Alas, Neil Armstrong.

After traveling nearly a quarter-million miles to reach the moon鈥檚 Sea of Tranquility in July 1969, the Apollo 11 astronaut didn鈥檛 get much time to聽look around. His space suit was pumped up聽like an all-season radial. Grasping tools exhausted his hands in minutes. From inside his helmet, he couldn鈥檛 see his own feet. And the effort required to lope stiff-legged across the powdery surface guzzled the air and cooling water in his backpack, limiting his time outside the relative safety of the lunar module.

So it was that in man鈥檚 first visit to another celestial body, Armstrong and his crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, covered very little ground; the farthest either ventured from the lander was when Armstrong embarked on an unscripted jog for last-minute pictures and rock samples鈥攁bout 65 yards. All their travels would fit inside a football field, with plenty of room to spare.

The Apollo 11 crew earned an enduring place in the annals of exploration, and rightly so, not because of what they did on the moon, but because they were there, and there first. The courage it required, the precision it demanded, and the sheer boldness of the undertaking thrilled the world. The names of Erikson, Peary, and Henson have likewise stayed with us. Amundsen and Cook. Magellan. Marco聽Polo.

But the fact is, the greatest achievements of America鈥檚 lunar adventure came later, when people were聽no longer hanging on every word the moonwalkers spoke or following every step they took, on聽missions that were given comparatively little notice at the time and are recalled dimly today.

It wasn鈥檛 until the fourth moon landing, two years after Apollo 11, that NASA supplied an Apollo crew with the tools it needed to take real advantage of its presence amid the 鈥渕agnificent desolation鈥� of that forbidding, airless environment:聽A beefed-up lunar module capable of supporting three full days on the regolith. Redesigned backpacks that supplied air,聽water, and power for longer explorations. And the most transformative equipment of all,聽a spindly aluminum go-kart that folded like a business letter to fit inside the lander聽and weighed all of 78 pounds in the moon鈥檚 one-sixth gravity.

Its tires were made of wire mesh. Its seats looked like beach chairs. Its four electric motors聽together managed just one horsepower. Its floorboard was one-fiftieth of an inch thick, about the same as the slimmest wood veneers, and would snap under an astronaut鈥檚 weight on Earth. Yet the lunar rover鈥攐r, in NASA parlance, the lunar roving vehicle, or LRV鈥攗pended all expectations of what was possible in a brief visit to another world.

鈥淭hey were looking at how could the astronauts get the most bang for the buck鈥攊n getting around, in picking things up, in exploring,鈥� says Saverio 鈥淪onny鈥� Morea, who oversaw the project at NASA鈥檚 Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. 鈥淎 car came up pretty fast.鈥�

A couple of seconds passed before he added: 鈥淭hough it鈥檚 not a car. It鈥檚 really a spacecraft.鈥�

The post The Off-Roading Astronauts of Apollo appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Three people met in the Georgia woods. They were two young men and a girl not yet 18. They were a drifter and a pair who barely knew each other. They were, all three, green to the outdoors, new to the dragon-backed highlands near the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. One died in those mountains. A second forfeited any shot at a normal life. Just one of the three has outlived the story. Until now, 44 years after the fact, that survivor has shared it with few. Three people met in the Georgia woods, and this is what happened.

It begins with the girl.

A typical girl of the mid-seventies American South, in most respects. In love with her dog, her friends, and summer days wasted in adventure yarns and mysteries. In Jethro Tull records and card games and movie dates. In canoeing the pond out back of her family鈥檚 house in Sumter, South Carolina.

Sharper than average: Margaret McFaddin Harritt could dive so deep into books that the world around her disappeared, and she could apply the same focus to any task at hand. She finished high school in three years and turned 17 just days before arriving at the University of South Carolina.

She looked even younger than she was. But she was also a headstrong kid. Daring. Hungry for the new and exotic. South Carolina wasn鈥檛 much for counterculture in the fall of 1973, but she found a pocket of it a few blocks from USC in Columbia鈥檚 Five Points district. Hippie boutiques. Hole-in-the-wall restaurants. , which sold incense, New Age books, and roach clips. A new outdoor shop called the Backpacker.

Margaret found a job in Five Points, waiting tables at a popular restaurant, Capri鈥檚 Italian. Which is what she was doing one night in March 1974 when in walked tall, long-haired Joel Polson.

He was slender, fit, and wore shorts year-round. His mustache and goatee signaled that he was older than Margaret鈥攂y nine years, she鈥檇 come to find out. But otherwise he seemed an unspoiled child of nature, a guileless friend to all.

And from that first night, Joel talked nonstop about a great adventure he had in the works. He planned to hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2,200 miles of it. It would take months. And hey, he told her, you should come with me.

Margaret laughed off the idea. She鈥檇 just met him. Besides, she was no athlete鈥攕he hadn鈥檛 intentionally exercised a day in her life鈥攁nd slogging up mountains didn鈥檛 sound like fun. But Joel kept coming back, still talking up the trip. She ran into him at the Joyful Alternative, where he talked about it more. Before long, two thoughts began to crystallize.

One, she liked this Joel. Not in a romantic way; he was more buddy material than boyfriend. But she found that he was deeply interested in the world around him. He was relentlessly upbeat. Not least, he was generous: he wanted to pursue big, life-shaping experiences that he was eager to share.

And two, she would not be returning to USC in the fall. She felt out of place there, uninspired by her classes. She wasn鈥檛 sure what she would do.

Perhaps a long walk was just the way to work that out.

Margaret owed聽much to her DNA. She was fun-loving like her physician father, a hard-playing freethinker who friends called Wild Bill. And she was willful like her mother, whose childhood polio had not kept her from college and a career as a clinical pathologist, raising four children, and juggling a crowded social calendar.

Like both of her parents, she was intellectually curious. She devoured books on Eastern religions. And in their pages she detected threads that resonated with her鈥攖hat time is vast and human life short. Death would come for her, as it did everyone. Fearing it didn鈥檛 make much sense. Fear in general didn鈥檛.

The sum of all this: Margaret said yes. 鈥淚 can remember sitting in her front yard and her telling me about the trip,鈥� says Mary Jac Brennan, Margaret鈥檚 closest friend since first grade. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure I knew about the trail, but I鈥檇 never known anyone who did that kind of stuff.鈥�

In 1974, few did. The previous year, just 93 people completed a through-hike of the entire trail, and the feat did not yet inspire the public鈥檚 imagination. Margaret knew almost nothing about the AT. Still, in early May, she found herself 38 miles from its southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia, beginning their first full day of hiking.

They鈥檇 started their journey the evening before, at a road crossing at , but got such a late start that they were able to cover only a couple of miles, in darkness. Now Margaret got a first good look at her surroundings. In spring, the southern Appalachian forests are flooded with light (maples, oaks, and tulip trees are just beginning to bud) and wildflowers鈥攂uttercups and purple trilliums, toothworts and mayapples, the neat white radials of great chickweed. In every direction mountains form blue-gray ramparts against the sky.

It was stunning. But the view carried a price: the trail climbed steadily, unmercifully, and burdened by their overloaded external-frame packs, the unseasoned hikers felt every foot. It wasn鈥檛 long before Margaret had a blister forming on her heel. They paused to tape moleskin over it. About a mile on, they broke for lunch. They encountered a party of foresters armed with chainsaws, on the hunt for blowdowns, and stopped to chat. They rested once more a little farther on, and again after that.

Late in the afternoon, they were relieved to reach a long descent. At the bottom, a sign pointed the way down a 190-yard side trail to the . They鈥檇 covered just six miles but agreed: the day ended here.

Then as now, the shelter was a lean-to perched high on concrete pilings in a glade hemmed by a curving brook. There, under the hut鈥檚 gabled roof, they found another hiker already settled on the bare plank floor.

They must have made quite the first impression. Margaret had her hair in pigtails, looked barely into her teens, and was dwarfed by her enormous red JanSport pack. Joel wore a pith helmet, the headgear favored by olden-day jungle explorers, equal parts swashbuckling and absurd.

By comparison, the stranger was nondescript. He was a little older than Joel, by the looks of him, and much smaller鈥攆ive inches shorter and slight of build. He had a wispy mustache and horn-rimmed glasses. What remained of his receding blond hair was combed straight back and fell over his collar.

As she shook off her pack, Margaret asked his name. Ralph, he replied.

Were there clues that something awful was about to happen?

No. None that Margaret detected, anyway. Ralph appeared harmless, though certainly down on his luck, with the dark, desiccated skin of a heavy smoker who鈥檇 gone awhile without a shower. In the shelter beside him was a meager pile of gear: blanket, leather jacket, canvas rucksack.

After a few minutes of conversation, Margaret crossed the clearing to wash up in the stream. Joel sidled up close. He didn鈥檛 know that he trusted this Ralph character, he told her, keeping his voice low. Surprising talk, coming from him.

Ralph didn鈥檛 look like a hiker, Joel explained鈥攈e was wearing suede crepe-soled desert boots, and didn鈥檛 have any proper gear. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the shelter. They鈥檇 left their packs right next to the guy, he whispered. For all they knew, he could be stealing their stuff right now.

They hurried back to the shelter. Ralph hadn鈥檛 moved. Their gear was untouched. He watched as, a little chastened, they strung up a clothesline and hung their socks and T-shirts. They started a fire and cooked dinner, offering him some. He demurred.

As they ate, Ralph left the shelter and wandered into the trees, returning with an armful of wood for the fire. He made another trip for more. Went back a third time.

Well, maybe he鈥檚 all right, Joel commented to Margaret while Ralph was gone. He鈥檚 probably OK. Still, he told her, they should leave first thing in the morning. He鈥檇 wake her, and they鈥檇 get hiking straight away. They鈥檇 have breakfast when they were a mile or two up the trail to the north.

Margaret crawled into her sleeping bag not long after. Darkness had yet to fall. As she drifted off, the men built the fire into a fierce blaze. Neither said much.

She woke to Joel urging her to get moving. Margaret sat up in her bag. Morning had come, and he was already loaded up; his big green pack leaned against a tree outside, cinched tight. She watched as he walked to the stream, splashed water on his face, and doubled back toward the fire ring. At the same time, Ralph threw off his blanket and stepped out of the shelter.

She was lacing a boot when there came a loud, sharp noise, a blast, and when she looked up, Joel had dropped into an awkward crouch. His head rested on the fire ring. He was motionless.

Before Margaret had time to process the scene, Ralph was leaping into the shelter to stand over her. In his hand was an enormous 颅revolver.

Wait, what? 鈥淩oll over,鈥� Ralph said. 鈥淏e quiet.鈥� He tied her hands behind her back with twine. What had just happened? He ordered her to her feet, then guided her up the narrow path that led to the privy and into the trackless woods beyond. 鈥淚s Joel dead?鈥� she dared to ask.

鈥淣o,鈥� Ralph told her, 鈥渉e鈥檚 just hurt.鈥� He said it quickly.

鈥淐ould you pull him away from the fire ring so he doesn鈥檛 get burned?鈥�

Yes, Ralph said, he鈥檇 do that. He stopped her beside a slim hardwood, ordered her to sit on the ground, pulled her legs around the tree, and tied her feet together. He blindfolded her. 鈥淒o I have to gag you?鈥� he asked.

鈥淣o,鈥� Margaret replied. 鈥淲hat are you going to do with me?鈥�

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know,鈥� he said.

He walked off. Margaret sat on the forest floor, surrounded by the sounds of trees and birds, frantic. This couldn鈥檛 be real. She willed herself to calm down, to imagine that it was all a story, a fiction. She hoped Joel wasn鈥檛 badly hurt. Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen.

Footsteps. Ralph removed her blindfold, untied her, and led her back to the shelter. Joel was nowhere to be seen. She asked Ralph where he was.

鈥淚 got rid of him,鈥� he said.

Joel聽Eugene Polson: April 26, 1948 to May 9, 1974. Remembered today, when he is remembered at all, for his unfortunate place in history鈥攖he first documented murder on the Appalachian Trail.

In the decades since, seven other hikers have died in acts of violence on the footpath. Most of those crimes have attracted national attention, if for no other reason than the AT鈥檚 status as one of the safest places around.

A few southern newspapers in the days after. But the story soon faded, and today Joel Polson鈥檚 life and death are usually dispensed with in a sentence or two. Who he was, and how he passed the 26 years before that May morning, are such a blank that many mentions of him in print and online misspell his name Polsom.

This much is known: He was from Hartsville, South Carolina, a paper-mill town 60 miles northeast of Columbia. The youngest of three children born to John E. and Bonnie Tedder Polson, a mill worker turned jeweler and a farm-raised homemaker.

Joel was intrepid as a kid, into scouting, playing soldier. Then, when he was 13 or 14, he suffered a mysterious accident. 鈥淛oel climbed up a tree onto the roof of the garage, and he apparently fell down,鈥� says his brother, Johnny. Their parents, who鈥檇 been out for the day, returned to find Joel dirty and discombobulated. 鈥淲e never got a clear story of what happened, because Joel didn鈥檛 remember,鈥� Johnny says. 鈥淗e was thrown off by some sort of mental thing from that fall.鈥�

Whatever his condition, by the time he was able to return to school, he was two years older than his classmates. Even so, he seemed 鈥渃hildlike, kind of naive,鈥� a friend, Kenneth Krueger Jr., remembers. 鈥淣ot of the world. He didn鈥檛 see people as threatening.鈥�

He was also shy and nerdish, clumsy in his interactions. Photos from his high school yearbooks depict a bespectacled straight arrow with a mission-control haircut and a fondness for cardigans and chinos. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 have that many friends,鈥� his brother says. 鈥淎nd of course, talking to girls, he didn鈥檛 have any skills there.鈥�

Still, Joel was difficult to overlook at Hartsville High. He got into photography, and he and his camera became fixtures at every campus event. Classmates nicknamed him Flash.

That primed him for further involvement. By his senior year, he鈥檇 been active not only on the newspaper and yearbook staffs, but in student government, a slew of clubs, and the junior and senior class plays. He was president of the Photography Club, was a DJ on the school radio station, and worked the counter in the student store.

Flipping through the yearbook, you鈥檇 think that awkward Joel Polson was among the most popular kids in school.

At the shelter, Margaret was numb with shock. Joel was probably dead. It made no sense. The men had not said a word to each other that morning.

Ralph ordered her to eat and drink while he went through Joel鈥檚 pack. He asked whether Joel had any money. Traveler鈥檚 checks, she managed. Where? She pointed out where Joel stashed them. She had change in her pocket. She handed it over.

Pack up, Ralph told her. He led her back into the woods鈥攄eeper this time, 200 yards from the shelter. She asked whether he was going to kill her. 鈥淵ou really don鈥檛 have any reason to,鈥� she told him. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 do anything to you.鈥�

鈥淲ell,鈥� Ralph said, 鈥渘either did Joel.鈥�

He had her again sit facing a tree and once more positioned her legs around the trunk, binding her feet together. He tied her hands behind her back. He covered her backpack with leaves and wedged his own rucksack behind her as a backrest. I鈥檒l leave you here, he told her. I鈥檒l leave a note in the shelter saying where you are.

Ralph had brought Joel鈥檚 pith helmet along, and now he turned it upside down, filled it with water, and placed it beside her. He dropped a bag of granola in her lap. He had her demonstrate that she could reach both with her mouth. It could be that somebody will come in an hour, he said. Then again, it might be tomorrow.

This time he dispensed with the blindfold. Instead, he balanced Joel鈥檚 watch on a log so that she could read its face, then stalked off through the trees.

Margaret watched the sweep of the second hand. It seemed preternaturally slow. Minutes crawled by. She strained her ears, dreading the sound of footsteps, certain that if Ralph returned it would be to kill her.

After fifteen minutes, here he came. Being dead didn鈥檛 frighten her. Getting that way, she realized, did. She found herself thinking, with eerie calm: OK God. Here I come.

Ralph surprised her. I can鈥檛 leave you here, he announced. What if it鈥檚 days before anyone shows up? You鈥檇 die, and I don鈥檛 want that.

I didn鈥檛 want to kill Joel, he said. I just wanted his gear. I had to do it because he was such a big guy. But, he said, he had never 鈥渨hacked a chick before.鈥�

So you have a choice, Ralph told her. You can stay here if you want. Or you can hike out of the mountains with me. When we get to the next highway, I鈥檒l let you go home.

