He walked off. Morning had come, and he was already loaded up; his big green pack leaned against a tree outside, cinched tight. According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the proposal for the hiking trail was first presented in 1921, but the Trail was not technically completed until 2014 when a final major stretch was formally acquired and received permanent protection. They were two young men and a girl not yet 18. 7 contributions. Polson in 1970, about the time he rode from Hartsville, South Carolina to Kent, Ohio. If all this hadn’t happened, I could have really liked you. Did she know of a place that would overlook that? But I was calm.”, “I am not a passive person. “And he went on his way.”. Just the opposite: if the forester saw that she was hiking with a different man, she was sure Ralph would start shooting. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s mission is to protect, manage, and advocate for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. My name is Julia. But he didn’t lay a hand on her, didn’t so much as look at her—he was there, it seemed, solely to keep her from climbing through the window. We hear from our audience every day about how much they love our long-form journalism. Nothing appeared on the local news. The Appalachian Trail (or the A.T.) is one of the longest footpaths in the world. It made sense that he would. The AT traversed several slides of jumbled boulders, and the hikers’ progress, never brisk, slowed as they picked their way across. She fully expected he would rape her. https://www.alltrails.com/lists/appalachian-trail-tennessee-best-day-hikes He said no more about it. “We never got a clear story of what happened, because Joel didn’t remember,” Johnny says. The FBI was probably looking for him. Making a financial contribution to Outside is not tax-deductible, but it will help pay for the writers, editors, fact-checkers, designers, and photographers that stories like these demand—and will ensure we can keep publishing them for years to come. Ralph had brought Joel’s pith helmet along, and now he turned it upside down, filled it with water, and placed it beside her. Joel sidled up close. The good: Ralph might not kill her here and now. Some states allow hikers to carry weapons that are not concealed. Ralph ordered her to eat and drink while he went through Joel’s pack. They were then asked which type of experience made them feel most unsafe and were given six options to choose from:  hitchhiking, a strange person in town, a strange person on the trail, trail conditions, wildlife encounter, and other. Besides, she was no athlete—she hadn’t intentionally exercised a day in her life—and slogging up mountains didn’t sound like fun. Even if you have enough gun permits to wallpaper the Taj Mahal, you are not allowed to discharge a firearm on federal land, except for highly restricted hunting. They refined their timetable: Joel would attend a fiddling convention in North Carolina and from there make his way to Springer Mountain. From shop DexMex. There was a very unfortunate incident back in 1985 just outside of Duncannon, PA when two SOBOs were murdered. “Be quiet.” He tied her hands behind her back with twine. Well before dawn, Thompson joined Baker at the crime scene. “I’d just like for the record to know,” he said, “that I did not have anything to do with the murder of Diane Good.”. He stopped her beside a slim hardwood, ordered her to sit on the ground, pulled her legs around the tree, and tied her feet together. He planned to hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2,200 miles of it. It was he, not Margaret, who needed to stop every few minutes. The youngest of three children born to John E. and Bonnie Tedder Polson, a mill worker turned jeweler and a farm-raised homemaker. Outside Online aims to deliver readers the world, dispatching our writers and photographers to the ends of the earth to report the one-of-a-kind stories that have inspired and informed generations of readers. She asked whether he was going to kill her. The state gave him 15 years, but he served only a fraction of that before he escaped from the Michigan State Prison in Jackson. He had a wispy mustache and horn-rimmed glasses. Being dead didn’t frighten her. He arranged for his mother to mail-drop supplies and, miffed that the only available AT patch bore the legend Maine to Georgia, carefully embroidered his own reading GEORGIA TO MAINE. He covered her backpack with leaves and wedged his own rucksack behind her as a backrest. The summer after he died, she and Ralph’s son took his cremated remains to a swinging bridge over eastern Michigan’s Rifle River and dumped them into the water. Ralph, he replied. I know what most people envision, as far as safety, when I say “thru-hiking”. Luckily the pair survived, but Smith was charged for attempted murder and murder of two hikers back in 1981 (mpora.com). At the junction, they could have turned south, backtracking to a road less than five miles away. She spurred their ­conversation as they tackled a series of short but steep ascents. She wasn’t sure what she would do. The deranged actions of a few bad seeds. Like Joel, he was the youngest of three children in a solidly middle-class household. Circuit Judge Martin E. Clements wasn’t having it. Margaret crawled into her sleeping bag not long after. The Appalachian National Scenic Trail, generally known as the Appalachian Trail or simply the A.T., is a marked hiking trail in the eastern United States extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. She