember huddling under this tree in Pretty Hollow Gap back in 2010 on a long overnight slog. Boy, were we soaked! Ironically, we walked right by this same tree under rain clouds on our long walk across America.
There’s an old song recorded by a country singer, Ronnie Milsap, in 1980 that I have long appreciated because I can relate to it, not the sappy part about missing an old flame, but the part about what falls just west of my own backyard: Smoky Mountain rain keeps on fallin’ . . . Many times over the years, I have found myself somewhere in that Smoky Mountain rain, and uncomfortably wet. And though frustrating, it was never not uniquely memorable and fascinating. Yes, I have a love/hate relationship with the Smoky Mountain rain and a love/hate relationship with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And from the moment we took that first step on our long walk across America out at Cape Hatteras back in March, we knew the Smokies were standing in the way and that there would ultimately be no avoiding a difficult walk somewhere in the Smoky Mountain rain.
Yes, I have experienced real adventure in the Great Smokies over the years, and I am recalling things even now as I type. I have climbed over 1,100 mountain peaks in my lifetime, but one of the first was in the Smokies, the Chimney Tops (3,557 ft.). It was a hike at dusk with my dad, my brother, and my cousins back in 1992. I thought about that while Bethany and Eric were walking a stretch of US 441 almost three weeks ago. I was sitting at an overlook with the S.A.G. vehicle (i.e. Support & Gear) and flew my drone up high to get some sweet shots of those crags. I remember my dad wasn't too thrilled about us bushwhacking the steep ground out to the lower chimney way back then. And we had to come down in the dark with no lights. Believe it or not, I actually found a couple of old photos from that outing.
I got this shot of the Chimney Tops (3,557 ft.) with my drone along The Long Walk several weeks ago. I still can’t believe we bushwhacked that traverse back in 1992 when I had little clue what I was doing.
Here’s my cousin and I are traversing out to the lower of the Chimney Tops (1992).
My brother, my cousins, and I are back at the car. The Chimney Tops are in the background, one of the first peaks I ever climbed. (1992).
My last hike before I took my first ever hike in the Himalayas was in the Smokies. In 1999, my wife and I walked the Appalachian Trail for a bit up near Mt. Collins and Clingman’s Dome, just a few days before we left for Kathmandu. It was a little rainy that afternoon but a fine and memorable weekend with my parents before we had to say some hard goodbyes.
Jamie and I pause on the Appalachian Trail near Clingmans Dome just a few days before leaving for Kathmandu, Nepal (1999).
In the summer of 2000, we came back from the Himalayas; and I went right back to the Smokies with some buddies to backpack part of the Appalachian Trail, west from Newfound Gap. Our plan was to hike out to the shelter on Silers Bald. Just a few weeks prior, a couple of bears had killed a woman at that shelter. Her husband had left her there alone to go fishing nearby, and when he came back, he found her backpack on the ground and two bears mauling her body. It was horrible, and it was the first recorded incident in history of a black bear killing someone in a federal park or reserve in the Southeast. We sat up talking about that at Silers Bald in 2000, and it made us restless. So, we packed up our things and walked all the way back to Clingmans Dome in the dark and in the rain. Of course, standing on the summit of Clingmans Dome in the middle of the night is a fond memory of itself. I hated that Smoky Mountain rain, but I loved that moment.
A Backpacking Trip to Silers Bald (2000). I used that pack for the first time to hike up to Annapurna Base Camp and then later to Everest Base Camp in the Himalayas. I ended up using it for many years. I’m not that skinny any more, but I do wear the same pant size :)
A Memorable Moment on the Summit of Clingmans Dome in the Middle of the Night (2000).