Margaret did not dwell on her options. She did not want to sit tied up in the woods. She wanted to get away from the shelter and out of Georgia, and yes, she鈥檇 be walking with Joel鈥檚 killer, but that was secondary to getting out of there.

鈥淯ntie me,鈥� she told him.

A few minutes later, they were packed up and headed back to the AT, Margaret in the lead, Ralph and his gun a pace behind. At the junction, they could have turned south, backtracking to a road less than five miles away. Instead, Ralph ordered her north.

Listen up, he said as they walked. I鈥檓 going to let you go. But if we run into anyone before we reach civilization, and you say anything鈥攐r do anything to signal that there鈥檚 something wrong鈥攜ou鈥檒l all die. And I鈥檒l kill you first.

After high school, Joel continued to hone his skill behind a lens. He landed pictures in the local papers and won first place at the 1970 Darlington Arts Festival. 鈥淚f he had lived, he would have been an outstanding photographer,鈥� his friend and distant cousin Myra Polson says. 鈥淚 mean, he would have been going to National Geographic.鈥�

Joel hiked frequently into a local arboretum to photograph flowers and the blackwater swamp at its heart. Perhaps the beauty he found there kindled his interest in the natural world, because during a stint at Hartsville鈥檚 Coker College, he immersed himself in 鈥渢rying to save the planet,鈥� Krueger says.

He took up cycling, too, and invested in a lightweight road bike he took on marathon rides across the coastal plain. Around 1970, he pedaled from Hartsville to Kent, Ohio, and a couple of years later, says his brother, he set out to ride across the country.

Joel鈥檚 trip ended in Texas. 鈥淗e got hemorrhoids,鈥� Johnny Polson says. 鈥淗e came back on a Greyhound with his bike.鈥�

Inevitably, his interest in the outdoors and arcane gear fused into a new passion: Joel started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

You set the pace, Ralph said. If you need to rest, stop. Anything you need, we鈥檒l do it.

His kindness chilled Margaret. She believed none of it. She was the only person who could link him to a murder. Surely he planned to kill her.

But for now she was still alive, and she recognized that staying that way meant doing everything he said, buying one minute at a time.

For nearly four miles out of Low Gap, the trail followed an old roadbed ruffed with ferns. On their left rose dark stone, bearded in moss and punctuated with small waterfalls. On their right the ground fell sharply away. Margaret expected at any moment that Ralph might shove her over the precipice or shoot her in the back and kick her down the mountainside. She was certain he鈥檇 do it. It made sense that he would.

She steadied her nerves by talking. She said it seemed like he was running from something and asked what it was. He鈥檇 been in and out of the pen, he replied. The FBI was probably looking for him.

He was preoccupied. He was wearing 颅Joel鈥檚 heavy pack, which was sized for a man with a longer torso. The straps carved into his shoulders, and he couldn鈥檛 get the hipbelt to ride comfortably. It was he, not Margaret, who needed to stop every few minutes.

They were resting not far into the hike when two men with chainsaws came into view, one of them the same forester she and Joel had spoken with the day before. Margaret panicked. This was no chance for rescue. Just the opposite: if the forester saw that she was hiking with a different man, she was sure Ralph would start shooting.

And in fact, the guy did notice. 鈥淥h yeah,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e saw y鈥檃ll yesterday.鈥� She held her breath.

He said no more about it. They couldn鈥檛 dawdle, he said. Their ride was picking them up miles to the south later that afternoon.

Ralph asked about the next road crossing to the north.

It鈥檚 a long way, the man replied. A good hike.

The men hurried off, unaware of their luck, leaving Margaret with a deepening dread that she and Ralph would spend the night in the woods.

Five years out聽of Hartsville High, Joel bore scant resemblance to the clean-cut kid in his old yearbook photos. He looked like a hippie out of central casting鈥攂eard, granny glasses, hair spilling past his shoulders and held in place with a headband.

But appearances aside, he was out of step with the Woodstock generation. He lived with his parents. He remained a quiet misfit. Though he was good-looking鈥斺�渂eautiful,鈥� Myra Polson says鈥攏o one recalls him having a girlfriend. 鈥淗e was just a friend to everybody,鈥� says a college buddy, Marguerite Ewing. 鈥淗e was happy to be by himself, and he was really happy to make other people happy.鈥�

He continued to dive deep into hobbies: He took a liking to bluegrass tunes and built his own washtub bass, carrying the unwieldy instrument wherever he went. He bought a fiddle, too. Family and friends never heard him play it, but it ranked high among his possessions.

In time, Joel moved to Columbia and was hired on as a night watchman at the Joyful Alternative. The post included a cot in the back, which is where he was living when he first walked into Capri鈥檚 and met Margaret.

By then he鈥檇 read everything he could find about the Appalachian Trail and was a regular at where he made an impression on the owners, brothers Lewis and Malcolm Jones. 鈥淛oel Polson was one of the most gentle persons I鈥檝e met through the years,鈥� Lewis says. 鈥淎 true gentle person, quiet and trustworthy.鈥�

He was also broke鈥攈e didn鈥檛 earn nearly enough to cover the cost of gear. All he had to offer was that fiddle. 鈥淗e said that if I would let him get some equipment and sign a note, he would leave the violin with me, and when he got back from his adventure he鈥檇 pay us back.鈥�

鈥淗e outfitted himself with a tent, sleeping bag, all the equipment he鈥檇 need,鈥� Lewis says. 鈥淎nd he went on his way.鈥�

The old roadbad聽ended, and Margaret now led Ralph over a narrower, more arduous path. It was studded with rocks and knuckled with roots, and it rode the knobby spine of a ridge high above the infant Chattahoochee River. She spurred their 颅conversation as they tackled a series of short but steep ascents. He told her he鈥檇 busted out of jail. She learned that he was born 鈥渦p north鈥� but had been 鈥渙ut west,鈥� up in the mountains. There he could scratch by with just a pocketknife. Not so in these southern Appalachians: here he felt out of his element. He wanted to get back west, which meant moving light and fast鈥攚hich meant stealing Joel鈥檚 gear.

The afternoon sun crossed the sky. The AT traversed several slides of jumbled boulders, and the hikers鈥� progress, never brisk, slowed as they picked their way across. Just beyond, they came to the , where they rested before descending a steep, 150-yard side trail to a spring.

After filling his canteen, Ralph pulled a trail map from Joel鈥檚 pack and was surprised to find that the next road crossing was less than three miles away. Even they could cover the distance by nightfall.

Joel asked many聽to join his hike鈥攆riends, acquaintances, and, as in Margaret鈥檚 case, near strangers. All but Margaret dropped out as the time to leave approached.

He arranged for his mother to mail-drop supplies and, miffed that the only available AT patch bore the legend Maine to Georgia, carefully embroidered his own reading GEORGIA TO MAINE. Margaret had never met a man who could embroider. She was impressed.

They refined their timetable: Joel would attend a fiddling convention in North Carolina and from there make his way to . In the three weeks before Margaret鈥檚 last exam, he鈥檇 bang out the trail鈥檚 76-mile Georgia section, then he鈥檇 tell her where to meet him and she鈥檇 take a bus from Columbia. They鈥檇 hike together from there.

One logistical hurdle remained. Knowing that her parents would never let her hike alone with a man, Margaret concocted a lie: she would be one of 15 college students Joel would lead on the trip. She enlisted him as coconspirator and introduced him to her folks in mid-April 1974.

Her father, an avid hunter, was excited by the adventure and evidently satisfied that Joel was fit to lead it. He bought Margaret the gear she鈥檇 need and snapped a Polaroid of her wearing her oversize pack. She looked tiny and impossibly young in the image鈥攕light, baby-faced, feigning hardy courage with one foot propped up on a chair.

The night before Joel left, he and Margaret stayed with her elder sister, Polly. Joel spread his sleeping bag on the kitchen floor. Polly鈥檚 young daughter had received baby chicks for Easter, and the bright yellow birds 鈥渄rove him crazy all night,鈥� Polly remembers. 鈥淗e was a lovely young man, and he made light of the fact that he slept with the baby chicks.鈥� In the morning, he was off.

A week later, he was back. Once again he鈥檇 developed hemorrhoids, and he鈥檇 made it only to Tesnatee Gap. He killed time while Margaret wrapped up her classes.

On Monday, May 6, the two left Columbia by bus for Atlanta. The next day they took another bus into the mountains and caught a ride to the trailhead at Tesnatee.

Change of plan,聽Ralph announced. He would not let Margaret go when they reached the road. He needed time to work out his next move, and he wanted her with him. They would hitch to the nearest town and get a motel room, and he鈥檇 let her go in the morning.

It was good news and bad. The good: Ralph might not kill her here and now. The bad: Ralph would kill her just the same. And first she might have to actually hole up with him in a motel.

They clambered out of the hollow, up a series of short, steep climbs, and then down the rocky, hourlong descent into . They heard passing cars long before they saw Georgia Route 75 through the trees. Ralph repeated his warning: say anything and 颅everyone dies.

A few minutes after they reached the blacktop, a young woman pulled over and offered them a lift. Once in the car, Ralph told her they had traveler鈥檚 checks but had lost their IDs. Did she know of a place that would overlook that?

She might, the woman replied. Nine miles south of Unicoi Gap, she stopped the car outside a restaurant in the north Georgia burg of Helen.

The name of the place鈥斺�斅璷ffered a clue to what set Helen apart. Facing the decline of its logging industry, the town had reimagined itself as a tourist draw: a storybook Bavarian village, its every building revamped with towers, chalet rooflines, and alpine gingerbread.

It was into this discordant setting that Margaret and Ralph now stepped. In the restaurant, with Ralph holding his gun a foot away, Margaret asked whether she could cash a $20 traveler鈥檚 check. Of course, she was told. Where in town could they stay? Just up the road, came the reply.

The Chattahoochee Motel was an unassuming place, with six rooms facing the road and its namesake river chattering fast out back. Ralph did the talking this time. He asked for a room, handed over $10, and signed the register Mr. and Mrs. Joel Polson.

Margaret entered their room with a fast-beating heart. She fully expected he would rape her. Just as likely, this is where he鈥檇 kill her. But once he鈥檇 closed the door behind them, Ralph was interested only in whether the TV carried word that Joel鈥檚 body had been found.

Nothing appeared on the local news. At a restaurant next door, they bought food and beer and brought it back to the room. They watched an Elvis Presley movie. Ralph practiced Joel鈥檚 signature, so he could cash his traveler鈥檚 checks. He told Margaret that if she wanted to keep a memento of Joel, she was welcome to go through his pack. She left it as it was.

She asked to take a shower. It did not give her the brief peace she鈥檇 sought: Ralph followed her into the bathroom, ushering a fraught moment. But he didn鈥檛 lay a hand on her, didn鈥檛 so much as look at her鈥攈e was there, it seemed, solely to keep her from climbing through the window.

You know, Ralph told her, I could tell you were scared when we were hiking. You kept turning around, like you thought I was about to shoot you. I almost gave you the gun just to calm you down.

It鈥檚 too bad, he said, that we didn鈥檛 meet under different circumstances.

If all this hadn鈥檛 happened, I could have really liked you.

Margaret drifted聽off, exhaustion overpowering her fear, as Ralph sat alert in a chair, the gun beside him. Though it might seem impossible, she slept through the night; it was well past sunup when she opened her eyes to find him still sitting there. They packed and walked to the Wurst Haus to cash more traveler鈥檚 checks, Margaret amazed by every new step he allowed her to take. The restaurant had no money in the till. At a gas station up the street, Ralph forged Joel鈥檚 signature, and they walked out with $20.

They returned to the Wurst Haus for coffee. He was still going to let her go, Ralph said. But he couldn鈥檛 think of allowing her to hitchhike home to South Carolina鈥攖here was no telling what sort of person might pick her up. So they鈥檇 find a bus station, and then they鈥檇 go their separate ways. Ralph had a map of Georgia and figured they could get a bus in Cleveland, nine miles to the south. They started through town, thumbs out. A car pulled over.

At Cleveland鈥檚 Trailways station, Margaret asked the man at the counter for a ticket to Columbia. Well, he said, from here you鈥檇 have to go to Atlanta first. But Cornelia, a town to the southeast, has a Greyhound station. You can catch an eastbound bus there.

They hitched another ride. The Greyhound station occupied a downtown storefront, and when Margaret and Ralph arrived shortly before noon, they found the door locked and a sign on the glass: Gone to the doctor. Be back afternoon.

They walked to a nearby bank to cash more traveler鈥檚 checks. After a quick lunch at a restaurant around the corner, they returned to the bus station, where the manager appeared and unlocked the door. Margaret bought a $10 ticket for Columbia. Ralph stepped up to the counter. He was still keeping Margaret at point-blank range, so he couldn鈥檛 very well hide where he was going: he paid $3 for a ticket to Atlanta.

His bus, due in first, was running late, so Ralph talked. He鈥檇 probably been stupid to let her live, he told her. He knew she鈥檇 go to the police and that the cops would be looking for a man with a big green pack. He counted on having a few hours鈥� head start.

I promise you, he said, that if you call the police as soon as I leave, and they鈥檙e waiting when I get to Atlanta, innocent people are going to die. I鈥檒l start shooting, and I won鈥檛 care who gets hurt.

You should write a book about this, he said. You could make some money.

Then his bus arrived. His pack was loaded into the cargo hold. He climbed aboard. Margaret watched the bus pull away.

She sat in the waiting room, awed that she was alive, scared that he鈥檇 be back, and wanting nothing but to get home to her mother. She sat, immobile, until her own bus arrived a short time later.

It was dark when the Greyhound reached Columbia. From a station phone booth, Margaret called her elder brother, who lived in the city, but got no answer. She called her parents in Sumter. No one picked up.

So she dialed the Columbia police. Someone鈥檚 been killed in Georgia, she said, and I need to tell you about it. Could you come get me?

The Low Gap聽shelter stands just within White County, Georgia. At 11:15 that night, the sheriff鈥檚 office got a call from a police captain in South Carolina relating that a teenager in hiking boots and pigtails had just told him what he鈥檇 later describe as 鈥渁 right weird story鈥濃�攖hat a homicide had occurred at Low Gap and that a body could be found nearby.

Sheriff Frank Baker summoned backup from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In the wee hours of Saturday, May 11, GBI special agent Stanley L. Thompson was roused from his bed and dispatched to White County. Well before dawn, Thompson joined Baker at the crime scene. The sheriff had 颅already found Joel.

He lay covered with leaves and sticks, across the stream from the shelter. His clothes were in disarray, suggesting he鈥檇 been dragged by his armpits. 鈥淭he subject鈥檚 head was in a plastic bag and the bag had been tied around his head with a piece of string,鈥� 鈥淭his was done apparently to keep the blood from being strewn around the area.鈥�

a .38-caliber bullet had entered Joel鈥檚 skull just behind his left ear, ripped through his cerebellum, and come to a stop beneath his scalp above and behind his right ear.

That was a break for investigators. They had the bullet.

. She was as confused as her listeners about one piece of the narrative. 鈥淚t was just strange that he knew the whole time that it would be because of me that he would get caught and all [but] was still letting me go,鈥� she said.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what his motive was or anything, but he was unbelievably kind to me. He really was.鈥�

While she gave her statement, Joel鈥檚 family and friends gathered in Hartsville for his funeral. Just after, his distraught mother had to be hospitalized.

A week after聽the killing, on May 16, the Atlanta Police Department received a telephone tip: a woman said she鈥檇 met a man matching the newspaper鈥檚 description of the Appalachian Trail murder suspect. She knew where he lived.

Agent Thompson and Sheriff Baker drove to Atlanta, where police obtained a search warrant for the man鈥檚 apartment. He wasn鈥檛 home, but inside they found Joel鈥檚 backpack, his clothes and camping gear, and a revolver containing four live rounds and one empty cartridge. Thompson waited inside for the tenant to return. Late that afternoon he did. 鈥淗e was just meek as a lamb, from what I remember,鈥� Thompson says. 鈥淗e had no choice, because I stuck a .357 right in his nose.鈥�

Police identified him as Ralph Howard Fox. He was 31, born and raised in Detroit. Like Joel, he was the youngest of three children in a solidly middle-class household. The similarities ended there.

鈥淗e started early on getting into trouble,鈥� his sister, Corrinne, says. In his teens, Ralph kidnapped a girl from a party he threw while his parents were away, she recalls. At 17, he was arrested for car theft, and again a year after that for breaking and entering. In 1963, when he was 20, he ran off to New Mexico with a teenage girl and was arrested for statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her name was Ann. He married her a few months later.

