Confucius Raisin.
“I think that was his name,” Lowell Van Ness said with a laugh. “It was something like that.”
That’s just one of the characters he met on the Appalachian Trail when he did the 2,160-mile thru-hike from Georgia to Maine back in 2014.
“I met the former civil affairs officer from Afghanistan. I also ran into a convicted felon from the lower 9th ward of New Orleans,” he said. “You meet all sorts of odd and interesting folks.”
He met guys going through mid-life crises. He met a lot of people from all over the world.
“There were a lot from Germany and also Australia,” Van Ness said.
And he spent many an evening with them around the campfire — in five months on the trail, he only spent four or five nights alone.
“It’s a cliché — they say the journey is the destination, but it’s kind of true,” he said. “It’s just you and the trail and all these utterly fascinating people who just randomly show up.”
Investing in others
For some of those nights, his father, Thomas Van Ness, was with him too. It’s a hobby the two have shared since Lowell was in Boy Scouts. They’ve hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail both separately and together.
Thomas Van Ness said it’s a great way to invest in the lives of people along the trail.
“I attend Hunter Street Baptist Church (in Hoover), and I take my lessons from Bible study fellowship with me,” Thomas Van Ness said. “I’ll be reading and answering questions from my lesson, and it never fails that somebody says, ‘Whatcha doing?’ I get to tell them that I’m a Christian and I’m studying my lesson. I tell them about how Jesus died for our sins and that if they don’t know Him, they really need to.”
Sometimes people call him a Jesus freak. Sometimes people just say “cool.” Other times they really engage with him in a conversation and think about it.
“And right now I’m studying Revelation, so I’m getting to share with them about how one day God is going to take the whole heavens and earth that we’re hiking through and renew it,” Thomas Van Ness said.
He headed out on the trail again in late April, chipping away at his ninth section of the trail, a section in Virginia from Daleville to Waynesboro.
He’s been working on it for years, ever since his son was young and the elder Van Ness took his family to hike part of it in Maryland and then again when he and his son hiked 50 miles of it for his Boy Scout merit badge.
Change of plans
In the early ’90s, he and his wife, Jimmye, had planned to hike the whole thing at one time but plans quickly changed.
“We did one night of backpacking at Oak Mountain and everything had gone well, so we were starting to do some planning when Jimmye got pregnant,” he said.
Resurrected dream
But after Lowell Van Ness got old enough to hike, Thomas Van Ness resurrected the dream.
“I think when Dad and I were doing backpacking trips together for Boy Scouts and I caught the backpacking bug, it kind of reactivated him,” Lowell Van Ness said. “He started buying all these DVDs about people hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
And he started chipping away at it in sections.
Thomas Van Ness said, “First was with my wife for our 30th anniversary.”
After that he did seven more sections, including the first part of the trail to help Lowell Van Ness kick off his thru-hike in 2014 after he graduated from college.
Thomas Van Ness said, “It doesn’t sound relaxing to carry a 30-pound pack over 2,000- and 3,000-foot climbs, but you’re not staring at a computer. It gives me a chance to get out of town and be in nature.”
And it’s a great time to enjoy creation, said Lowell Van Ness, also a member of Hunter Street Baptist.
“I enjoy being outside, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my dad and I’ve loved getting to interact with so many people,” he said.
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