Years later, I finally earned my official South Beyond 6000 patch and certificate from the Carolina Mountain Club. I completed that quest with a 27-mile one-way hike in the heart of the Smokies, a romp that included a nasty bushwhack up Mount Chapman and a walk over the summit of Mt. Sequoyah on the Appalachian Trail, the last of the “official” 6,000-ft. peaks in the Southern Appalachians that I needed to cross off my list. I guess I could have camped out there and made it easier, but I didn’t want to bother with the hassle of carrying all the gear, so I just walked 27 miles in a day. When my buddy dropped me off at the Pin Oak Gap trailhead early in the morning, I discovered that I had left my hiking boots at home. All I had were some slip-on moccasins. I hiked that entire 27-miles in slip-on moccasins that I had a hard time keeping on my feet, so I wore two pairs of socks. At the other end, my buddy hiked in 3 miles from Newfound Gap to bring me an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. I’ll never forget that, or that long day in the Smokies. In fact, that is one of the few times hiking out there that I never saw a cloud in the sky or felt a drop of that Smoky Mountain rain. Sheer profundity! Not long thereafter, I got my certificate and patch in the mail, marking that 27-mile day—May 25, 2008. At the time, I became one of only 167 completers of the Southern Sixers recognized by the Carolina Mountain Club. Moreover, I learned and accepted long ago that no one really cared :)
My South Beyond 6000 Certificate
Of course, earning that certificate necessitated several adventures in the Smokies before the infamous 27-mile day hike. The year before, I had shattered my cell phone in an unassailable windfall near the summit of Mt. Guyot and then spent an endless night trying to sleep on the slopes of Tricorner Knob, enduring a horrendous downpour and the cold front that almost instantly turned all that rain hanging in the trees into pristine rime ice. I literally watched Smoky Mountain rain turn into Smoky Mountain ice. I did, however, bag Marks Knob on that trip, one of the hardest of the Southern Sixers to access. Two weeks before that rime ice nightmare, summiting Luftee Knob and Big Cataloochee were bushwhacking nightmares in the Smoky Mountain rain. I shudder now ever thinking about that.
The sad part about both of those 2007 ventures into that remote part of the Smokies is that I literally walked right by Mt. Hardison on the Balsam Mountain Trail. I could have easily left the trail and bushwhacked a quarter-mile through the brush to tag that summit, but I didn’t because I didn’t care about “unofficial” Sixers in 2007. Later, the Carolina Mountain Club’s definition of what makes an “official” Sixer in the Southern Appalachians started to bug me. They so pompously define that a true Sixer must have a 200-foot rise from an adjacent gap OR a 3/4-mile distance from a neighboring Sixer. And yet, there are at least four peaks that meet this criteria in North Carolina which are excluded. I started pondering (usually gets me into trouble) the simplest definition of a mountain peak, an obvious closed contour along a high ridgeline, and then discovered that there are 104 of these closed contours in the South, many of which were considered worthy of measurement by Arnold Guyot during his pioneering surveys in the mid-1800s. And some of these “unofficial” Sixers actually boast names commemorating persons of historical significance with regard to early exploration and establishment of public lands in the area. Forget about my little South Beyond 6000 patch. There were 63 of the 104 Sixers closed contours that I hadn’t yet climbed, at least half of which required serious bushwhacking. So began another quest, and yes, this quest again forced me back into that Smoky Mountain rain.
It took me a little more than two years after receiving the above certificate to summit all but one of the 104 closed contours in the South above 6,000 ft. At the time, I actually got paid to write an article about these forgotten summits for the September 2010 edition of Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine. Unfortunately, the editor added a caption to the photo of me in that article which read “Jesse Boyd has summited over 400 peaks worldwide [in 2021, it’s more than 1,100], including all 103 Southern Sixers.” Yes, I had summited 103, but that wasn’t all. There are 104! I was still lacking Mt. Hardison, a peak I had walked right by twice long before in one of the remotest corners of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I really, really didn’t want to slog back out there, most likely in the Smoky Mountain rain.
I still have a copy of that 2010 Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine with my article, “The Forgotten Summits.”