In March 1964, with his 16-year-old wife expecting their son, Ralph forced a Detroit high school junior into his car at gunpoint, then drove her 13 miles to a wooded lover鈥檚 lane in Troy, Michigan. An alert cop came upon them as he was tying the girl鈥檚 hands behind her back.

Ann divorced him. The state gave him 15 years, but he served only a fraction of that before he escaped from the Michigan State Prison in Jackson. Details of his breakout are lost鈥擬ichigan prison officials say his file was destroyed years ago鈥攂ut in October 1969, he was recaptured in Miami and returned to Jackson.

鈥淗e was never out of prison very long before the next thing happened,鈥� Corrinne says. Indeed, she says, while out on parole he broke into Ann鈥檚 apartment and lay in wait for her. When she walked in, he opened fire with a rifle. He missed.

Ralph eventually fled the state. He bounced around New Orleans for a while, then Fort Lauderdale, and later Atlanta. He stepped onto the Appalachian Trail for the first time five days before killing Joel.

Margaret picked him out of a lineup. He admitted owning the gun, which he said he鈥檇 bought on a Florida beach; it was later matched to the bullet taken from Joel鈥檚 head. He confessed to stealing Joel鈥檚 gear. He described tying Margaret up, returning for her, and their hike to Unicoi Gap. 鈥淚 was just trying all the time to keep her scared, you know,鈥� , 鈥渟o that she wouldn鈥檛 run for help or anything like that.鈥�

Ralph did not explicitly confess to murder, however, or explain just what had happened that morning at Low Gap. When Sheriff Baker asked him whether Joel was 鈥渁 friendly type of fellow,鈥� Ralph replied: 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 talk to him much.鈥�

Thompson: 鈥淒id you need the gear, the camping equipment and all that鈥攊s that the purpose?鈥�

Ralph: 鈥淣o.鈥�

Thompson: 鈥淒id you get into an argument, some kind of argument, or anything?鈥�

鈥淣o,鈥� Ralph told him, 鈥渏ust something鈥擨鈥檒l have to wait for a lawyer.鈥�

He said no more. When he was indicted for murder the following October, Ralph pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to life in Georgia State Prison.

Ralph Fox, a.k.a. Inmate D-21795, spent most of the next 17 years behind bars. But when his older brother died, in July 1991, he was granted a one-month reprieve to attend the Michigan funeral. That furlough morphed into parole, with his supervision transferred to Michigan authorities.

And so Ralph gained a tentative freedom, and he moved in with Corrinne in Lapeer County, Michigan, about 50 miles north of Detroit. He could have made a new start. He could have demonstrated that his behavior at Low Gap had been an aberration and that the mercy he showed to Margaret Harritt, while unsettling in its own right, was truer to his character. That in his middle years he was a wiser and better man.

At first it seemed he might. He came home deeply aged and depleted by prison. He was quiet, agreeable. 鈥淚 thought he had totally changed,鈥� Corrinne says.

But after seven months of liberty, he failed to appear at a meeting with his parole officer and didn鈥檛 turn up at home or his job. About a week later, on March 5, 1992, police were called to a muddy field in rural Lapeer, where they recovered the nude body of 29-year-old Diane Good of Detroit. She鈥檇 been strangled.

They also found evidence that a car had recently been mired in the mud. Canvassing local towing companies turned up a driver who recalled pulling a blue-gray Mercury Cougar from the field. Its owner had given his name as Ralph Fox.

Police issued a nationwide alert for man and vehicle. Two days later, Ralph was arrested in Skagit County, Washington, as he tried to break into a parked car. A Lapeer jury convicted him of murder that November. Ralph did not take the stand. His only statement on the matter came at his January 1993 sentencing. 鈥淚鈥檇 just like for the record to know,鈥� he said, 鈥渢hat I did not have anything to do with the murder of Diane Good.鈥�

Circuit Judge Martin E. Clements wasn鈥檛 having it. 鈥淢r. Fox, you were convicted of murder before in another state,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou are now convicted of two murders in your lifetime. I am satisfied that you pose a substantial risk to a free society, and that you should never be let out of prison.

鈥淓ver,鈥� he added. 鈥淔or any reason.鈥�

Thus it went. Some years after Ralph was again locked up, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and in June 2003 he was transferred to the state prison hospital. He died there the following month.

Corrinne has not been able to reconcile the 鈥渧ery soft-spoken鈥� brother she knew with the killer he was. The summer after he died, she and Ralph鈥檚 son took his cremated remains to a swinging bridge over eastern Michigan鈥檚 Rifle River and dumped them into the water.

By that time, traces of Joel Polson were becoming elusive. His parents were dead. Friends and relatives had scattered, and his simple, flat gravestone in the family plot provided no information beyond the dates of his birth and death. No marker bore his name at Low Gap or anywhere else on the AT. Of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photographs he took, few survived outside of the yearbooks he worked on.

His fiddle endured, however. When the Jones brothers back in Columbia heard that Joel had been killed, they were 鈥渏ust devastated,鈥� Lewis says. 鈥淲e went over to Joel鈥檚 funeral, my brother and I.鈥�

鈥淚 wanted to give them this violin,鈥� he says, but the Polsons said no鈥擩oel had made a deal with the store, which the family felt it should honor. 鈥淭hey said they would like me to keep it.鈥�

And he did, for more than 40 years. 鈥淚 had it refurbished,鈥� Lewis says. 鈥淎nd my granddaughter was interested in playing the violin, so I gave it to her.鈥�

She 鈥渟tuck with it very diligently for a couple of years,鈥� he says, then lost interest. If she did not resume playing, Lewis planned to get it back. 鈥淚鈥檒l always have that violin. It鈥檒l be in the family,鈥� Lewis said this spring. 鈥淭his is a special instrument.鈥�

Lewis didn鈥檛 know at the time that his granddaughter had quit playing for good and that her family had stashed the fiddle in the attic. That a leaky pipe had dripped water on it until the seams burst and the wood turned to mush. That it went out with the trash.

Three people聽met in the Georgia woods. One died there, leaving scant trace of his decent and well-meaning life. A second followed nearly thirty years later, with little but heartache to mark a squandered existence.

But this story ends, as it began, with Margaret. She turned 62 not long ago. She is married, with two children, three stepchildren, and two grandkids, and lives in southern Europe, where her husband was based when they met. Their hilltop home, fringed with palms, olives, and citrus trees, offers a sweeping panorama of rolling grassland studded with Bronze Age megaliths. She passes afternoons tending to an ambitious herb garden.

Her thoughts rarely wander back to May 1974. When they do, she can revisit those days with almost clinical detachment. 鈥淚鈥檒l explain to people that it almost feels like it happened to somebody else,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 not exactly accurate. It鈥檚 very much a part of me, but the whole thing is so surreal that it almost feels like it鈥檚 a movie.鈥�

More than forty years passed before she decided to share her story鈥攆irst with the , in 2015, and now for this article. Time has brought her little clarity about why it happened. Who steals a backpack by walking up to its owner and, without so much as a word, shooting him in the head? Who lets the sole witness get away? Why did Ralph handle her with such fraternal care when he鈥檇 brutalized others?

Perhaps even more, she is amazed by her own behavior. She had always assumed that if confronted with violence, she鈥檇 鈥渟cream and fight and get crazy and run away.鈥�

鈥淏ut a person does not know how you鈥檙e going to react in that critical moment until you鈥檙e in it,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 had this calm. Adrenaline鈥攚ho knows what it was? But I was calm.鈥�

鈥淚 am not a passive person. But I was passive then, and it probably saved my life.鈥�

The arc of that life has been a rebuttal to her two days with Ralph. Later in 1974, she got her own place outside Sumter and found work at an orchard, overseeing its production of tree seeds. The job, solitary and outdoor, appealed so much that in 1975 she enrolled at Clemson University and took up forestry.

She did a lot of thinking. 鈥淚 decided I鈥檇 start being and doing what I was supposed to,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 was a teenager hanging out, smoking pot, and doing the things you do at that age. Within a year or two of this experience, I had quit all drugs, all alcohol. I was much more serious.鈥�

鈥淚t was almost as if God took a big old branch and whacked me across the head and said, 鈥榃ake up. Don鈥檛 wait forty years. Don鈥檛 wait five years. Wake up right now.鈥欌��

Any other person terrorized in the woods might avoid them. Margaret went on to get her doctorate, which required several years in the tropical forests of Brazil. She joined the U.S. Agency for International Development, managing projects in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. She spent much of a decade in jungles. She was twice posted to Pakistan and worked in five former Soviet republics.

Once, years after he鈥檇 been locked up, Ralph mailed Margaret鈥檚 parents a copy of the Georgia State Prison newspaper he edited, and she worried that he knew their address. Another time, a friend remarked that killers in Georgia could expect to serve just seven years, and she was again anxious that he might be free to hurt her loved ones.

But those episodes aside, her hours with Ralph, certain that she was about to die, seemed to have inoculated her against fear.

Today, post-retirement, she continues to visit the world鈥檚 hot zones as a contractor with her old agency. 鈥淪he doesn鈥檛 mind wearing bulletproof vests and being delivered by Marine helicopters,鈥� her sister, Polly, says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not as though she鈥檚 throwing herself in the face of danger, but at the same time it doesn鈥檛 scare her.鈥�

Margaret herself is matter-of-fact about her life鈥檚 trajectory. 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 say I鈥檝e done anything all that extraordinary, but I have very much taken it to heart that I was spared for something,鈥� she says. 鈥淢aybe this experience helped me see that life is a fleeting moment, so grab it and go.鈥�

Most days, she is quick to point out, do not require bravery. She wakes up surrounded by beauty. She digs in her garden. She roams the countryside around her home.

Hiking out there is calming, restorative. A reboot. The light looks different in that part of the world. Everything is suffused with gold.

And the grasslands are wide open. You can see for miles.

Nothing is hidden.

Earl Swift () is the author of . He wrote about the wreck of a 颅tangier fishing boat in June.

The post The Stranger in the Shelter appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

That Monday opened with winds coming steady out of the east-northeast at 20 to 25, or kyowking, as they say on Virginia鈥檚 Tangier Island.

It鈥檚 one of many old and strange words used by the people there: kyowking, or blowing hard. A day unfit for pleasure craft and weekend sailors.

But April 24, 2017, was also a workday, and for 72 of the island鈥檚 watermen, that meant venturing out into the Chesapeake Bay to harvest its famed blue crabs. The people who came down to the docks that morning lived on a lump of mud and marsh about 12 miles from the mainland. It was, and is, one of the most isolated communities in the East, marooned from the rest of America by 18 trillion gallons of tempestuous water. Tangiermen had braved the bay鈥檚 moods since the American Revolution. They knew wind and waves.

So it was that at five o鈥檆lock that blustery morning, Edward Vaughn Charnock and his son, Jason, slacked the lines on Ed鈥檚 workboat, the Henrietta C., and chugged west from the harbor in the predawn dark. They motored out past the protection of the island鈥檚 low, crumbling shoreline, leaving behind a homeplace with traditions of long ago and a style of speech that harks back to Cornish settlers two centuries past.

They left behind a village of 460 residents, with small weatherboard houses and lanes no wider than sidewalks. A place without mobile-phone service or a resident doctor. A near theocracy of old-school Christians who don鈥檛 allow the sale of alcohol and believe themselves an anointed people, armored by faith against the hurricanes that often pass near. Rising in the gloom behind the Henrietta C. was the town鈥檚 water tower, emblazoned with a bright orange crab facing east and, to the west, a Gothic cross.

The Charnocks had little reason to think their faith would be tested that day, or that the hours ahead would call on Tangier Island鈥檚 proud traditions of courage and selflessness. They knew that the conditions, already brisk, were expected to sour鈥攖hat the afternoon spoke of wind, as Tangiermen say, and would 鈥渂reeze up鈥� to 30 or 35 miles per hour. But father and son planned to quit before the weather turned mean. They鈥檇 fish up 300 pots or so, more if they had time.

They鈥檇 fish up their pots and be home in time for lunch.

The is America鈥檚 largest estuary, a mixing bowl of oceanic salt water and the flow of the mid-Atlantic鈥檚 big rivers鈥攖he Susquehanna and Potomac, the Rappahannock and York, the James. It stretches 200 miles south from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to a gaping junction with the Atlantic at Virginia Beach. The bay鈥檚 Maryland waters are never so wide that the far shore isn鈥檛 visible. But near the zigzagging imaginary line that crosses the bay and marks the Virginia border, the Chesapeake broadens to 30 miles. It鈥檚 here, dead center, that Ed and Jason Charnock lived, and it was into the big water west of the island that they pressed that morning.

Ed Charnock鈥擡ddie Jacks to his friends鈥攚as cousin to most of his neighbors, and like them descended from a single family, the Crocketts, who arrived in 1778. Like most island men his age, he鈥檇 quit school in his teens to follow the water. He had since lived a virtually amphibious existence, chasing crustaceans prized for their sweet, juicy meat, from a village famed for catching more of them than anywhere else. No community in the bay is so identified with the blue crab, so economically bound to the small but com-bative creature, as Tangier.

At 70, Eddie Jacks looked like a character straight out of Coleridge: six feet tall and powerfully built, with a square jaw and a face lined and chapped by sun and salt. He was one of the most capable watermen on an island of experts, but he was shy and laconic, predisposed to spend his tight budget of words poking fun at himself. He joked that he was flat broke, near starving. He brushed off talk that he could think like a crab, claiming he was no wiser about the animal than when he鈥檇 started crabbing 54 years before. All he knew for sure, he once said, was that 鈥渟he鈥檒l run from you, and she鈥檒l bite.鈥�

Jason Charnock had grown up working summers and Saturdays with his father, and had been Ed鈥檚 full-time mate since graduating from Tangier鈥檚 K-through-12 school in 1994. Stocky and strong at 40, he lived with his wife and four young children in a toy-strewn house 400 feet from Ed鈥檚.

The Charnocks ranged far, farther than many a crabber, and they did today. They had their 425 pots arranged in six rows on the bottom of the bay. The first two ran in parallel lines near a submerged wreck about seven miles southwest of Tangier鈥攖he U.S. Navy鈥檚 oldest battleship, the Texas, later renamed the San Marcos and parked there in 1911 as a gunnery target. The rest of their pots were five miles farther southwest, near the channel used by big ships plying the bay to Baltimore, a dozen miles from Tangier and a long way from anywhere else.

Eddie Jacks and Jason were undaunted; they knew their business and drove a time-proven craft. The Henrietta C. was a classic Chesapeake Bay deadrise and, at 43 feet long and 13 wide, big enough to handle a choppy day. Like all of its kind, it had a small cabin positioned up near the bow, a long open-weather deck aft of the cabin, and steering consoles both inside and out, so a captain could control the boat while tending to pots. In profile it swooped from a high bow to a stern that rode low, just two feet off the water.

The Henrietta C. had been hand-built for Ed by one of his closest friends, Jerry Frank Pruitt. Pruitt never wrote down a measurement鈥攈e kept them all in his head鈥攁nd had built some of the strongest and most well-mannered wooden boats on the bay. Made of fir and southern yellow pine, the Henrietta C. was a visual song.

Ed had named it for his first wife, Jason鈥檚 mother, later lost to cancer. Twenty-eight years he鈥檇 had the boat, and he wasn鈥檛 one to baby it: he鈥檇 driven it hard, in all kinds of weather. The Henrietta C. had always been up for it.

It was just shy of sunrise when they reached their first pots and stepped into their oilskins. Ed, working the outside steering console, would sidle the boat up to a foam buoy linked to a pot resting on the bay鈥檚 floor, lean over the starboard side to snag it with a hook, and feed the line into a motorized pot puller. With a few seconds of spinning, the device would haul the pot to the surface.

Pot is a misnomer. They鈥檙e traps: wire-mesh cubes two feet to a side, with four tapering 鈥渢hroats,鈥� or funnels, opening to the interior. Crabs crawl through the passages to get in, but they can鈥檛 easily find a way back out.

Once a pot was aboard, they鈥檇 dump the catch, close and rebait the trap, and toss it overboard. In the minute it took them to putter 30 yards to the next buoy, they would cull the catch, sorting by size and sex. This time of year, the biggest males, or 鈥渏immies,鈥� would bring $100 a bushel.

