The Kindness of Strangers

[Sara Renouf]

Hello:

I am trying to reach a very kind stranger (lol) from my past. His name is Taeji Nedilsky (roadtopines). We knew each other when we were young and he has made a post on this forum before. Please contact me Mike! Sara

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I arrived at Battle Pass on the CDT in Wyoming late in the afternoon. The highway is visible for miles to each side of the pass and there were no cars coming from either direction. My plan was to hitch down to the town of Encampment Wyoming and resupply at the Sinclair c-store in nearby Riverside.
I was out of food and the guidebook left me with the impression this could be a tough hitch into a town that had not been exactly friendly to hikers in the past.
I sat by the side of the windy highway with my groundsheet in hand with it's white tyvek surface and hand printed letters that read: "Hiker to Town".
A few cars and trucks came by but all were headed the other direction.
The sun was just about to hit the horizon and i began to think about where i would bed down for the night planning to just try and hitch in first thing in the morning instead.
Thats when it happened.
A white truck that had passed in the other direction came back. The driver, Gary of Encampment, stopped and gave me a ride down to town. He said i looked like a "serious hiker".. I hoped so by that point since I had walked there from Mexico!
On the way down to town he mentioned the store would be closed and there was not really anyplace to camp. I explained i would just stealth camp somewhere out of the way and such.
He offered a place for me to stay at his place and i accepted. He cooked up a huge pot of spaghetti and we drank Guiness beer out of the can and talked about hiking and the army until 3 AM!
The next morning at 6AM Gary took me right over to the Sincalir store and i resupplied. Then he brought me all the way back up to Battle Pass. I was hiking again by 7AM!
The supposed "most difficult resupply" turned out to be the most incredibly efficient of the CDT for me.
Despite trying, Gary would not take any money from me.
That was not an isolated incident on the CDT by the way.
Of course i still think about what would have happened if i did not look like a "Serious hiker"!
Long distance hiking has a way of changing your perspective.
People are mostly very good. the reality is not at all what you would expect by reading the newspapers or blogs on the internet.
It forced me to think: "Would i have picked up a scraggley hiker on the side of a deserted mountain highway?" I am ashamed to say that before my thru hikes the answer would have been "No".

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