Five years would go by before I finally slogged back out there to tag Mount Hardison, but before that, I did have a few more adventures in the Smokies. In December of 2013, while training for a climb of Mt. Aconcagua, the highest peak in South America at 22,841 ft., I climbed nearly 5,000-ft. up Mt. Leconte from its base with a 60-lb pack (I actually stuck books and a jar of pennies in there) and then made a hugh loop out the Boulevard Trail to the Appalachian Trail and back out to Newfound Gap. I think it was an 18-mile day with a 60-lb pack. Needless to say, I walked out in the pitch dark, a little spooky, especially considering the strange disappearances that have happened on that very stretch of trail over the years. That obviously wasn’t my first summit of Leconte, one of my favorite peaks in the Smokies. The first was back in 2004 with my dad and my brother. I was real proud of my dad that day. It’s a very steep 5-mile climb up that mountain from the Alum Cave Trailhead, and we did it together in the Smoky Mountain rain. Man, it was wet that day.
I actually found a couple of old photos from that 2004 slog with my dad and my brother up Leconte in the Smoky Mountain rain.
It’s funny, as we plotted our route across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for The Long Walk, it became evident that we needed to slog that route up Leconte from the Alum Cave Trailhead, that same brutal stretch of trail I had done with my dad and my brother in 2004 and with a 60-lb pack in 2013. There was no way I was doing that again. So, that leg fell to Bethany and Eric, and Carter Phillips of Missouri who joined us yet again for another week. They actually had some good Gospel encounters that day: two hikers from Indiana, a couple from St. Louis, Lester and his wife from Poland, and Brian from Florida. Moreover, they stocked two backcountry shelters with Bibles and Gospel materials. It was a long 26-mile stretch that ended that night at Smokemont Campground. I had driven up that evening and met them at the trailhead with a couple of hot pizzas. And guess what, unlike me on Leconte, the hiked all day without a drop of that Smoky Mountain rain, very rare.
Bethany, Eric, and Carter on the Summit of Mt, Leconte, The Long Walk (2021)
Eric left this message on the Icewater Shelter Log, along with a Bible and some Gospel materials. We love stocking backcountry shelters with God’s Word.
Let me go back to 2015 for a moment. I finally decided to slog out to Mt. Hardison and bag the last of the 104 closed contours above 6,000 ft. in the Southern Appalachians (there is actually only one more east of the Mississippi, Mt. Washington in New Hampshire). I had been itching to break my single-day hiking record of 27 miles, the aforementioned slog in slip-on moccasins, and I wanted to see if I still had it in me at forty years old. At the time, Eric was one of my martial arts students (now, he teaches martial arts and walks with us across America), and he was the perfect candidate for me to say: “Obey your sensei!” After a sleepless night in the car at Newfound Gap, we overslept and hit the AT at 6:15am. It was December 11, 2015. We stopped for ten minutes at Icewater Springs Shelter to brew up some Israeli coffee and for twenty minutes at Tricorner Knob Shelter to boil up some ramen. We also paused briefly to stock some shelters with Bibles and to take a power nap in a meadow as it got dark. Besides that, we never stopped walking. At 3:46pm, we stepped onto the summit of Mt. Hardison, and I became the only person in recorded history, at least as far as I can ascertain, to have climbed all 104 closed contours above 6,000ft. in the South. At the top, I actually made the number 105 with my hands because Mt. Washington in New Hampshire makes 105 closed contours east of the Mississippi River above 6,000 ft. I climbed that back in 1997 with my lovely bride on our honeymoon. Eric and I also had a dog there with us. He started following us not far from Newfound Gap and stayed with us all day. Sometime after 11:00pm, we walked into the parking lot at Cosby Campground where Jamie was waiting to pick us up. I broke my single-day hiking record from 2008 at 40 years old. We slogged 30 miles that day. Before heading home, I called the number on that dog’s collar and let the owner know we had him. Our faithful hiking pal got back to his home. And oh yeah, we did find ourselves somewhere in that Smoky Mountain rain a few times.