They tried the nearest two rows first, close to the San Marcos. The results were disappointing. After checking 30 pots and finding few crabs, the men decided to head for the four outer rows, which sat in deeper water. On the way, they passed Paul Wheatley in the Elizabeth Kelly. He was Ed鈥檚 son-in-law, married to the eldest Charnock daughter, Kelly. Ed鈥檚 grandson, Jonathon, was his mate. Everyone waved.

Out by the shipping channel their luck improved. The pots came up loaded, and they filled one bushel basket after another. But as they worked their rows, the wind picked up. By midmorning it was blowing 25 to 30. It had a lot of fetch before reaching the Henrietta C.鈥攁 lot of room, unbroken by land, to push water around. To build waves.

The seas sprang to four feet. Spray blew off their crests; the wind swept cold over the boat, and the deck pitched under the men鈥檚 boots. It was becoming the kind of morning that islanders, prone to saying the opposite of what they mean, summarize with: 鈥淚t ain鈥檛 blowin鈥� none.鈥� The Charnocks stayed alert to the weather but kept to their work.

Another man of 70 years might have found a reason to stay ashore that day, and Eddie Jacks wouldn鈥檛 have had to look far for one. He was nursing a hernia, for starters. And then there was Annette.

Two years after Henrietta鈥檚 death, Ed married island-born Annette Pruitt Beatty. Living on the mainland since leaving for college in 1970, she had married a mainlander, raised three children, taught first grade, divorced. Then, after 36 years, friends set her up with the quiet, deeply religious Ed. Their courtship started slowly鈥攊t took him weeks to work up the nerve to call her鈥攂ut by their third date they were already talking about marriage. Annette had moved back, and they鈥檇 been together ten years.

Annette was Ed鈥檚 opposite鈥攄aring, outgoing, opinionated, with the laugh of an optimist and a fondness for dancing. She lured him onto his first plane ride, to Mexico, and talked him into a cruise around the Caribbean. She introduced him to fine restaurants and big cities; he told her he felt like Crocodile Dundee. The whole island thought she was good for him.

Annette wasn鈥檛 keen on Ed working in rough weather. But all who knew him knew that the man loved crab potting. Once, when he heard the Virginia Lottery was offering a jackpot in the hundreds of millions, he deadpanned: 鈥淚f I won that, I could buy a lot of crabbing supplies.鈥�

There was another reason Ed was inclined to take the boat out. Having raised four children, he understood the money pressures his son faced, and worried that if they stayed in, it might be a hardship for Jason. That was one of the reasons he鈥檇 put off surgery to repair his hernia鈥攖he Henrietta C. would be idle while he recovered.

So out they鈥檇 come, father and son, and the crabbing was good. By late morning they had fished up only two-thirds of their pots, yet the open deck was crowded with 36 bushels. At that point, the wind still rising, they decided to pack it in.

They set off to the northeast, against the building seas, Ed pushing the boat. It was slow going, especially with something like 1,400 pounds of crab aboard. They were halfway home, moving just past the San Marcos at about 12:45 p.m., when they noticed that the boat felt soft. It wasn鈥檛 quick to answer turns of the wheel; it seemed lazy, wallowing.

The Henrietta C. was taking on water. This in itself was no cause for alarm鈥攚ater finds its way into a wooden boat as a matter of course. Still, they needed to address it. With water in the hull the boat sat lower, which slowed it down, forced its diesel engine to work harder, and made it more susceptible to waves over the stern.

Jason guessed that they had taken on quite a bit. As they dived into troughs, he could sense weight shifting to the bow, driving it down. When they rode a wave up, he could feel the heaviness slide aft.

A workboat relies on two pieces of equipment to clear water from its bilge, the dark space below deck. The first is a bilge pump, which operates like a basement sump pump: tripped on by the presence of water, it runs until the water鈥檚 gone. The Henrietta C. had two of them, one on its port side, another starboard. The starboard pump had been busted for a while, but the port-side machine was working fine.

The second piece of equipment is an automatic bailer, a device with no moving parts. It鈥檚 essentially a short brass pipe, 1.5 inches across, that passes straight down through a boat鈥檚 bottom. The vessel鈥檚 forward movement creates a vacuum at the pipe鈥檚 lower end, which sucks water out and overboard. Bailers are capped when not in use, and usually reached via a hatch in the deck just aft of the engine.

Ed told his son to take the helm while he uncapped the bailer and kept it clear. A day鈥檚 crabbing dumps all manner of debris on the deck鈥攂its of crab shell, sea grass, splinters from wooden bushel baskets鈥攁nd some of it inevitably works its way through the deck and into the bilge, where it can clog a pump or choke the bailer. Ed opened the hatch, got on his knees, and reached almost shoulder-deep to unscrew the bailer cap. Most of his arm was in water.

In the cabin, Jason recalled the many times he and his dad had found themselves in heavy weather. They鈥檇 seen worse, for sure鈥攂ut not by much. The seas were running five feet now, and the marine radio crackled with watermen talking about how rough it was. One was Jason鈥檚 father-in-law, Lonnie Moore, an able and aggressive crabber headed for Tangier with his limit of crabs. Lonnie鈥檚 boat, the Alona Rahab, was also riding low under its load, and he was having to take his time crossing Tangier Sound, on the island鈥檚 east side. Rocking and rolling, the radio chatter went. She鈥檚 a-blowing out here. These waves ain鈥檛 big at all.

If you think it鈥檚 rough there, Jason radioed, you ought to see how nasty it is over this way.

Supposed to be even rougher tomorrow, someone said. Ain鈥檛 no way, Jason replied. You won鈥檛 see me out here if it is.

Out on deck, Ed still had an arm down the hatch. The bailer wasn鈥檛 pulling any water. Slow as they were moving, the pipe wasn鈥檛 creating a vacuum under the boat.

They knew what to do: turn from the wind, get up some speed, get the suction going.

It was counterintuitive, to steer away from home, but with the wind hitting them 鈥渞ight in the painter holes,鈥� as Tangiermen say, they were crawling anyway. Still, Jason hated the idea of surrendering all the progress they鈥檇 made, so rather than put their tail full to the wind, he decided they would run solid to it鈥攖urn to the northwest, with the wind hitting them abeam.

With Jason at the helm, Ed out on deck, the Henrietta C. swung wide and put its starboard side to the wind. They got up some speed. The bailer pulled water. Lonnie Moore, reaching the safety of the harbor, radioed: Are you OK?

Yes, Jason replied. Everything鈥檚 fine. We got some water in, but no concern. We鈥檙e going to run solid to it until we got it out.

For a while after that exchange, the going was smoother. The waves pounded a little less stridently on the hull as they labored to the northwest. They might get home late, but they鈥檇 see Tangier before dark.

Except that the Henrietta C. wasn鈥檛 clearing the water in its bilge, even as the boat gained speed. The bailer was working, sucking water at a furious rate. The sole bilge pump was drawing hard. But the flooding in the boat鈥檚 bottom was as bad as ever: Water seemed to be piling in, and the pipe and pump couldn鈥檛 keep up. What was going on? Where was all this water coming from?

It was then, as the boat slogged heavier through the chop, that Jason noticed something he鈥檇 never seen before: water was seeping into the cabin, collecting on the deck. He checked the windows. No leak.

It took him a moment to put it together. It was coming up through the floor.

With that the bilge pump died, and their situation shifted from inconvenience to emergency. Now the bailer was the only route for all this water to leave the Henrietta C., and it was clearly no match for the load.

Jason tried an emergency maneuver. He turned the boat away from the wind and opened the throttle wide. The Henrietta C. surged westward, running with the storm. So it ran, right up until the engine quit.

The deadrise fell weirdly quiet, the only sound the pounding of water on wood. Ed shouted from the stern: Jason, you better holler for somebody. And get your oilskins off. Take them off right now.

Eddie Jacks: nicknamed for a character on the old TV melodrama Peyton Place鈥攁 sinister character, which didn鈥檛 fit Ed in the least. He鈥檇 been raised in a household guided by scripture, had spent his childhood Sundays in the austere New Testament Church, a renegade splinter of the island鈥檚 Methodist majority. Even on devout Tangier, members of the New Testament flock were called

Holy Rollers.

Ed still went to church every Sunday, only these days he did so at Swain Memorial United Methodist, a grand old wood-frame structure that served a congregation dating back to 1807. He could quote Bible verses off the top of his head. Was known to say, 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 pay attention to those red-letter words in the Bible, there ain鈥檛 no need to worry about everything else.鈥�

His time on the water had reinforced his faith, as it is wont to do, for a Tangierman encounters nature at its capricious worst. He chases blue crabs from March to November, dredges oysters December through February, and braves rough conditions throughout. The Chesapeake Bay is shallow, with an average depth of only 21 feet, but its temper can shift from one minute to the next, and among those who work the shallow-draft boats suited to crabbing, its waves can inspire real fear. 鈥淵ou better know what to be afraid of,鈥� Ed once said, 鈥渙r you get drownded.鈥�

Coming ashore doesn鈥檛 completely safeguard the waterman from the bay鈥檚 muscle. Tangier Island itself is sinking, actually subsiding into the earth鈥檚 crust, as the water around it rises. Two-thirds of the island has washed away since 1850. Now it鈥檚 been whittled to about a mile wide by three miles long, most of that marshland that barely clears the tide. Most years the island鈥檚 edges recede by 15 feet or more. A 2015 study reckoned that the rising waters might well produce the country鈥檚 first climate-change refugees; its lead author thinks the island will probably be uninhabitable within 25 years.

So Tangiermen pray. On the Henrietta C.鈥�s cabin wall was a framed print of 鈥淐hrist Our Pilot,鈥� painted by a Chicago artist in 1950. It depicts a young mariner at the wheel of a sailing ship in the grip of a terrible storm. A ghostly Jesus stands behind him, one hand on the sailor鈥檚 shoulder, the other pointing the way to safety. The image is standard equipment aboard Tangier workboats, an acknowledgment that faith is sometimes the best protection a waterman has.

Sometimes it鈥檚 all he has.

In the cabin, water sloshed around Jason鈥檚 ankles. He tore off his oilskins and reached for the radio. He knew it was past workday鈥檚 end for most Tangier crabbers, who would have turned off their two-ways. Even if a few boats were still out, they were miles away鈥攁nd, with the storm raging, probably beyond range. Still, Jason keyed the mike. Does anybody hear this radio? he shouted.

No answer. Water swirled cold around his legs, creeping higher. Does anybody hear this radio? he yelled again.

A squawking voice: Yeah, I hear you.

It was Billy Brown, a Tangierman bucking the wind into Crisfield, Maryland, with his day鈥檚 catch of crabs. He was 16, 17 miles to the northeast. Amazing that he鈥檇 heard.

We鈥檙e in trouble, Jason told Billy. Taking on water, a lot of it. We need help. Better get ahold of somebody.

Billy, against a background of static: Who should I call?

Lonnie, Jason said. Call Lonnie.

He had no time to say more. The water leaped to his waist.

He heard his father鈥檚 voice from out on deck: Get out the cabin, Jason!

A thought intruded: the life jackets. There were two aboard, stashed in a storage space in the boat鈥檚 nose. Jason took two steps that way, spotted one jacket, reached for it. But just then the water jumped chest high, and the PFD slipped from his grasp. He felt around for it under the water, found a strap, pulled the vest close.

His father again: Get out the cabin!

Jason turned for the door. His first step sent him under. A floor hatch into the bilge had floated free, and he was in the hole. It took him a moment to find the hatch鈥檚 edge. He clambered back on deck, pushed for the door. In a second, no more鈥攏ot even time to take a breath鈥攚ater filled the cabin to the overhead.

Billy Brown was close enough to Crisfield to use his phone, and his call came into the Tangier Oil Company, a.k.a. 鈥渢he oil dock.鈥� A combination fuel pier and marine supply store on the island鈥檚 waterfront, it served as a clubhouse where watermen gathered after work to chew over crabs, boats, the weather, and wrongheaded state fishing regulations. On this afternoon, they鈥檇 come and gone鈥攐nly one crabber was on hand when Sandra Parks, working the counter, heard Billy鈥檚 report that the Henrietta C. was in trouble.

That crabber was Andy Parks, one of Ed鈥檚 closest friends. When Sandra told him what Billy had said, Andy was alarmed: If an experienced captain like Ed Charnock calls for help, you know he鈥檚 already done all he can do for himself. The situation had to be very bad indeed.

Andy grabbed the phone and called Ed鈥檚 daughter Kelly. Listen, your dad鈥檚 boat is taking on water, he told her. Is Paul home? Yes, she replied. Her husband, Paul Wheatley, the crabber who鈥檇 exchanged waves with Ed and Jason earlier in the day, had just come in from his boat.

Tell Paul he has to go back out, Andy said. He鈥檚 got to go help your dad. Andy鈥檚 voice was cracking. Kelly had never heard him so agitated. She thought he might be crying.

Down in the boat stalls lining Tangier鈥檚 harbor, Freddie Wheatley, first cousin to Paul, was about to step off his boat, the Cynthia Lou, when Jason鈥檚 call to Billy Brown came over the radio. He heard Jason鈥檚 plea for help, and he could hear Ed鈥檚 voice in the background. He was shouting, It鈥檒l soon be too late!

Freddie yelled over to Dean Dise, who was tidying up his own boat in the next slip. Eddie Jacks is going down, he said. Without further discussion, both men started their engines and threw off their lines.

Minutes later, Paul Wheatley and his son Jonathon arrived at the Elizabeth Kelly. They fired it up and headed out. Word reached Tangiermen aboard other boats around the harbor and they pulled out, too. Meanwhile, news of the emergency was spreading by landline among the island鈥檚 210 households.

It didn鈥檛 reach Lonnie Moore. Exhausted after eight hours of crabbing in Pocomoke Sound, Jason鈥檚 father-in-law had changed into pajamas and fallen asleep on his sofa, the ringer on the house phone switched off.

Springtime has always been rife with hazard for the watermen of the Chesapeake. The season lacks the abrupt violence of summer squalls, full of lightning and waterspouts, but many a March and April morning speaks of wind. The seas can build high. The water runs cold.

In conditions so unforgiving, minor problems cascade into major threats and can get away from the most experienced captains. 鈥淚鈥檒l be fine out there, even in six- or seven-foot seas, as long as everything works the way it鈥檚 supposed to,鈥� Tangier skipper Tommy Eskridge once put it. 鈥淏ut if my engine cuts out, or my rudder breaks, that changes all the rules.鈥�

So it was that veteran Tangier waterman Harry Smith Parks died one night in April 1989, after reporting engine trouble in his boat while motoring up the bay. Likewise, a fierce March 2005 nor鈥檞ester claimed James Donald 鈥淒onnie鈥� Crockett, a Tangierman who鈥檇 spent more than half a century on the water. Crockett left Crisfield in blinding snow and spray that turned to ice on every surface of his boat. Not far out, he disappeared without a trace.

As of April 2017, one living Tangierman more than any other could speak to the dangers of spring weather. Lonnie Moore, alone on his boat one day in April 1991, was underway at a good clip when he went to check something aft, tripped, and plunged head-first over the stern.

Tide and wind propelled him southward, toward the bay鈥檚 junction with the Atlantic. Numbed and befuddled by the cold, losing strength by the minute as he treaded water, he had no choice but to go with it. For two hours he drifted, until, hallucinating and unable to move his arms, he surrendered himself to death.

Then, in an occurrence that defied all odds, two Tangiermen making a surreptitious beer run to Crisfield happened to notice something afloat in the rough water, and swung around for a closer look.

On Tangier, Ed鈥檚 daughter Kelly, frantic to reach her younger sister Danielle, found her at the Tangier Combined School, where she was filling in as a substitute teacher. Jason鈥檚 wife, Loni Renee, also worked there, teaching special ed. Soon after Kelly spoke to the office, just before 2 P.M., the principal pulled Loni Renee out of class.

She greeted the news calmly. The Henrietta C. took on water all the time, and her husband and father-in-law knew how to deal with it. Between them they had 75 years on the water. They鈥檇 be fine.

Then she heard that no one had been able to raise the boat by radio and that the bay was in chaos. Her calm turned to worry, then dread, and finally panic. Unable to reach her father by phone, she sprinted the 250 yards to her parents鈥� house. By the time she burst into the room where Lonnie lay sleeping, she was winded and crying. Dad, she told him, Jason鈥檚 boat is sinking. You have to go out and look for him.

