Such a beautiful place, such pretty flowers, such this and such that. All those "suches" gave the little town of Suches, Georgia, its name. At least that's what Dick told me. I suspect that's what someone told him. As far as he was concerned, the crowning glory of Suches was its post office. That's where he received my lovingly packed box of instant oatmeal, juice boxes, Pop Tarts, and assorted high-energy bars from the health food store. That's also where he stuffed a big box with his self-inflating air mattress, Polertec shirt, gloves, two t-shirts, and a radio, and mailed the assortment home to me. I'm no judge of weight, or age, or the number of beans in a guess-and-win jar, but I'd estimate he shaved off a good 8 pounds. That 57-pound pack had become too much to carry. It posed no problem when walking on flat ground, but climbing up and down mountains proved far more difficult than he had imagined. Dick used to be a news director for a radio station. He listens to the news on either radio or television several hours a day. I predict he'll ask me to mail back that radio.

I asked how - and where - he'd been sleeping. The first night, he pitched his tent next to one of the shelters. Most shelters on the AT are three-sided wooden structures where a hiker can lay his sleeping bag. People crowd into the shelters and sleep like pickets on a fence. The second night he slept in a shelter, but most of the other hikers stayed up till midnight talking, playing cards, and laughing. Dick is a very social person, but his normal 9:00 p.m. bedtime keeps him from being a party animal. The next night he pitched his tent in the woods all by himself.

Remember that Polartec shirt he sent home? Well, he had been using that as his pillow and he always sleeps with a pillow. He might ask me to mail that back too.

On one of the first few days on the trail, another hiker asked him why a man his age would want to hike the AT. He answered, "Isn't this every hiker's dream?" And thus, his trail name was born. The next night at the shelter, someone asked what his trail name was. Poor guy. He's taking a lot of ribbing over that name. But I think it suits him just fine.

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