Eric at the Trailhead at 6:15am. He would hike 30 miles that day in the Smokies.
We hiked 30 miles in a day to tag Mount Hardison and only paused a few times, once for Ramen at Tricorner Knob Shelter.
The Summit of Mount Hardison (6,134 ft.) with my K9 Friend
Ok, I know I am doing a whole lot of reminiscing here that probably has you bored out of your skull, but just indulge me for a few more lines. I’ve been stuck at home with “you know what” since we came home from the walk real sick 11 days ago. I promise, I’ll get to the Smokies leg of our long walk across America.
In July of 2020, when everyone was hiding in their homes, we got restless and I started thinking about trying to break my 30-mile single day hiking record set when I finally bagged Mount Hardison. I also wanted to spend a little time in the woods seeking the LORD concerning what He would have us do in ministry in light of the travel restrictions. So, Bethany, Eric, Carter, and I (the same group of us who would attack the Great Smokies on The Long Walk just a few weeks ago) set off from our car at Newfound Gap in the rain at 3:45pm on a Friday afternoon. We enjoyed some dinner and a glorious sunset on the summit of Clingmans Dome. We tried to hammock for an hour at Silers Bald shelter, but it was too cold. At Spence Field, we abandoned the Appalachian Trail and made the huge mistake of trying to walk out to Fontana via the overgrown and seldom used Eagle Creek Trail. I think we had to cross that raging creek at least 20 times. At 10:45pm Saturday night, we walked up on our pastor friend’s truck at Fontana Dam. Brandon, my trusty old pal, was waiting for us. We didn’t get home until 4:30am on Sunday morning, but we all got up and made it to church and were blessed by a great sermon from Titus 2. My pedometer, known to be pretty accurate in the past, read 56 miles in 31 hours. I think we got 42 of those miles in 24 hours, shattering the previous record. Most importantly, we had some great witnessing encounters along the way, including a frightened woman from Michigan, a depressed widower from Kentucky, and some thru-hikers who invited us to join them around a fire for a few minutes at Jenkins Knob. When we were finally dropped off at our car back at Newfound Gap, I bade farewell to a faithful pair of Goretex gaiters that I had first worn on my first hike in Nepal back in 1999. They had been with me on nearly all of the hikes I have mentioned above. It was time for them to go. I left them atop a trash bin in the parking lot, hoping that one man’s trash would become another man’s treasure. Maybe they did. I wrote about this Smokies outing in greater detail in a July 31, 2020 ministry update: Consciousness of Duty Faithfully Performed. It’s a good read if you aren’t too tired already of my raging stream of consciousness.
This was 20 hours into that 56-mile Smokies slogfest. Once again, we found ourselves somewhere in the Smoky Mountain rain.
I trust my trash became another man’s treasure. Those OR gaiters had been faithful to me for many, many years.
After that long 2020 slog which saw its share of Smoky Mountain rain, I told myself I was done with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I had literally walked all over that place. I was done! And yet strangely, when the Lord began to put a burden upon my heart to walk across the United States in February of this year, it was the fact that He had given me strength to walk that 56 miles in 31 hours that convinced me in my oh-so-little-faith that He would give me the strength to walk from Cape Hatteras to the Pacific Ocean, one step at a time. I really did hope, however, that this long walk wouldn’t eventually put me back out there somewhere in that Smoky Mountain rain. It did. And by God’s grace, we literally walked clear across that national park. It took us five long days, and toward the end, we were starting to get sick.