Lonnie was up off the sofa, throwing on his clothes, firing questions. Where were they? How much water was aboard? His daughter knew nothing, but Lonnie, like Andy Parks, had to assume the worst. He was out the door before Loni Renee caught her breath, running for his boat. Bring Jason home to me, she called after him. Please.

The Alona Rahab was tied up at the end of a long, curving dock. Lonnie had just reached it when Michael Parks, a bearish tugboater and the island鈥檚 volunteer fire chief, yelled to him from one dock over: You want me to get a pump from the firehouse?

No time for that, Lonnie hollered back.

Do you need help?

Yes, Lonnie said. Come on.

Michael leaped aboard as Lonnie started the boat鈥檚 diesel, threw off the lines. The Alona Rahab tore down the channel, nose high, and ran full throttle past the island鈥檚 western edge and into the storm.

Jason Charnock was underwater. More than anything he felt surprise: How could this have happened so fast? How could it be happening at all? He hoisted himself past the doorframe, kicked clear of the wreck, and broke the surface. His father was treading water a few feet away, thin hair plastered to his balding head.

The Henrietta C. was standing up on its tail, about four feet of its bow rising from the water, suspended there by air trapped in its forepeak. Jason was dumbfounded by the sight, shocked by the cold, unable to move. His father snapped him out of his stupor. Come on, Ed yelled, and he led the way, swimming to the boat. They crawled onto the cowl beneath the front windows, searching for handholds. Ed latched on to the bowline. Jason wrapped an arm around the stem.

The boat鈥檚 topside faced east, flat to the wind. Both men wore what amounted to a cool-weather uniform for Chesapeake watermen, who have not adopted the wools and polyesters favored by modern outdoorsmen鈥攃otton blue jeans, cotton socks, cotton underwear, cotton shirts. Ed wore an additional layer, a cotton sweatshirt. The air temperature was about 55 degrees, the water about 60. The Charnocks were soaked, and there was no way to gain cover from gusts that tore at them and doused them with spray, and from great wind-driven waves that crashed in, pounding them against the wooden decking. Hold on, Jason, Ed shouted over their roar. He put an arm around his son, pulled him close.

Lord, it was cold. Jason had never felt so cold. His wet hair, trimmed short, was like ice against his scalp. His neck and arms and hands ached. His shirt clung sopping to his back, and with each gust he was nearly robbed of breath. I ain鈥檛 going to be able to take this, his father said. A while later, he said it again.

Six miles from the nearest land, the Henrietta C. bobbed with the waves, and as it dropped into troughs a heavy, shuddering thud ran through the boat. I think she鈥檚 hitting bottom, Ed said.

They were in 40 feet of water. The stern was bouncing off the mud and sand on the bay鈥檚 floor. Every time it hit, a little air would burp from the boat鈥檚 nose, and the vessel would settle an inch or two lower. The water covered its front windows now and, with each thump, crept higher up their legs.

Lonnie Moore pushed into the storm at 20 knots, about as fast as his boat could manage in the heavy seas west of the island. At 32 feet, his Alona Rahab was among the smallest workboats in the Tangier fleet and could almost fit inside the Henrietta C. But it was a light and speedy craft, built sturdy of fiberglass. He had named it for two of his four grandchildren. Jason鈥檚 daughters.

Lonnie employed two mates to help fish up his pots, and their oilskins and rain jackets were piled in the cabin. Get this gear on, he told Michael Parks. I鈥檓 going to stay to the wheel, and I鈥檒l need you out on deck to get a view of whatever you can.

They joined a growing armada of Tangier boats searching for the Henrietta C. Within a half hour of Jason鈥檚 radio call, 20 boats tossed their way westward. Most had two or three men aboard. One had five. They ventured into a storm that, for all they knew, had already claimed one of the most experienced and capable captains among them.

The men set out with only guesses as to where the Henrietta C. might be found. Eddie Jacks, like most Tangier crabbers, had not fitted his boat with an emergency position-indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB, a device that automatically sends a satellite signal when a boat is in distress and pinpoints its location for rescuers. Big commercial fishing vessels plying the open ocean are required to have an EPIRB aboard. Not so the small deadrises on the Chesapeake, and Tangiermen are disinclined to spend the few hundred dollars they cost.

The bay west of Tangier, immense on any day, seemed even bigger in the wind and high seas of that afternoon. Freddie Wheatley and Dean Dise, knowing that Ed had been fishing pots far to the southwest鈥攁nd figuring that he was inbound from there when he ran into trouble鈥攎ade for the spar, a buoy out toward the San Marcos wreck. Several more boats headed that way, too. Others ran blindly for points north of the San Marcos, informed by little more than instinct.

Lonnie Moore, meanwhile, replayed his last radio conversation with Jason in his head. He knew the Henrietta C. was homebound when it started taking on water. He knew that Jason turned the boat solid to the wind. With the gale coming from the east-northeast, that meant he had tracked northwest. The time between their conversation and Jason鈥檚 call to Billy Brown had been鈥攚hat, an hour? Eddie Jacks and Jason could have covered miles in that time.

The Henrietta C. was a good five miles to the northwest of the San Marcos, Lonnie decided. It was likely up near what Tangiermen call the corn buoy, about six miles west-southwest of the island. So called because it was planted near a spot where a barge full of corn had gone down, decades in the past.

He steered the Alona Rahab that way.

Back home, Kelly phoned Annette Charnock. Daddy and Jason are taking on water, she told Ed鈥檚 wife. They might be sinking. Annette鈥檚 first reaction was much like Loni Renee鈥檚. They鈥檒l be fine, she told Kelly. Even if the boat was taking on water, this late in the day it was bound to be close to home.

No, Kelly told her. It鈥檚 bad. It鈥檚 real bad. She told her stepmother all she鈥檇 heard. Lord, Annette whispered.

Danielle arrived at Kelly鈥檚 house, and the sisters rode their bikes up the island鈥檚 narrow main road to their father鈥檚 place, where they sat with Annette and fretted. Kelly placed a call to one of Tangier鈥檚 two state marine policemen, asking that he notify the Coast Guard. When the women stepped outside, the wind was blowing hard. A crowd had gathered up the road鈥攊slanders with their own men out in the storm, too agitated to wait for them at home. They were huddled in the chill beside the bait dock, where they would see the boats as they returned.

After a while, Kelly walked up that way, which took her past Lonnie鈥檚 house. His golden retriever, Progger, was in the yard. The dog rarely barked, but as Kelly passed, Progger threw back her head and howled.

The Henrietta C.鈥�s bow continued to slip into the water. Ed and Jason rode it down. Look for a helicopter, Ed told his son. That鈥檚 our only hope. Keep looking for a helicopter.

They saw no helicopter or boats. They could see little at all, except seas that seemed to defy every norm. The tide was outbound, running with the wind, but waves seemed to be raging every direction at once. They collided in fizzing geysers, parted to open deep holes, and ambushed the men from all sides. Heavy tongues of water sledged them, loosening their grip on the boat and each other. With every passing minute, their wet clothes leached more of their heat and strength.

You better get right with the Lord, Ed told Jason. Call unto the Lord, because he鈥檚 the only one who can get us out of this situation.

A while later, as Ed looked to the east, he said: I don鈥檛 guess nobody鈥檚 a-coming.

A little after that he said: I didn鈥檛 think I would go like this.

Then: I鈥檓 scared.

Jason realized that his father was crying. He was too stupefied to do so himself. A blank. None of this seemed real. And the cold was so intense that it erased any but the simplest, lizard-brain thoughts. The bow was almost submerged, the water up to their chests, and Jason remembered that he still had the life jacket, draped over his arm. He released his hold on the stem long enough to hand it to Ed. A wave ripped the vest from his father鈥檚 grasp and carried it away.

Forty-five minutes after the men took hold of the bow, the last few inches of the Henrietta C. slipped under. Treading water now, untethered in the chop, they were almost immediately torn in different directions. Eighty feet of water opened between them. Across the divide, Jason could see his father staring at him.

An hour after Jason鈥檚 call to Billy Brown, the Alona Rahab and several other Tangier boats converged on the corn buoy. Pressing farther to the northwest, they came upon a debris field floating on the water鈥攖he big plywood lid from a workboat鈥檚 engine box, empty bushel baskets, others still full of crabs, and a tote labeled with Ed Charnock鈥檚 name.

So they weren鈥檛 looking for a boat, Lonnie realized, but for two men in the water. As the searchers split up, he began to appreciate just how high the seas were running. Five to six feet now, and there was no flow to the waves鈥攖hey were crazed, anarchic, running every direction.

Lonnie saw that wind and tide were carrying the debris to the southwest, and fast. He pressed the Man Overboard button on his GPS console. It would enable him to cover the surrounding water in loops, always returning to the same spot to start again. He knew, from his own close call in 1991, that a man treading water doesn鈥檛 drift as quickly as flotsam. That meant that Ed and Jason were likely upwind of the debris. He turned to the northeast. Out on deck, Michael Parks climbed onto the engine box. The Alona Rahab was tossing like a cork, but the big firefighter somehow kept his feet鈥攕urfing, in effect, while he scanned the surrounding water.

Lonnie ran up the debris field until it ended, then circled back to the point he鈥檇 marked on his GPS. By this time, a Coast Guard rescue helicopter had flown the 90 miles up from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and another Tangier waterman was on the radio with its crew. Get him to find the debris field, and fly against its flow, Lonnie told the waterman. Ed and Jason, they鈥檙e going to be lagging behind the debris.

Lonnie made another looping search to the northeast. Light and lively as his boat was, the deck swerved, dipped, and tilted under his feet, and the storm was strengthening鈥攈e reckoned it was blowing 35 now, gusting to 40. Tangier boats had fanned out to the north and south of him, and he could see them tossing. The Coast Guard chopper roared low overhead, circling. Lonnie鈥檚 wife, Carol, hailed him on the radio from back home鈥攍ike many Tangier families, the Moores kept a two-way in their house.

Lonnie, do you see anything? she asked.

Nothing yet, Carol.

Do you have hope?

He didn鈥檛 answer. As the chopper made another pass, a terrible thought began to grow. He might have to tell his daughter that he couldn鈥檛 find her husband. That his four grandchildren had lost their father. He did not share his worry with the other boats. To the contrary, as he made another circle in the Alona Rahab, and another, always returning to that spot he鈥檇 marked on his GPS, Lonnie tried to encourage their crews. I know they can still be alive, he said into his radio. I know because I鈥檝e been there.

Ninety minutes had passed since Jason鈥檚 call to Billy. Carol called again. Anything yet, Lonnie?

Nothing yet, Carol.

He made another circle, and suddenly Michael shouted, I see something! From his unsteady perch he was peering over the cabin at the water ahead of the boat. It鈥檚 right smack over your bow! Lonnie turned the wheel as Michael yelled, I think it鈥檚 Jason!

Dead ahead the waves had parted to reveal a man neck-deep in the water. He鈥檇 stripped off a pale red T-shirt and was waving it over his head. Michael heaved a life ring to him and pulled him to the Alona Rahab. He came up ghostly pale, almost blue.

Which way is your dad? Lonnie asked him, looking around.

Jason was trembling, barely coherent. I don鈥檛 think Dad made it, he said.

The Coast Guard the next morning.

Two nights later, when Pastor John Flood opened the Wednesday evening service at Swain Memorial, no sign of Ed Charnock had been found. 鈥淒ear Heavenly Father,鈥� he prayed, 鈥渁s we gather together as your people this evening, we are hurting. And Father, we鈥檙e trying to comprehend everything that has happened this week.鈥�

Swain Memorial is the centerpiece of Tangier life, the repository of collective memories spanning more than a century鈥攃hristenings, graduations, marriages, and funerals; prayers as babies were born and neighbors ailed; celebration and grief across generations. The sanctuary鈥檚 high ceiling and walls are sheathed in stamped tin overpainted in ivory, its interior illuminated by immense stained-glass windows.

It is more church than the island needs, built when the population was more than twice what it is today. Tangier is also eroding from within, its young people moving away after graduation for the opportunities, and relative ease, of life on the mainland.

Flood paced the altar. 鈥淵ou have to wonder, where is God in all this? What happened here?鈥� He gazed at his congregation. 鈥淚 found out that there were two blessings right immediately. That Ed, in that crisis time, in that stormy sea, hanging on, he told his son: 鈥楾his don鈥檛 look good. You have to get right with the Lord. You need to accept him as your savior right now.鈥� And then Loni Renee told me that she made a deal. She said, 鈥楪od, if you will only bring Jason home safe, I鈥檒l serve you the rest of my life.鈥欌�夆��

With that the preacher outlined how the island would process the tragedy. That Ed was a Christian mitigated the pain of his loss. That his death led Jason and Loni Renee to salvation was cause for rejoicing.

Left unaddressed was a remarkable element of that Monday: that 50-some of Ed鈥檚 neighbors and kin had risked their lives trying to rescue him. That they鈥檇 done it without pause and hadn鈥檛 much talked about it after. That this dying island is a place apart.

The entire congregation stood and, holding hands, formed a circle. It enclosed most of the sanctuary. Marlene McCready, wife of a boat captain, offered a prayer. 鈥淧lease, Lord, watch over our watermen, our men who make their living on this great big bay, and protect them,鈥� she said.

鈥淎nd Lord, if it is your will, please bring Ed鈥檚 body back to his family.鈥�

In the days that followed, the weather turned balmy as islanders searched for Eddie Jacks by air and sea. Beneath a Cessna circling southwest of the corn buoy, the vastness of the Chesapeake glittered benignly. The spotters saw nothing but water. Forty-odd islanders on 15 workboats spent days dragging the bottom but pulled up only algae and sea grapes. Finding the body preoccupied everybody. Without it, Ed鈥檚 family and friends were in limbo, unable to commence the public rituals that attend death, unable to get on with the private phase of their grief.

A week passed with no sign, but it did bring one form of closure. Four days after the sinking, a young islander named Thomas Reed Eskridge dived on the Henrietta C.

The boat had been surprisingly easy to locate. Shortly after it went down, a Tangier waterman came upon an oil slick and marked the location on his GPS. Another islander ventured to the spot and scanned the bottom with sonar. It showed the boat in profile, 38 feet down. Now came Thomas Reed, 20 years old and trained as a commercial diver, descending by umbilical to the bay鈥檚 floor.

It was black as pitch down there. He didn鈥檛 see the boat until he was within ten feet of its starboard side. From stem to stern, it was without a blemish. The deadrise was sitting upright, so Thomas Reed vaulted its gunwales and walked up its deck to the cabin. Inside it appeared much as it had been. 鈥淐hrist Our Pilot鈥� framed on the bulkhead. The throttle wide open. He found Ed鈥檚 keys and pried a big domed compass from its mount. He would take those to Annette.

He climbed back over the rail and walked the length of the port side. The boat was fine at the stern, solid amidships. But farther on, up under the cabin, Thomas Reed found a crack鈥攁 broken seam where several boards forming the bottom had been pulled loose by their nails. He squatted to eye the hull beneath the crack and was surprised to find an enormous hole. Six or seven boards, each 7.5 inches wide, were staved in鈥攕till nailed in place at their ends, but cracked in their middles and shoved inward. Some of the boards had snapped outright. He panned a video camera over the damage, and in its light the broken planks revealed themselves in cross-section. They were honeycombed, more air than wood, chewed hollow by worms.

What had brought down the Henrietta C. was no longer a mystery. The wonder was that it had lasted as long as it had.

Eddie Jacks came up ten days after the sinking, not far from the boat he鈥檇 followed to the bottom. His remains went to a mainland medical examiner first, then to a funeral home. It wasn鈥檛 until May 17, 23 days after he鈥檇 left the island, that the mail boat brought his closed casket back to Tangier. The town ambulance carried it to Swain Memorial.

That afternoon a half-dozen old-timers met for their daily coffee klatch in a tile-lined room of Tangier鈥檚 defunct health center. 鈥淥l鈥� Ed鈥檚 gonna be missed,鈥� said Leon McMann, at 86 Tangier鈥檚 oldest active waterman.

鈥淚鈥檒l tell you something else about him.鈥� This from Jerry Frank Pruitt, the boat builder, who in 70 years had never lived more than 400 feet from Ed. 鈥淭here weren鈥檛 no more honest a man in all the world.鈥�

鈥淭hat he was,鈥� Richard Pruitt murmured.

