By any other name

April 4, 2025

When I first began looking seriously at the idea of doing some time on the AT, the idea of trail names came up. In hiking circles, a trail name is your handle while hiking and a decent conversational opener. Some folks name themselves, but old school tradition seems to be that you get from someone else along the way. They can be silly or serious. On day one, my brother and I met a thru hiker on the path coming down from Harper’s Ferry. After asking where we’d started from, she asked us if we had trail names yet (we didn’t) and offered us hers: Treebird. It was a 30-second conversation, but a nice way to remember the people we run into out here, I found myself thinking. 

Here at the hostel, I had a quiet early morning with Mata Hari before making my pancakes and joining the other hikers at table. 

Mata and her salmon of seduction keeping me company in the early mornings

Jim would also be taking a zero-mile day here, but Hobo was ending his thru-hike altogether, and Gary intended to move on later this morning. From the sound of it, Bill, one of my shuttle drivers from yesterday, would be coming to take him to the trailhead, where he would begin hiking back to his car here at the hostel. I’d already gotten a text from Goldilocks this morning to check in on me and ask if I needed Bill to pick up anything for me on his way, no charge. 

The topic of trail names came up after a thin man with a gentle, rueful smile stopped by the hostel for a rest and a beverage. He introduced himself as Martha Stewart. He’d gotten his trail name ( because of course we asked) when he first started hiking in 2002. He’d just gotten married and had made his own wedding cake. Gary asked how it had turned out; Martha Stewart smiled and replied that it had looked better than it had tasted. after he left, we all agreed that Martha Stewart was a kickin’ good trail name.

Hobo had been calling me Blisterfoot since I’d arrived last night. That morning I argued, half-jokingly, that the name was incomplete—there were more problems with the foot than just blisters, after all. I think it was Gary, then, who suggested Deadfoot, and we all laughed. In truth, I did like Deadfoot a bit better than Blisterfoot as a name, so I was relieved. I knew I had the option to just reject the name and move on, but that felt unsporting, somehow. When Bill came to pick Gary up, I greeted him and thanked him again. Later, Fern got a text from Bill with a third name: Pearl. I asked Fern to ask Bill for his reasoning. What ensued was an odd game of text telephone, but the gist of it was the idea of an irritant bringing forth something of value and light, mixed with some complimentary language about me and how I was handling everything, etc. I was touched. At the same time, the original name, or at least what it had evolved into, felt equally authentic, if a bit grim.

I thought about it for a while, and eventually decided to accept both names. So when I signed the hostel logbook at the end of my stay there, I signed it, with a bit of buccaneer spirit, as Deadfoot Pearl.