In my last update, Hold Fast, I left off with Eric and Bethany entering the national park at its most southwestern frontier along the defunct Parsons Branch Road. The route took them into Cades Cove where the bumper-to-bumper traffic, though a nightmare, provided some great visibility for the cross and the flag. Cades Cove proved profound to me that day for two reasons. First, in all my years of walking and slogging in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I had never been to Cades Cove. How is that? Secondly, the madness we saw there on a weekday again confirmed how Google has completely destroyed so many once great places. Anyway, the Cades Cove insanity did allow for witnessing encounters with folks from New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, a couple of park rangers, and some road construction workers. Eric and Bethany even got to help a guy find his lost cell phone while offering him a Gospel tract. I drove all the way around from the Tail of the Dragon to rendezvous with Eric and Bethany in Cades Code so they could pass the baton to me. It took me 2 hours to get around the 11-mile Cades Cove one-way loop to find them. They were supposed to walk 8 miles and then pass it off to me. They ended up walking 16 miles before I could get to them. I finished the day off with 10 of my own, along the very busy and dangerous Laurel Creek Road. And oh yeah, there was some of that good old Smoky Mountain rain that day. By sundown, we were bushed.
The next day, we walked another dangerous stretch of road, the narrow and winding Little River Gorge, all the way out to US 441 near Gatlinburg and then up the mountain to the Alum Cave Trailhead, the infamous beginning of the aforementioned slog Bethany, Eric, and Carter would do the next week up and over the summit of Leconte. We had 13 encounters that day! There was Myron the Cherokee fishing in the river, Mark the hitchhiker, a young couple in a Tesla who stopped to ask me for directions, another park ranger, and folks from Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas City, Ohio, and India. Myron was a memorable encounter. I’ll never forget him. Also, I’ll never forget the smiling face of a little girl who passed by me with the cross, looking out the window of her parents’ car. She smiled at me with a haunting smile, her two front teeth missing. In that moment, my spirit was gravely pressed to stop and start praying in earnest for her. The LORD knows what that was all about. I don’t, and I don’t need to know. Maybe she was the reason I was walking that stretch of road in the Smokies that day.
Later, after I had gotten onto 441, I was really bored, and it was an uphill slog. I came upon a long stretch of wooden guardrail and decided to see if I could walk the entire stretch like a balance beam without falling off. It was about 3 feet off the ground, and I am sure I looked like a fool with my cross walking on top of that thing to all who drove by. That guardrail continued for more than half a mile, and it ended at an overlook where there were a group of bikers. I could either jump off and walk normal, appearing less of a fool, or I could try to walk atop that rail to the end without falling off, coming down right in the middle of those folks. I stayed on the guardrail and walked right off into their midst. Before they could break the silence of their strange glares, I interjected: “Hey, I wanted to see if I could walk that entire guardrail without falling off. I’m walking across the United States, and I got a little bored.” One of the ladies then asked, “Well, did you fall off?” I replied, “Not once.” From there it was easy: “Folks, I’m just a middle-aged preacher that God told to stop what He was doing and walk across this wicked country. America is in BIG TROUBLE with God . . . “ They listened and took Gospel tracts. I didn’t end up looking like such a fool after all. Well, maybe I did, but what’s wrong with being a FOOL FOR JESUS CHRIST (I Corinthians 4:10)?
Later that evening, I took those shots of the Chimney Tops with my drone, and Eric and Bethany walked the final leg of our 27-mile day to the parking lot at the Alum Cave Trailhead off US 441. The first half of the Smokies was done. On our drive home to rest for the weekend, we stopped to enjoy a glorious sunset of the very ridge we slogged on that 56-miles in 31-hours back in July of last year. How is it that we were back again? Here’s a little gallery from our walk across the western half of the national park:
Carter Phillips from Missouri came into town that weekend, and the next week, he joined us as we slogged across the eastern half of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. This involved a lot of remote trail, so we alternated days. Eric, Bethany, and Carter would hike for a day. Then, I would do a leg the next day, and so on. After four long days, we were back on the pavement in Madison County. I already shared about the Leconte slog that picked up right where we had packed up at the Alum Cave Trail. It ended with some pizza in the dark at Smokemont Campground.