Then Jerry Frank broached a subject that had been the stuff of island rumor. 鈥淎bout four year ago,鈥� he said, Ed pulled the Henrietta C. out of the water at the boatyard, and 鈥渢hey found a place in the bilge, up under the cabin, where the wood was eaten with worms. Not the kind you get overboard, but the kind that get in trees, that kill trees.鈥�

鈥淎 dry woodworm,鈥� Jerry Frank called it. Park your boat or a piece of onboard gear under the trees and the worms would drop in. They ate a boat from the inside out. He suspected they came from trees in Reedville, on the bay鈥檚 western shore, where Tangiermen had been known to store equipment.

鈥淚鈥檝e taken them out of quite a few boats around here,鈥� he said later. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e hard to see. That hole鈥檚 so small you鈥檇 better look very close. The worm gets bigger as he eats. When he first goes in, he鈥檚 a little thing.鈥� The boatyard might not have noticed the infestation, except that the affected boards wouldn鈥檛 hold paint, he said. Repairmen scraped out the damage, filled, and painted, and told Ed he鈥檇 need to swap out the wood.

Ed had loved that boat. He鈥檇 been a stickler for maintenance. He鈥檇 replaced several boards since, at the starboard stern where he fished up his pots, a high-wear region of the hull. The previous November he鈥檇 had the Henrietta C. in a Smith Island boatyard, getting the hull sanded and filled and painted, zinc applied to its rudder and prop shaft, a new seat installed in the cabin.

But in that and several other repairs, he had not replaced that weakened section of the bottom. The work would have kept the boat

out of the water. Would have kept the Charnocks from working.

He and Jason had gone out last April 24, a punishing day, and likely cracked one of those worm-tunneled boards early in the run home. And after one went, so did another, and another, like a zipper pulled.

So it happened that 24 days after the sinking, all of Tangier crowded into Swain Memorial for Ed鈥檚 funeral. His casket was up in front of the altar, flanked by glass-shaded torch猫res, surrounded by flower arrangements. One, four feet long, was in the shape of the Henrietta C.

Ed鈥檚 son-in-law, Denny Crockett, delivered the eulogy. He talked about how Ed, quiet though he was, could tell a good story down at the oil dock. How he鈥檇 get everyone laughing by casting himself as the butt of those stories. How he鈥檇 paint himself as destitute, courting starvation, when all in the room knew he was among the most successful captains around.

Denny didn鈥檛 mention it, but Eddie Jacks was also known to lament the state of the Henrietta C. in those conversations.

鈥淭hat boat is going to be the death of me,鈥� he鈥檇 tell his fellow watermen.

He meant that keeping a wooden boat is an expensive proposition, that he had to pour money into it.

He meant it as a joke.听

Earl Swift () is the author of the forthcoming . He is a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia.

The post The Incredible True Story of the Henrietta C. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Last October my daughter phoned me at the office to report the presence of a 鈥渂ig, weird-looking bug鈥� on our front porch鈥攍ong-legged, slow moving, and unlike any she鈥檇 ever seen. She texted me a photo of the creature. I told her to get inside and lock the door.

The image captured a wheel bug, a little-known, seldom-seen beast that seems more an evil steampunk contraption than anything conjured by nature. Abdomen flared like the hull of a speedboat. Large fin shaped like a cogged wheel rising from its back. Skinny, dowel-like head. And tucked beneath that head, a mouth in the form of a powerful syringe, with which the bug injects its prey with an enzyme-busy squirt of saliva that liquefies meat鈥攖hen sucks up the resulting goo like a milkshake.听

By the already brutal standards of the insect world, it鈥檚 an apex predator, one of the most vicious, pitiless hunters around. Few of our crawling brethren鈥攂ees, wasps, even the redoubtable praying mantis鈥攁re good bets against it. And that meat it liquefies includes ours. The critter delivers a bite that one victim likened to a gunshot wound. Your own results may vary, but rest assured: it hurts. 聽

Even so, until now you鈥檝e probably not heard of the wheel bug, and odds are even better that you鈥檝e not seen one. It populates woodlands, fields, and gardens from Massachusetts to New Mexico, but it鈥檚 a secretive animal, wary of man; one can spend a lifetime outdoors and miss it. So I was surprised and a little alarmed when, in the two weeks after my daughter snapped that portrait, five other wheel bugs turned up on our porch鈥攕pecifically, on and around the front door鈥攁nd a sixth juvenile materialized in our living room. I sought expert insight into what was going on.

The answer: in some parts of the country, the once-invisible wheel bug is stepping out.

And that鈥檚 worth your attention and respect.

First things first: Arilus cristatus won鈥檛 come looking for trouble. Though the largest of the accurately named 鈥渁ssassin bug鈥� family鈥攃arnivores that lie in ambush until prey happens by鈥攊t bites humans strictly in self-defense.听

The problem is that, despite its size and bizarre appearance鈥攁nd it looks and moves like a robot assembled from wristwatch parts鈥攊ts dusty brown-gray armor blends well with tree trunks, branches, and weathered lumber. You can all too easily touch it before you see it.

So it was for Richard 鈥淏ugman鈥� Fagerlund of Las Cruces, New Mexico, a pest management consultant, columnist, and blogger who, while inspecting a property in Albuquerque, 鈥減ut my hand in some bushes and kind of grabbed鈥� a wheel bug. It stabbed the back of his hand.听

Fagerlund, now 73, told me he鈥檚 been bitten nine times by poisonous snakes and stung by scorpions and centipedes, and that the wheel bug鈥檚 bite equaled the worst of them. In fact, he wrote in for the San Francisco Chronicle, his 鈥渇irst impression after the bite was the feeling of being shot.鈥� He confided that he had experienced that brand of injury, too.

鈥淚t was painful,鈥� he told me earlier this year. 鈥淚t was about as equally as painful as a snakebite, but it didn鈥檛 last as long. I didn鈥檛 panic or anything. I knew what had bit me, and I knew they weren鈥檛 poisonous. I do recommend that people not try to pet them.鈥�

It鈥檚 possible that Fagerlund鈥檚 experience was atypical鈥攖he bug 鈥渃ould have hit a nerve, or something,鈥� he allowed. That would explain the somewhat less dramatic description of a bite offered by Michael J. Raupp, a professor of entomology and extension specialist at the University of Maryland, and a well-established authority on the wheel bug in particular.

Raupp, who鈥檚 known as 鈥渢he Bug Guy鈥� (not to be confused with Fagerlund鈥檚 鈥淏ugman鈥�), says that on the Doberman Scale, with 0 representing easy comfort and 10 the pain you鈥檇 experience in a full-on mauling by said attack dog, the wheel bug manages 鈥渓ess than a 5.鈥澛�
Not even half as bad.

鈥淥nce they get to be adults, they can definitely give you a bite,鈥� he told me, but he ranked its wallop below that packed in the notoriously painful sting of the bald-faced hornet. Any other comparisons were beyond his expertise: 鈥淚 have to be honest with you,鈥� he said. 鈥淚鈥檝e never been bitten by a rattlesnake, and I鈥檝e never suffered a gunshot wound.鈥�

All of this would be academic had the wheel bug remained in hiding. But over the past few years, entomologists in the Mid-Atlantic have received anecdotal reports of the insect鈥檚 growing prevalence. Raupp attests to it, as well: Until recently, he and his students rarely encountered wheel bugs on their forays into the woods around UM's campus, even when they were hunting specifically for them; the ever-reclusive insects “rarely showed themselves.” Nowadays, however, “it's no surprise to encounter a wheel bug,” he said.

The difference, he believes, is a jump in the predator鈥檚 food supply, especially an entr茅e called the brown marmorated stink bug. Native to Asia, this distant cousin of the wheel bug apparently snuck into the United States in shipboard freight, and first drew the notice of Pennsylvania scientists in the late nineties. It has since spread to more than 40 states, feasting on fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals. 聽

Nowhere is the invader a bigger pest than in the states of the coastal Mid-Atlantic, where it has proved a scourge to farmers and homeowners alike: the stink bugs, which use their probosces to suck up plant innards rather than meat, wreak havoc on croplands and, with the cooler evenings of autumn, invade homes, offices, classrooms and shops in search of warmth. Where I live in Virginia鈥檚 Blue Ridge Mountains, they slip around screens and under doors and seemingly through walls, becoming ubiquitous inside and out by early October.

And right behind them, Raupp believes, are wheel bugs, which happen to love the taste of their foreign kin鈥攁n assertion borne out by Raupp鈥檚 own experiments in which he and his students have baited trees with stink bugs and watched as wheel bugs turned up for a feed.听

That and other experiments have led Raupp to theorize that we鈥檙e witnessing what he describes as a 鈥渘umerical response, where you see the increase of a predator population in response to an increase in its available prey.鈥� In other words, the wheel bug has not simply shifted its distribution to take advantage of a new food source鈥攁n ungainly flyer, it鈥檚 not mobile enough for that. Rather, it appears that its numbers have swelled to fill a natural void.听

Which means, Raupp said, that as long as we鈥檙e stuck with the stink bug, we鈥檙e likely to see more of this formidable creature both in the woods and on the porch. 鈥淏ecause the stink bug can be a very urban and suburban pest鈥攂ecause people have vegetable gardens and there are overwinter shelters,鈥� he said, 鈥渋t makes sense that the wheel bug would appear with greater frequency in and around our homes.鈥�

That might seem a bad thing, especially after you take in a nightmarish installment of Raupp鈥檚 聽starring a wheel bug wielding its wicked beak on a hapless caterpillar鈥攁 clip Raupp himself calls 鈥渁wesome and gruesome at the same time.鈥澛�

But, no鈥攂oth he and Fagerlund say that the bug鈥檚 voracious habits make it an ally in the garden and orchard. It鈥檚 considered a beneficial insect. Scary though it is, you should let it be.听

Bottom line: give the wheel bug plenty of room. And be advised that it acquires its telltale wheel only as an adult, after five molts. As a smaller nymph, it passes through some stages, or “instars,” with bright orange-red markings, which you should recognize as a warning if you see it trying to slip into home or tent. It packs a bite, even as a tyke. Watch where you put your hands.

The post Wheel Bugs Are the Most Terrifying Thing Ever appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

It is a quiet, restorative place, this clearing high on a Pennsylvania ridge. Ferns and wildflowers carpet its floor. Sassafras and tulip trees, tall oak and hickory stand tight at its sides, their leaves hissing in breezes that sweep from the valley below. Cloistered from civilization by a steep 900-foot climb over loose and jutting rock, the glade goes unseen by most everyone but a straggle of hikers on the Appalachian Trail, the 2,180-mile footpath carved into the roofs of 14 eastern states.

Those travelers have rested here for more than half a century. At the clearing鈥檚 edge stands an open-faced shelter of heavy timber, one of 260 huts built roughly a day鈥檚 walk apart on the AT鈥檚 wriggling, roller-coaster course from Maine to Georgia. It鈥檚 tall and airy and skylit, with a deep porch, two tiers of wooden bunks, and a picnic table.

A few feet away stood the ancient log lean-to it replaced. When I visited this past spring, saplings and tangled brier so colonized the old shelter鈥檚 footprint that I might have missed it, had I not slept there myself. Twenty-five summers ago, I pulled into what was called the Thelma Marks shelter, near the halfway point of a southbound through-hike. I met a stranger in the old lean-to, talked with him under its low roof as we fired up our stoves and cooked dinner.

Eight nights later, a southbound couple I鈥檇 befriended early in my hike followed me into Thelma Marks. They met a stranger there, too.

What he did to them left wounds that didn鈥檛 close as neatly as that fading rectangle in the forest floor. It prompted outdoorsmen and trail officials to rethink conventional wisdom long held dear: that safety lies in numbers, that the wilds offer escape from senseless violence, and that when trouble does visit, it鈥檚 always near some nexus with civilization鈥攁 road, a park, the fringe of a town.

And it reverberates still, all these years later, because what befell Geoff Hood and Molly LaRue at the Thelma Marks shelter is a cautionary tale without lesson.

Then as now, this clearing was a lovely place.

And near as anyone can tell, they did everything right.

It’s no surprise, what with the millions who use the path each year, that the AT had seen violence before the early morning of September 13, 1990. Five of its hikers had been killed in four attacks, the earliest in May 1974, the most recent in May 1988.

Those crimes shared traits with what transpired at Thelma Marks. Two of the four attacks were aimed at couples. Three came at trailside shelters. All were ghastly.

Still, none drew the attention, or generated the angst, of the incident here. Perhaps it was because Thelma Marks fell within range of news media in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., and because it involved not only a crime but a mountain manhunt that lasted a week. Perhaps the shelter鈥檚 remoteness鈥攆ar greater than that of past trouble鈥攑layed into our big-city uneasiness about what lurks in the woods at night.

Maybe it was the sheer savagery of the act. Or the questions that lingered when the man responsible would not say why he shot Geoff three times or why he tied Molly鈥檚 hands behind her back and looped the rope around her neck. Why he raped her. Why he stabbed her eight times in the neck, throat, and back.

鈥淚t probably took me a good 15 years to just process,鈥� says Karen Lutz, then and now the top staffer in the mid-Atlantic region for the (ATC).

鈥淚 was up at the shelter. It was very real. It was very fresh. It was god-awful.鈥�

Or maybe what set this sad affair apart were the victims, who combined competence, wholesomeness, and smarts.

鈥淭his might have to do with my age, but I find I get more emotional about it now,鈥� says former Perry County, Pennsylvania, prosecutor R. Scott Cramer, who tried the case in 1991. 鈥淚 get choked up thinking about Molly and Geoff.

鈥淭hese were good kids. They were going to make a difference. All the indicators suggested that. And to have their lives snuffed out at that age鈥攊t鈥檚 a tragedy beyond words.鈥�

They’d met in聽Salina, Kansas, where both worked for a church-sponsored outfit that took at-risk youngsters into the backcountry to salve their troubles with adventure. At 26, Geoff was a friendly, contemplative Tennessean, even tempered and patient. Molly, a year younger, was a sunny, energetic artist who in high school had won a national contest to design a 1984 U.S. postage stamp.

They shared a love for kids and the outdoors. Geoff had rock-climbed in Colorado and taught climbing at New Mexico鈥檚 Philmont Scout Ranch. Molly had tackled two Outward Bound courses and spent a year providing wilderness therapy to kids in the Arizona desert.

They ventured onto the AT, as many do, at an unsettled juncture in their lives: they鈥檇 learned that, come May, they鈥檇 be laid off, and a six-month hike seemed a good way to decide what to do next. 鈥淲e got a phone call from her one day,鈥� Molly鈥檚 father, Jim LaRue, recalls. 鈥淪he said, 鈥榊ou know I鈥檝e always wanted to do the Appalachian Trail, and I have a friend here who wants to do it, too. Do you want to know something about the friend?鈥�

鈥淚 said, 鈥榊es, I would.鈥�

鈥淪he said, 鈥榃ell, he鈥檚 a male.鈥�

鈥淚 said, 鈥楢re you announcing a relationship?鈥�

鈥淎nd she said, 鈥榊es, I am.鈥� 鈥�

By then she and Geoff were close to inseparable. 鈥淚 love you forever, I like you for always,鈥� he wrote in April, when he was off in the backcountry. 鈥淎s long as I鈥檓 living my ALL you will be.鈥� She cashed in her savings to finance their trip, which they鈥檇 start in Maine, as only one in ten through-hikers do.

And so, on June 4, 1990, having climbed the day before to the AT鈥檚 northern terminus on the peak of mile-high Mount Katahdin, they set off on their long walk鈥攁nd found it surprisingly arduous. 鈥淲e reminded one another before we started this ordeal that there would be tough days: Days we would ask ourselves, 鈥榃hy are we doing this?鈥� 鈥� Molly admitted early on, in a journal they shared. 鈥淲ell, we had one of those days.鈥� Geoff鈥檚 next entry whimpered: 鈥淥ur bodies have had almost as much as they can take.鈥�

But they also wrote in the logbooks left in shelters, which, in the days before cell phones, were the most reliable means for through-hikers to connect. Reading those entries made it obvious to all in their wake that they were enjoying themselves immensely.

Which is how I first made their acquaintance, in a poem Molly left in a Maine lean-to and signed with her trail name, Nalgene.

Last evening I whispered 鈥淚 think there鈥檙e less bugs.鈥�
This morning, BRING ON THE SLUGS.
Through the roof of our tent I see their familiar sludge
The stuff that resembles butterscotch fudge.
Squish between my toes in my sandal
Yuck! This is something I just can鈥檛 handle.

