The Refined Skill of a Yogi...

You're not a true thru-hiker until you have honed your skill as a yogi.  I was able to begin my apprentice work in the Shenandoah's.  The Shenandoah's are a perfect place to develop this important thru-hiker skill because of the various opportunities along the way.  You see, the trail intersects various picnic areas, overlooks and waysides along Skyline Drive.  These intersections mean us smelly, scary looking thru-hikers end up bumping into the freshly scrubbed faces of day hikers and sightseers. Most have no idea of what they are getting into when they either approach us or we them.

So part of the process is to help them understand that we we may look dangerous and homeless, we are, in fact, very hungry thru-hikers simply looking to poach a free snack - or maybe even a meal.  Once you are able to disarm the victims I have found the rest to be pretty easy.  When they realize that we have just hiked from Georgia and headed to Maine they become intrigued and begin to ask questions.  Of course, we invariably lead the conversation to food and the minimalist approach to eating on the trail.  They quickly pickup the notion that we are all very skinny and are salivating and staring at their picnic basket.  It's hard for them not too offer up some sacrificial treats  just so they can get on with what they were doing.

The first REAL opportunity for me came up at Pinnacles Picnic area.  We had just stuffed ourselves at the Skyland Resort at an all you can eat breakfast buffet (note that this was not trail food) and Wobegon, Fire Fly and I stopped for a quick trail food lunch at the Picnic area scoping out a pavilion with a large group of "eastern speaking people" surrounded by large trays of food.  Looking starved and innocent, one woman took an interest in us and nervously approached us and asked us why we were there and what we were doing.  Great opener...and after describing our desperate situation we were able to get our foot in the door by asking her what the occasion, where they were from, and generally pretending we were interested.  Turns out that it was a Turkish family celebrating a young man's birthday.  They own a Turkish restaurant in McLean.  We noticed that the old men were smoking cigars and playing some sort of game so we asked if it would be okay to watch them play their game.

BINGO...once inside their camp, what else could they do but provide us with a huge plate of spicy herbed chicken, cabbage and beef rolls, steamed rice and a ton of wonderful Turkish homemade bread!

After this brilliant effort the three of us were anointed as exalted yogis of the Shenandoah's and we lived to tell everyone about it!