The next day, I did a 16-mile leg on some really remote trail, from Smokemont all the way out to the Beech Gap Trailhead on the gravel Balsam Mountain Road. Some strange things happened to me that day. For starters, those woods were pretty spooky and lonely. For most of the day, I didn’t see or hear a soul. At one trail junction, I stopped to sit on a rock to eat some Crown Prince sardines, the good skinless kind from Morocco in pure olive oil—my choice snack for The Long Walk. Out of nowhere, a couple walked up. They looked very tired and were carrying basically nothing. I couldn’t figure out why they were out there, for the nearest trailhead was 3 miles steeply down to a remote dirt road, and there was nothing out in that area to really see. They were drenched in sweat, and the terribly out-of-shape woman was struggling. I tried to speak to them, but they just scurried by down the Enloe Creek Trail into the forest, moving very slow. I thought to myself, “I’ll finish up this snack and then head on down that trail. I’ll catch up to them and offer them a Gospel tract.” I should have passed them shortly thereafter, but I never saw those folks again. There was only one way to go from where they passed me, and there wasn’t really anywhere to get off that trail. They were nowhere to be found. I started to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing. I still think I may have, for it was in those moments that I started getting the very first inclination that something was up with my health.
It was dark in those woods where I failed to catch up with those slow-moving folks, and I started thinking about Dennis Martin (1969), Trenny Gibson (1976), and Pauline Melton (1981), the Great Smoky Mountains’ famous BIG THREE disappearances. All three vanished off a trail in a remote corner of the park, and not a trace of them has ever been found. Then, there was Geoffrey Hague (1970), Mark Hanson (1975), and Brad Lavies (1993) . . . all young men who were hiking with other people and suddenly disappeared from a trail in the Smokies. Eventually, there bodies were found in places far from the trail that defied explanation. Some really weird stuff has happened in that national park over the years, and the park service definitely covers up a lot of it. Of course they would. It’s all about the money and keeping the tourists coming. It’s almost funny how our wicked government in America wants you to fear things you need not fear and not to fear things you should. Anway, I started thinking about all those folks and how our route in the Smokies had or would pass relatively near where all of these incidents had happened. In fact, when Eric, Bethany, and Carter were hiking the route over Leconte, I had told them to pause on the Boulevard Trail and peer down the Walker Camp Prong drainage and try to figure out how Geoff Hague got off the very clearly marked Appalachian Trail in 1970, away from his boy scout troop, and ended up a mile down in that tangled ravine. A mile farther down, his pack, sleeping bag, and the stuff inside were found neatly arranged on top of a rock in the middle of the creek. Weird.
Anyway, that is the stuff that was going through my mind when I failed to catch up with those folks. It was distracting, and when I suddenly walked up on six backpackers, I scared them. Maybe it was the big Glock openly displayed on my hip that scared them. Either way, I really dropped the ball and didn’t seize the opportunity to share the Gospel. I failed and drug the remorse with me the rest of the afternoon. I spoke with the LORD about it and prayed that in spite of my failure, He would miraculously give Eric, Bethany, and Carter a witnessing opportunity that day with a Lost Sheep from the House of Israel. The likelihood of that was minute, but these three had taken the day to drive over to Pigeon Forge and visit a famous knife shop. They had a whole day to putz around while I slogged that 16 miles. And we had been praying for such an encounter for a long, long time. So, in my failure, the Holy Spirit pressed upon me to again pray for that. I did, and I kept on walking in the dark forest. Finally, I got them over the walkie-talkie as I got within a mile of the rendezvous trailhead. Eric came over the line and said, “You’ll never guess what happened to us today. We had TWO ENCOUNTERS with Lost Sheep from the House of Israel, not one encounter, TWO ENCOUNTERS.” I paused, bowed my head, and worshipped the LORD. That last mile was easy.