I read this a few days south of Katahdin, which I鈥檇 climbed 12 days behind them. I was stinking, blistered, and covered in mosquito bites. My pack weighed nearly half as much as I did, and every pound hurt. Black flies kamikazed into my eyes and mouth. I missed my girlfriend.

My first reaction was: How can this Nalgene person be so obnoxiously happy?

Eleven days into my hike, I stumbled out of the woods and into Monson, Maine, where I met Greg Hammer, an Army vet in his late twenties whose Virginia home was just a short distance from mine. Greg, trail name Animal, was easygoing and smart, and together we pushed into the windswept mountains of western Maine.

Along the way, the hikers ahead of us came into focus, none more so than Nalgene and her partner, who called himself Clevis. They left upbeat log entries at every shelter. They thanked the volunteers who maintained the trail. They gave shout-outs to other hikers, including one named Skip 鈥淢uskratt鈥� Richards, whom they鈥檇 met in Monson. They were self-deprecating, funny, kind.

And they were slow. By the time I left Monson, I鈥檇 gained three days on them, and I was no speedster. At the New Hampshire line I鈥檇 picked up a week. As Molly predicted in one log entry: 鈥淚f you鈥檙e behind us you will pass us.鈥�

Their glacial pace was no accident. They were stopping to take pictures, to study plants, turtles, and salamanders, to bake bread. Animal and I resolved to catch them. We sped over the high, wild Presidential Range and down the 2,000-foot Webster Cliffs, setting up camp at the bottom two nights behind Geoff and Molly. Shortly after midnight, as I snored in my tent and Greg slept in his bivy sack, we were startled awake by a concussive thud: a rotted tree had toppled into the four-foot space between us, coming within inches of my head.

We eyed the near miss by flashlight, awed by the almost surgical precision with which fate had spared us鈥攁nd unnerved that life or death could turn on such blind, stupid luck.

Our rendezvous came on Friday, July 20, at the Jeffers Brook shelter near Glencliff, New Hampshire, after we鈥檇 crossed an above-tree-line peak in a crashing thunderstorm. As I exchanged handshakes with Clevis and Nalgene, I told them that I felt like we鈥檇 already met. First impressions: Molly鈥攂lond and dimpled, quick to smile, solidly built but obviously fit. Spirited. Funny. A blue-haired troll doll dangled from her backpack. Geoff鈥攂earded, beetle browed, and thin, with a smoky, high-pitched Tennessee drawl. I noticed that he carried one of the best packs around at the time, a mammoth green Gregory, and that both of them handled their gear with an expert nonchalance.

Our conversation was halted by the approach of a short, bearded man in a baggy black suit and large-brimmed hat, staggering under a pack that towered high over his head. Without a hello, he demanded that he be given the shelter鈥檚 east wall, where Greg had already set up. He huffed, impatient, when Greg didn鈥檛 jump to clear the space.

Irritated, Greg told the newcomer, whose name was Rubin, that he鈥檇 have to make do with the shelter鈥檚 middle. He unpacked, muttering, as our conversation resumed. Molly, Geoff, and I talked about Salina, where I鈥檇 interviewed for a job once. Greg chatted with two section hikers, Elizabeth and Chris, who鈥檇 been traveling with them for days.

Rubin interrupted. Why had I chosen my model of backpack, he wanted to know. He had heard it was bad. It鈥檚 worked just fine, I told him. Oh, you think it鈥檚 fine? Yes, I said, I think it鈥檚 fine. Well, if you think it鈥檚 fine, why have I heard it鈥檚 a bad pack?

And so on, whenever he opened his mouth, which he did a lot: to my everlasting regret, I devoted far more space in my journal to Rubin than to Geoff and Molly. With the sun setting, he yanked six Old Milwaukee tallboys from his pack and chugged them in quick succession. He crunched the empties into makeshift candleholders. As the rest of us crawled into our bags, he began to celebrate the Sabbath.

In what seemed a trance, he chanted, wailed, and danced in the middle of the shelter for one hour, then two. Then beyond two. At 9:30, Greg stopped him: 鈥淎re you almost through?鈥� Rubin nodded, then went right back to it. Shortly after ten, when he鈥檇 paused to wolf down some bread, I told him he鈥檇 have to stop. 鈥淭hese people are trying to sleep,鈥� I said, nodding toward the others. 鈥淭here鈥檚 got to be a way you can pray to yourself.鈥�

Rubin brushed me off. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e probably sleeping right through it.鈥�

From the darkness of the shelter鈥檚 west wall, Molly yelled, 鈥淚鈥檓 not sleeping through it!鈥� A chorus backed her up.

Morning came. Rubin needed no coffee to get up to speed. Throughout his babble, Geoff and Molly鈥攚ho wrote in their journal that they鈥檇 鈥渉ad a very poor night鈥檚 sleep due to the noise pollution鈥濃�攖reated him with quiet tolerance, never rising to his bait, just letting him be.

Still, they beat us out of camp. We caught up with them that afternoon as they took a break at a road crossing, chatting about the strange night we鈥檇 shared and our relief that Rubin was northbound. Greg and I pushed on but reunited with the other four southbounders that evening at a Dartmouth Outing Club bunkhouse. Geoff had hitched to a store for beer, and we all sat around the house鈥檚 kitchen table, drinking and talking, late into the evening鈥攁bout their layoffs, their plans for grad school after reaching Georgia, and, not least, Rubin.

The next morning, we all took a two-mile detour to a restaurant for the hiker鈥檚 special: six pancakes, four pieces of sausage, coffee, and juice for $5. We lingered, talking and laughing, long after we鈥檇 gorged ourselves. Back outside we split up: Greg and I decided to hike an old section of the AT, while the others backtracked to the rerouted trail.

We watched as they hitched a ride from a pickup and, waving from its bed, motored off for the trail crossing. We expected to reunite with them that night. But we covered close to 16 miles that day, far more than they did. We didn鈥檛 see them again.

A few days later, we caught up with Muskratt at Vermont鈥檚 Happy Hill shelter. We鈥檇 followed his register entries from Maine, and he proved an affable companion, at ease in the woods after working at fish camps close to the Canadian border.

Near Manchester Center, Vermont, both Muskratt and Animal pulled ahead of me, and no matter how far or fast I hiked, I couldn鈥檛 catch up; they seemed to stay a shelter ahead through the rest of New England, until, after a hell-for-leather sprint, I managed to catch Muskratt just inside New York State. I hiked with him for several days, lost him near the New Jersey border, caught him again near Palmerton, Pennsylvania, lost him again. Greg left notes in shelter logs asking where I was, but he stayed just ahead of me.

Meanwhile, Geoff and Molly enjoyed late starts and lunch breaks that stretched into overnights. I left hellos to them in logbook entries, and sometimes, I learned much later, they replied. By the time I reached central Pennsylvania, they trailed me by eight days.

A thousand miles south of Katahdin, I crossed the Susquehanna River and walked into the old ferry town of Duncannon, Pennsylvania, following the trail鈥檚 white blazes on telephone poles up High Street past churches, a hardware store, and simple, sturdy houses on well-tended lawns. The next day, I sweated four steep and rocky miles up Cove Mountain to the Thelma Marks shelter.

Another southbounder was already there: Marcus Macaluso, a.k.a. Granola, of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a long-haired, deep-thinking Grateful Dead fan, 18 years old, who carried bongos in his pack and left clever register entries that I鈥檇 enjoyed for weeks. We wound up talking past 11 p.m.

Both of us slept late and lounged at Thelma Marks, drinking coffee, until close to noon. Any hopes for respectable mileage already shot, we settled for an easy seven-mile stroll to the Darlington shelter.

At this point a chase was under way. Three southbounders鈥擝rian 鈥淏iff鈥� Bowen and his wife, Cindi, of Amherst, Virginia, along with Gene 鈥淔lat Feet鈥� Butcher, a retired soldier I鈥檇 camped with in Vermont鈥攚ere trying to catch Geoff and Molly, who were trying to catch up with Muskratt, who was now just behind me. I was still trying to catch up with Greg, who had left word in Darlington鈥檚 register that he planned to end his hike in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a few days to the south. 鈥淗ope to see you before I get off,鈥� he wrote.

That same day鈥擲eptember 5, 1990鈥攁 38-year-old farmhand left his cabin on a South Carolina tobacco spread, caught a ride to the nearest Greyhound depot, and bought a one-way ticket north. He was a short, stocky man, considered smart and hardworking by his bosses. They鈥檇 also remember him as rootless, quiet to the point of secrecy, and prone to lengthy, unexplained absences. The shack he left behind was piled with garbage and empty beer cans.

A day later he stepped off a bus in Winchester, Virginia, and embarked on a zigzag course of hitched rides鈥攚est to Romney, West Virginia, north into Maryland, northeast to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania鈥攗ntil, six days after leaving the farm, he walked into a library in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, halfway between Gettysburg and York, looking for hiking maps. A librarian suggested he try the York branch, wrote directions, and asked that he sign the guest book. He put down Casey Horn.

His name was really Paul David Crews, and he was a suspect in a murder. Four years earlier, on July 3, 1986, a woman had offered him a ride home from a bar in Bartow, Florida. She was later found naked and nearly decapitated on an abandoned railroad bed. Not long after, according to law-enforcement records, Crews had turned up at his older brother鈥檚 place in Polkville, North Carolina, driving the woman鈥檚 bloodied Oldsmobile. With the law closing in, his brother gave him a lift into the country, and he took off running. The police recovered the car, along with Crews鈥檚 knife and bloody clothes, but found no sign of him.

Since then he鈥檇 laid low, avoiding attention and revealing little of his past, which had been troubled from the start. Abandoned in childhood, he was adopted at age eight by a couple in Burlington, North Carolina, but he ran away frequently. He joined the Marines in 1972 and married in January 1973. Became a father the following month. Attempted suicide, went AWOL, and got discharged from the corps. Divorced in 1974. Bounced around.

In 1977, he turned up in southern Indiana, where he worked a string of dead-end jobs and met his second wife. One morning he crawled into bed behind her and held a bayonet to her throat. They divorced, too.

He wandered back to Florida, where he picked oranges each spring until the homicide in Bartow鈥攁 crime he was formally charged with on July 7, 1986. So the police thought Crews might have killed before. And now, late on the afternoon of September 11, 1990, he found his way to the Appalachian Trail.

At the time, the AT followed 16 miles of paved road through Pennsylvania鈥檚 Cumberland Valley鈥攁 shadeless hike, hard on the feet. The trail鈥檚 caretakers had worked for years to reroute the footpath into forest they had acquired piecemeal. On this afternoon, the ATC鈥檚 Karen Lutz was surveying one such property when she noticed a bearded man plodding up the road behind her.

She was a stone鈥檚 throw from the Pennsylvania Turnpike and figured him for a hitcher between rides, a drifter. No chance he was a hiker: he wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and combat boots, had a small rucksack on his back, and carried two bright red gym bags, each emblazoned with the Marlboro logo. He kept his head down as he trudged past, headed north toward U.S. 11.

Two hours later, Lutz drove north on the trail, following its blazes through several turns. Well north of 11, she encountered the stranger again. So he was hiking, she realized. He wasn鈥檛 far from the spot where the AT veered from the road and into the trees. If he hustled, he might make the Darlington shelter, little more than three miles away.

Lutz drove on, unnerved. Something about the man鈥攈is filthiness, his clothes, his joyless progress鈥攆illed her with dread. She didn鈥檛 know that the stranger carried a long-barreled .22-caliber revolver, a box of 50 bullets, and a double-edged knife nearly nine inches long. She didn鈥檛 know he was among Florida鈥檚 most wanted fugitives. Even so, Lutz, herself a 1978 through-hiker, decided that Darlington was a place she most sincerely did not want to be.

For years she would be haunted by that moment, by 鈥渢remendous guilt over the fact that I had seen him, and that I had sensed an evil aura coming off him.

鈥淚 know that sounds wacko, but that鈥檚 exactly what I felt,鈥� she says. 鈥淎nd I didn鈥檛 do anything.鈥�

Earlier that聽day, Geoff and Molly had broken camp at the tiny, squalid Peters Mountain shelter north of the Susquehanna River. They were almost halfway through their hike now, and ambitious days came comfortably, though they didn鈥檛 make them a habit. They continued to dawdle through meals. They lounged on any rock with a view. They even paused to do some counseling. 鈥淲e reached the Allentown shelter for breakfast,鈥� Geoff wrote on September 6. 鈥淭here we met Paul, whom we talked with quite a while. He is a 15-year-old who was kicked out of his house. We talked about some different ideas for him to try.鈥�

Along the 11 miles to Duncannon, they encountered a section hiker, Mark 鈥淒oc鈥� Glazerow of Owings Mills, Maryland, who joined them at a pizza parlor in town. His companions were still eating when Glazerow announced that he had more hiking to do, wished them luck, and groaned his way up to Thelma Marks.

Geoff and Molly walked two blocks to the , the crumbling fossil of a once grand inn. In 1990 as now, its bar served wonderful burgers and cheap draft beer, but even at $11 a night, the 23 peeling, spider-infested rooms upstairs were only so much of a bargain. They shared just three baths.

Still, those rooms had mattresses. The hikers unpacked their gear and called their parents, discussing their planned reunion in Harpers Ferry to celebrate making it halfway. Better bring soap and brushes, Geoff told his mother, so that we can scrub the smell out of our packs. Glenda Hood promised to bring two pumpkin pies, his favorite.

One more thing, Geoff said鈥攚e have something to tell you when we all get together. 鈥淭here鈥檚 always been a lot of speculation about what that was going to be,鈥� his younger sister, Marla Hood, says. She thinks they planned to announce their engagement.

That night, while feasting on shrimp and mushrooms, the couple signed the Doyle鈥檚 register, countering a previous hiker鈥檚 claim that he was the last of 1990鈥檚 southbounders.

鈥淗ey Greenhorn you most certainly are not the last entry of the season,鈥� Geoff wrote. 鈥淎s you can鈥檛 read this we鈥檒l tell you when we catch you! As we hear it we鈥檙e about mid-slip of the southbounders moving down鈥攐ops getting food on the book. Good food too; time to go鈥擟levis & Nalgene.鈥�

In the morning鈥擶ednesday, September 12, 1990鈥攖hey met Molly鈥檚 elderly great aunt and two other relatives on the town square, then accompanied them to lunch at a nearby truck stop. Afterward, they picked up mail, stopped at a small grocery, and, at 3:45 p.m., followed the trail into the woods and up Cove Mountain.

The climb over lichen-flaked stone and loose scree ended at Hawk Rock, a promontory offering a sweeping vista of the town, rivers, and rolling farmland below. From there they faced an easy two miles of ridgetop to Thelma Marks鈥攚hich waited, dark and droopy, its back to the AT, at the bottom of a steep 500-foot side trail.

Geoff and Molly likely arrived there sometime after 5 p.m. The graffiti-carved plank floor slept four or five comfortably, eight in a pinch. They would have had plenty of room to unroll their sleeping gear and spread out a bit.

Sunset came at 7:22 p.m., but the shelter was hunched against the mountain鈥檚 eastern flank, in the shade of the ridgetop.

Night fell fast.

Geoff and Molly聽most likely died between five and seven the next morning. Little else about the event is certain. Were they in trouble from the moment they met Crews? Unknown. Were they attacked as they slept? Unclear. Did they have a conversation with him? The killer鈥檚 own words, to others he met in the days that followed, suggest they talked and that he stole their story along with their gear: he said he鈥檇 started hiking in Maine around the first of June and was trying to catch up with Muskratt.

Jerry Philpott, the Duncannon lawyer who represented Crews at his 1991 trial, says he believes the couple reached the shelter first. 鈥淭hey were settling down for the night,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t was summer鈥攊t would have been pretty light. He came upon the scene, and something happened.

鈥淭his is a brain on cocaine and a quart of Jim Beam,鈥� Philpott says of Crews. 鈥淗e would take a quart of Jim Beam and a cigarette pack full of powder cocaine, and that鈥檚 how he would hike.鈥�

Crews shared little information with him, Philpott says. 鈥淗e never wanted to talk about this incident, or any of his alleged murderous incidents.鈥�

Indeed, Crews offered only monosyllabic responses to police, said next to nothing in court, and has described to no one, as far as is known, why things took such a horrible turn at Thelma Marks. He did not respond to several interview requests for this story.