At our rendezvous point, they greeted me with a burger and fries. I listened as they shared about running into two Orthodox Jewish families at Newfound Gap, the same place where we started that long 56-miles in 31-hours slog last year, and the very spot where I left my gaiters for another man to find. They were killing time and then suddenly saw the black dress, the tallit, and the curls. Eric approached the first family, and they clearly heard the Gospel. The man even took a Hebrew Gospel tract. Then, they saw another family. Bethany and Carter approached them. The man wouldn’t take a New Testament or a tract, but he very clearly heard the Gospel. Both families seemed blown away by the testimony of these Gentiles walking across the United States. The last time we had a sure encounter with a Jewish person on this long walk was when Eric stopped at a gas station in Eastern North Carolina enroute to the starting line. There was one Ukrainian family near Mt. Pisgah that may have been Jewish, I’m not sure, and then there was that couple from Florida at the waterfall off US 129 that seemed Jewish, but again, I’m not sure. Finally, at Newfound Gap we could be sure! Praise the LORD. I forgot all about those strange Smoky Mountain disappearances and that Smoky Mountain rain that fell on me a little that day.
Bethany & Carter witness to a young Orthodox Jewish couple at Newfound Gap, right on the NC/TN state line.
Wednesday of that week, it was again Eric, Bethany, and Carter’s turn. From Beech Gap Trailhead, they walked almost 18 miles up to Laurel Gap Shelter and then out the Sterling Ridge Trail to the summit of Mt. Sterling, and then down the long Baxter Creek trail to Big Creek. Late afternoon, I met them there. Laurel Gap Shelter is creepy, and I have overnighted there a few times over the years in the Smoky Mountain rain. I don’t recommend it. Notwithstanding, our crew stocked that place with a Bible and Gospel materials. Just up from that shelter, they ran into six backpackers from Pennsylvania. As it turned out, it was the same six guys I failed to speak to the day before. They were on a multi-day backpacking trip. This time, they all heard the Gospel, gladly listened, and took Gospel tracts. Praise God for that. They also witnessed to another couple from Pennsylvania, camping atop Mt. Sterling, and two guys from Michigan who they helped find their way back.
At Big Creek, I took up the cross and walked the 3.5 miles out to I-40 at Exit 451 in Tennessee. Along that short stretch of road, I crossed out the Great Smoky Mountains National Park boundary. We had done it; we had walked clear across that park. Glory to God. I then saw an unexpected sign on the side of the road in the tiny little community of Sterling. We were literally walking in the footsteps of Francis Asbury, that old Methodist circuit rider from the era of the Second Great Awakening who logged over 275,000 miles on horseback over pioneer trails between New England and Charleston, South Carolina. More than 60 times, he had crossed the Appalachians in that same area preaching the same message we were preaching. I was humbled. When I think about those old frontier missionaries and circuit riders from America’s Great Awakenings, it’s clear that me walking across the United States with a S.A.G. vehicle is no big deal. I have it quite easy compared to those faithful servants of the LORD.
I was humbled by this sign near the northeast edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Even though we made it to I-40, we weren’t quite off the trail. There remained a 17-mile leg we needed to complete on the Appalachian Trail up to Max Patch Mountain. That would put us right on the border of Madison County, a rural NC county that God had put on my heart many miles back. We had to walk clear across the Smokies to get there. Bethany and Carter walked that last 17-mile stretch with me. We had a few good encounters that day, including two frightened girls at Groundhog Creek shelter and two brothers from New York who were backpacking a section of the AT. Mid-afternoon, the heavens opened, and we got dumped on. It was one of the worst bouts of Smoky Mountain rain I could remember in all my wanderings in those hills. And, that night is when I really started feeling bad. Little did I know that the Smokies would be leaving me with a parting gift, something I had avoided for more than a year, a year that involved more than 50,000 miles of driving and more than 1,000 miles of walking.