Bob Howell, a Pennsylvania state police investigator at the center of the inquiry, offers a straightforward take. 鈥淗e went on the trail looking for an opportunity,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ingo. That鈥檚 it, as far as I鈥檓 concerned.鈥�

Jim LaRue鈥檚 explanation is almost as cut and dried. 鈥淗e happened to fall on these two kids and I鈥檓 sure saw Molly as a rape prospect.

鈥淢olly was a strong girl,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 wish she had had the strength to overcome him, and even if she had had to kill him, that would have been all right with me鈥攋ust to protect herself and maybe save Geoff. But that鈥檚 not the way it played out.鈥�

This much is known: later in the day on September 13, Crews returned to the trail and hiked north into Duncannon without his red gym bags. Now he wore a big green Gregory.

He hitched a ride east to Interstate 81 and got at least one ride south before rejoining the trail in the next county, far from Thelma Marks. He walked south from there, assuming the guise of a through-hiker.

At the same time, the trio of southbounders chasing Geoff and Molly walked into Duncannon. Gene 鈥淔lat Feet鈥� Butcher decided not to dally and hiked up Cove Mountain shortly after Crews had descended the same path. Peering down the steep mountainside toward the invisible Thelma Marks shelter, Butcher decided not to stop in and hiked on to Darlington. There he found the shelter littered with trash鈥攊ncluding an empty red gym bag, a discarded bus ticket, and a library note written to someone named Casey Horn.

Back in town, Biff and Cindi Bowen retrieved a mail drop and stuffed themselves on pizza, ice cream, and beer. It was close to 5 p.m. when they started climbing and about six when they reached the turnoff.

Cindi, an elementary school teacher, and Biff, a jeweler, knew they were close on Geoff and Molly鈥檚 heels. They planned to celebrate Biff鈥檚 upcoming birthday at Thelma Marks and were excited that they might do so with a couple they鈥檇 followed for nearly three months. 鈥淲e knew they were good people,鈥� Cindi says, 鈥渂ecause we鈥檇 been reading their entries.鈥�

But they slowed as they approached the lean-to鈥檚 rear. The clearing was dead quiet. An hour later they were back in Duncannon, phoning the state police.

That night, detectives who鈥檇 never set foot on the trail struggled for three hours to reach Thelma Marks. 鈥淚 think most of the conversation was curse words,鈥� recalls Pennsylvania state trooper Bill Link. 鈥淲e were in dress shoes. It was dark.鈥� The crime scene unfolded piece by piece in the beams of their flashlights. Geoff was lying in a back corner, his head on a makeshift pillow. 鈥淎t first glance,鈥� Link wrote in his report, 鈥渙ne would be led to believe that the subject was asleep.鈥�

鈥淎t the other side of the lean-to,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渢he body of the female was observed laying face down in a pool of blood.鈥�

It took another four hours to maneuver a pair of all-terrain vehicles up the mountainside on an old logging road, troopers chopping down trees to clear the way, so that the bodies and evidence could be removed.

After that the investigation proceeded rapidly. From Karen Lutz, they learned of the stranger with the red gym bags. They found one such bag at Thelma Marks, the other at Darlington. The library note Flat Feet had discovered gave them a name.

Glenda Hood, at home in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, switched on the radio the morning of September 14, just in time to hear a news report that two hikers had been murdered near Duncannon. Geoff had called from there three days before.

She knew her son was careful. In the past, when they had discussed someone meeting a bad end in the outdoors, he鈥檇 told her, 鈥淗e either didn鈥檛 know what he was doing, or he wasn鈥檛 doing what he knew he should be.鈥�

Just the same, she phoned Jim LaRue, up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and told him what she鈥檇 heard. He burst into tears. 鈥淚 was sure it was them,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 just knew.鈥� He saw Molly鈥檚 mother, Connie, pull into the driveway with a load of groceries. He walked out and told her, 鈥淚 think this is going to be the longest day of our lives.鈥�

It was, and the days that followed were not much better. The families arranged for memorial services while police searched for the killer. Geoff was laid to rest near his home in Tennessee, in a plot overlooking Signal Mountain. Molly鈥檚 body was transported to a funeral home outside Cleveland, where the LaRues found her on a mat, covered with a sheet. The funeral director told them, 鈥淚 thought you might like to hold her.鈥�

Jim, Connie, and their son, Mark, three years older than Molly, dropped to the floor and wrapped their arms around her. 鈥淚t was one of the most wonderful gifts,鈥� Jim says. 鈥淪he looked like she was asleep. It reminded me of when she was little and scared and couldn鈥檛 sleep, and going into her room to give her a hug.鈥�

I was still on the trail, hiking in Virginia鈥檚 Shenandoah National Park, when a pair of day-hikers told me a couple had been killed on the trail up in Pennsylvania five days before. A phone call home gave me their names.

Granola had pulled ahead of me, and I lay alone in a shelter that night, stunned and scared. I鈥檇 never known a murder victim. Until then I鈥檇 been a typical suburban American who figured that violence usually came by invitation. I鈥檇 hear of a crime and do a little calculus to separate myself from the victim: I wouldn鈥檛 hang around a crack house. No way would I walk that street at three in the morning.

This time the math didn鈥檛 work. I couldn鈥檛 claim to know Geoff and Molly well, but they seemed far savvier in the woods than I was. They were traveling as a pair, too, which was considered common sense. They were certainly more patient than me, and far better equipped to defuse trouble. And they were so damn nice, even to Rubin.

If chaos could find them, I realized, it could find anyone. The senseless happened. The universe had no plan. Their deaths seemed a terrible accident of time and geography. Biff Bowen had the same frightened thought: 鈥淗ad we hiked a little faster, it might have been us.鈥�

Granola and I reunited a couple of days later. In Waynesboro, Virginia, we ran into an older southbounder, George Phipps, whom we鈥檇 camped with in Maryland. The killings dominated our conversation.

鈥淪ome of Geoff and Molly鈥檚 register entries impressed me so much, I wrote them down,鈥� George told us. He flipped through his trail journal, started reading.

Last evening I whispered 鈥淚 think there鈥檙e less bugs.鈥�
This morning, BRING ON THE SLUGS.

When we had that conversation, Crews was in the custody of federal park rangers in Harpers Ferry, having been captured a few hours before as he walked a bridge across the Potomac. A hiker who鈥檇 embarked on a freelance search for the killer recognized Geoff鈥檚 pack on his back and sounded the alarm.

Crews was jailed, pending trial. Lawmen in Pennsylvania began putting together their case.

The families grieved. Glenda Hood, a pediatric nurse, threw herself into caring for ailing children. Connie LaRue, also a nurse, volunteered at a hospice on the shore of Lake Erie. The women talked often. They became close.

Jim LaRue found comfort in an idea offered by one of Molly鈥檚 college friends鈥攖hat Molly, ever artistic, was now adding her touch to each evening鈥檚 sunset. 鈥淔rom that day forward,鈥� he says, 鈥渢here鈥檚 not a day that goes by that I don鈥檛 see a spectacular sunset and think: Ah, Molly鈥檚 at work.鈥�

Strange as it sounds, the fact that family and friends were thrust into the unexpected role of defending the Appalachian Trail might have helped them cope. 鈥淲e kept getting comments like, 鈥榃ell, do you feel the trail is too dangerous to use?鈥� and 鈥楽hould it be shut down?鈥� 鈥� Jim says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 when Molly鈥檚 voice would come up and tell me, 鈥業f you ever let my death be an excuse for anything happening to the trail, I鈥檒l never forgive you.鈥�

鈥淢ol was where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do, caring about what she wanted to care about, having fun, and meeting and enjoying so many people,鈥� he says. 鈥淭o die doing something you love is not the worst thing in this life. There are no guarantees.鈥�

Glenda Hood climbed Cove Mountain on the first Mother鈥檚 Day after the murders. The trail was abloom in wildflowers鈥擩ack-in-the-pulpits, native columbine鈥攚hich almost seemed a message, a gift, from Geoff and Molly. She ventured into the clearing.

鈥淚 expected it to be a dark, sinister place, and it wasn鈥檛,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he sun was coming down through the trees, and it was a peaceful place, despite what had happened there.

鈥淚 consider that Geoff and Molly were murdered in God鈥檚 cathedral,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f someone were murdered in God鈥檚 cathedral, then murder could be committed anyplace.鈥�

Testimony in聽the trial started three days after Glenda鈥檚 hike, on May 15, 1991. The state presented 60 witnesses and 158 pieces of evidence that spun an inescapable web around Crews: He鈥檇 been arrested wearing Geoff鈥檚 pack, boots, and wristwatch, and he was carrying both murder weapons. He鈥檇 left his own gear at the scene, some of which was traced back to the tobacco farm in South Carolina. DNA linked him to Molly鈥檚 rape. He was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

I was in the courtroom. Unable to shake the confusion I鈥檇 felt upon learning of the deaths, nagged by a need for explanation, I鈥檇 begged off work to return to Pennsylvania. The proceedings offered only roundabout, unsatisfying clues as to why the killings had happened. During the trial鈥檚 penalty phase, a psychiatrist appearing for the defense testified that Crews had a personality disorder and that his consumption of whiskey and cocaine had triggered 鈥渙rganic aggressive syndrome.鈥� The doctor described the condition as 鈥渁 short period of time after taking cocaine, maybe an hour or two, when a person can become violent.鈥� That was as much explanation as we got.

But the trial was not without its rewards. Hikers were on hand to testify, and others, like me, had simply shown up. Some of us formed lasting bonds with Geoff鈥檚 and Molly鈥檚 families. So it was that when Biff and Cindi finished their hike that summer鈥攈aving avoided shelters every night鈥擥lenda Hood picked them up at the trail鈥檚 southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia.

And in June 1992, when Geoff鈥檚 sister, Marla, set out to finish the couple鈥檚 hike, I went along for her first week. We started south from Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, our pace modest in the Geoff and Molly tradition, reaching Pine Grove Furnace State Park, near the trail鈥檚 midpoint, on our second day out. We ate lunch at the top of a fire tower and shared a shelter with a pile of northbounders on day three, visited an emergency room when Marla pulled a knee on day four, and reached the Maryland line on day six.

Others joined Marla after me鈥擪ansas friends, a couple of hikers the ATC had lined up, and the ATC鈥檚 chief spokesman, Brian King鈥攂efore an infected blister forced Marla off the trail in Virginia.

Ten years later, in September 2000, I learned from Karen Lutz that the Thelma Marks shelter was to be replaced. I drove to Duncannon, slept at the Doyle, then swore my way uphill to the clearing. Lutz was already there, watching a crew from the Mountain Club of Maryland finish the new shelter, which was built of beams from a century-old barn. We stood together under a tall sassafras tree, songbirds chatty in its branches, and eyed the careworn and mouse-infested Thelma Marks for the last time.

鈥淭his event really seemed to mark the end of the trail鈥檚 innocence,鈥� Lutz told me. In the years after the killings, hikers were more apt to bring pepper spray along with their freeze-dried meals and to take dogs along. The ATC had become far more sensitive to reports of disquieting conduct on the trail, and quicker to intervene. Earlier in the year, the organization had even published a 176-page handbook called .听

鈥淭his week is always a tough one,鈥� Lutz said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a certain quality of the light this time of the year, and the temperatures suddenly get cooler and the humidity drops off, and it all comes right back.鈥�

Not long after, the crew removed the old shelter鈥檚 corrugated metal roof, dismantled its log walls, and sawed them up. They burned the wood in a bonfire, scattered the rock foundation. It was an exorcism as much as a demolition. When they finished, nothing remained of the old hut but a bald patch in the forest floor, not even its name. They called the new place the Cove Mountain shelter.

The forest got busy reclaiming the footprint.

Fifteen years have grayed the new shelter鈥檚 wood. It blends comfortably, unobtrusively, into its setting, has become one with the surrounding timber.

Those same years saw Connie LaRue fall ill with cancer and spend her final days in the hospice where she volunteered. She awoke from a dream near the end to report that she鈥檇 seen Molly waiting for her. Glenda Hood held her hand shortly before she died in July 2006.

Glenda continues to grieve not only Geoff, but also the future he might have had with Molly. It鈥檚 a loss she emphasized at a December 2006 hearing where Crews鈥檚 death sentence was replaced with life in prison without parole. 鈥淭hat day half my future was taken from me,鈥� she told Crews. 鈥淚 have missed his wedding to Molly. I have missed seeing them share their lives together. I have missed their children, who would be my grandchildren.鈥�

Biff and Cindi Bowen have divorced, but their son, Mason, took on the trail in 2010. Like his parents, he was a southbounder. Flat Feet met him at Springer Mountain.

Karen Lutz has achieved an uneasy peace. 鈥淭here isn鈥檛 a week that goes by that I don鈥檛 think of that, 25 years later,鈥� she says, adding: 鈥淚t鈥檚 better than it used to be鈥攊t鈥檚 no longer every minute, or every hour.鈥�

Jim LaRue has lost Connie, whom he鈥檇 known since both were five. But he later found Barbara, who鈥檇 lost her husband. They live in a home on rolling woodland that they share with school groups exploring the natural world. 鈥淚 want to spend my time caring about things my daughter cared about. I think that鈥檚 how I can best honor her memory,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f she knew I was wallowing in grief, she would kick my ass. She would say, 鈥業f you love me, get over it. Get over it, Jimmy.鈥� 鈥�

His statement to Crews at that 2006 hearing reflected, he thinks, what Molly would have wanted. 鈥淧aul, I am here today to offer forgiveness for what you have done,鈥� he told his daughter鈥檚 killer鈥攁t which point, he says, Crews locked eyes with him and held the connection. 鈥淚 wish that you and I can now find peace.

鈥淢olly had decided to devote her life to working with troubled children, like you certainly were,鈥� he told him. 鈥淧aul, I think it would be great if you could pick up where Molly left off, starting with yourself. Help the Mollys of this world learn who you are, and try to enlist the help of other inmates to help in this effort. You are a gold mine of critical information that needs to be unearthed.鈥�

鈥淧eace be with you, brother,鈥� he said in conclusion. 鈥淧eace be with you.鈥�

This past spring, I climbed again to the clearing. In the quarter-century since my first visit there, through-hiking had mushroomed in popularity: in 1990, the ATC recorded more than 230 completed end-to-end treks, just eight of them southbound; last year, the total had grown to 961. Though a few well-publicized homicides have occurred on trails or parklands near the AT since Geoff鈥檚 and Molly鈥檚 deaths, just one鈥攖he unsolved 2011 killing of an Indiana hiker, Scott 鈥淪tonewall鈥� Lilly, near a shelter in Amherst County, Virginia鈥攈as claimed someone actually walking the path.

My visit got me thinking of my 158 days and nights on the AT, the people I鈥檇 met, the friends I鈥檇 made, and when I got home I phoned Animal to revisit our adventures together. It had been 21 years since I鈥檇 last seen him, when I鈥檇 attended his wedding. He has a pair of teenage sons now. He鈥檚 also a Southern Baptist minister.

We read our trail journals aloud, laughed over our descriptions of Rubin, then turned to the subject of Geoff and Molly. Greg was confident that what had happened to them was part of a divine architecture, that the world鈥檚 sin, its evil, is no accident鈥攖hat everything is 鈥減art of God鈥檚 sovereignty.鈥�

Including his own hike. When he left Katahdin, he said, he had not been a good Baptist鈥攚hich would explain all that beer he drank with me. But he took a step toward the righteous path late in his hike, he told me, and he could remember the night it happened: Wednesday, August 28, 1990, at the Thelma Marks shelter.

He reached the hut two weeks before Geoff and Molly. He was alone there. A storm rumbled in the distance as he pulled a Bible from his pack, along with his journal. 鈥淭he lack of direction in my life was due to my leaving God,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渂ut He loves me and I feel a new strength. I pray that I can retain this and use it in my life.鈥�

A few minutes later, the weather hit. The wind rose to a sustained yowl, shredded the treetops, racked the old lean-to, seemed to be swelling toward a terrible end. Then it fell quiet. 鈥淚 thought a tornado was on the way,鈥� Greg wrote. 鈥淚 was really scared, but you have to keep the faith.鈥�

The next morning, he stepped out of the shelter and into the clearing. Sunshine splayed through the trees to dance at his feet. Birds trilled. The air smelled fresh, and all about him the woods seemed renewed. And he recognized the place as a little piece of paradise.

Earl Swift is the author of five books, including .

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