The next day, a Friday, we pulled together enough strength to walk down into Madison County from Max Patch Mountain. We saw those two brothers from New York again; that was nice. By early afternoon, I was hitting a wall. I thought about how long it had been since someone had offered us a cold beverage. It had been many miles, and I started praying for that. Later, Eric and I walked up on a man and his wife getting out of their car at a house along the road that had a big Confederate flag out front. I paused to warn them about the judgment that is upon our nation and our need for repentance and spiritual awakening. Jeff hollered to someone down on his front porch: “Hey, get these boys some bottles of cold water!” They were ice-cold. Jeff shook my hand, took a Gospel tract, and thanked us for what we were doing. Praise the LORD for answered prayer, even in the smallest of things. I told Jeff: “The Bible says that when a man gives a cup of cold water to a disciple of Jesus Christ, he will in no wise lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). It’s very true, my friends.
So, we finally made it to Madison County after a great week with Carter Phillips at our sides. He drove back to Missouri that weekend, and we all started feeling pretty sick. The next week, we tried to go back out in Madison County. The first day, we could only do 5 miles. The next day, we did 20, but it killed us. We all lost our taste and smell, and I have never experienced fatigue like that. We had no choice but to go back home and start chugging the Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, Zinc, and Quercetin. We have been recuperating at home ever since. Finally, I can smell again, and we are almost back to 100%. Jamie and Mindy, Eric’s wife, got sick too, but the LORD brought us all through without any serious issues. Now, we can go out stronger than ever, with that good NATURAL IMMUNITY.
Here is what is strange. I don’t know where we picked up the “you-know-what.” We were outside, had very few interactions with people, and we were mostly on remote trail that whole week. I wonder if those old Smoky Mountains were sick and tired of me after all these years. I wonder if those old mountains and that old Smoky Mountain rain wanted to leave us with a parting gift that we would never forget. I wonder if it might have been those strange slow-moving folks who passed me by in the middle of nowhere, the ones I never caught up with or saw again. Only God knows, but after all, a lot of strange things have happened over the years somewhere in that Smoky Mountain rain. Ask Ronnie Milsap!
Here’s a little gallery from our walk across the eastern half of the national park:
Here’s how the route has fallen out of late, including the section clear across the Great Smokies and over into Madison County at Max Patch (inside the yellow circle). Sometimes you have to go east to go west, and north to go south. And there is no such thing as “out of the way” when you are walking in the Spirit. I’m learning that the hard way.
Please continue to pray for us. I am really hoping we can be back out on the road on by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, picking up right where we left off in Madison County. We are all feeling so much better, not quite 100%, but getting there. And, this Fall weather has become so pleasant. Thank you so much to those who have showed care and concern as we have battled this sickness. So many have had it far worse than us, so I am definitely not complaining or comparing our trials to those much more difficult. I’m just thankful to God for trails that strengthen our faith and prove more precious than gold (I Peter 1:7). And, I’ll tell you something else. We eventually got sick with this virus, but I chose to live FREE since this thing all started. By God’s grace, we kept going to church, we drove more than 50,000 miles around the United States, and we walked more than 1,400 miles across North Carolina, not wearing a face mask for a single second and with zero inclination whatsoever to get a questionable experimental vaccine. And when I finally did get sick, as sick as I was back in 2009 when I got the swine flu up in Alaska, I found myself thinking just like William Borden of Yale, that faithful 25-year-old servant of the LORD who died of a terrible sickness enroute to the mission field in 1913. He wrote: “No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets.” I, too, have no reserves, no retreats, and no regrets. And, I’ll continue to please the Lord, live free, and defy tyranny.
I’m sorry this update is so long, but I really did have a lot of fun writing it. Thanks for indulging me. May the LORD bless you all, and may He have mercy upon our wicked nation. As for us, we will just keep walking and preaching.
If this walk across America and these testimonies are, or have been a blessing to you, please consider financially sowing into this difficult endeavor. We have some financial needs, gas has gotten real expensive, and anything you can give is a blessing that will be used faithfully and with account. All contributions are tax-deductible, and donating online via PayPal is very easy. Thank you in Jesus’ name. Learn more . . .
Come quickly Lord Jesus!
Jesse Boyd, just a middle-aged preacher who God told to stop what he was doing and walk across the United States