watched as he walked to the stream, splashed water on his face, and doubled back toward the fire ring. The similarities ended there. “A true gentle person, quiet and trustworthy.”, He was also broke—he didn’t earn nearly enough to cover the cost of gear. About a mile on, they broke for lunch. Well, maybe he’s all right, Joel commented to Margaret while Ralph was gone. She did not want to sit tied up in the woods. He bounced around New Orleans for a while, then Fort Lauderdale, and later Atlanta. The Appalachian Trail in White County, Georgia. The men hurried off, unaware of their luck, leaving Margaret with a deepening dread that she and Ralph would spend the night in the woods. In 1974, few did. He died there the following month. No one picked up. “Joel climbed up a tree onto the roof of the garage, and he apparently fell down,” says his brother, Johnny. In Jethro Tull records and card games and movie dates. Fatal Stabbing on Appalachian Trail Is Uncovered Thanks to GPS and a Dog James L. Jordan, 30, of West Yarmouth, Mass., was charged in the … Polly’s young daughter had received baby chicks for Easter, and the bright yellow birds “drove him crazy all night,” Polly remembers. You kept turning around, like you thought I was about to shoot you. His only statement on the matter came at his January 1993 sentencing. Just up the road, came the reply. She digs in her garden. More than forty years passed before she decided to share her story—first with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, in 2015, and now for this article. “Roll over,” Ralph said. Be back afternoon. Ralph did not take the stand. They hurried back to the shelter. A typical girl of the mid-seventies American South, in most respects. On Monday, May 6, the two left Columbia by bus for Atlanta. And the grasslands are wide open. None that Margaret detected, anyway. the appalachian trail footpath winding along the ridge of roan mountain's balds in tennessee under blue sky in autumn. The next day they took another bus into the mountains and caught a ride to the trailhead at Tesnatee. Joel Eugene Polson: April 26, 1948 to May 9, 1974. I’ll leave you here, he told her. This means, that with my math brain, 25% of thru-hikers reported meeting a strange person while on the trail. The buyer pays the same price as they would otherwise, and your purchase helps to support The Trek's ongoing goal to serve you quality backpacking advice and information. That a leaky pipe had dripped water on it until the seams burst and the wood turned to mush. Friends and relatives had scattered, and his simple, flat gravestone in the family plot provided no information beyond the dates of his birth and death. He took up cycling, too, and invested in a lightweight road bike he took on marathon rides across the coastal plain. “They said they would like me to keep it.”, And he did, for more than 40 years. They were a drifter and a pair who barely knew each other. Hikers were asked whether they had an experience that made them feel unsafe. And in their pages she detected threads that resonated with her—that time is vast and human life short. Around 1970, he pedaled from Hartsville to Kent, Ohio, and a couple of years later, says his brother, he set out to ride across the country. “He was thrown off by some sort of mental thing from that fall.”, Whatever his condition, by the time he was able to return to school, he was two years older than his classmates. A reboot. It’s very much a part of me, but the whole thing is so surreal that it almost feels like it’s a movie.”. Still, he told her, they should leave first thing in the morning. And first she might have to actually hole up with him in a motel. Murderer, Darrell David Rice was indicted for the crime six years later, while serving time in prison for another attempted abduction (mpora.com). Darkness had yet to fall. Completing an Appalachian Trail thru-hike is both draining and rewarding, mentally and physically. He told her he’d busted out of jail. It’s a long way, the man replied. Hiking out there is calming, restorative. Subscribe to our What You Missed newsletter for the top headlines from the outdoor world, in your inbox six days a week. Next Nine miles south of Unicoi Gap, she stopped the car outside a restaurant in the north Georgia burg of Helen. Congratulations on your thru hike! Before Margaret had time to process the scene, Ralph was leaping into the shelter to stand over her. Everything is suffused with gold. He was relentlessly upbeat. Corrinne has not been able to reconcile the “very soft-spoken” brother she knew with the killer he was. On their left rose dark stone, bearded in moss and punctuated with small waterfalls. “I had it refurbished,” Lewis says. He landed pictures in the local papers and won first place at the 1970 Darlington Arts Festival. Not in a romantic way; he was more buddy material than boyfriend. He lay covered with leaves and sticks, across the stream from the shelter. You could make some money. Ralph surprised her. A few minutes after they reached the blacktop, a young woman pulled over and offered them a lift. Then as now, the shelter was a lean-to perched high on concrete pilings in a glade hemmed by a curving brook. Perhaps the beauty he found there kindled his interest in the natural world, because during a stint at Hartsville’s Coker College, he immersed himself in “trying to save the planet,” Krueger says. Death would come for her, as it did everyone. The afternoon sun crossed the sky. “She doesn’t mind wearing bulletproof vests and being delivered by Marine helicopters,” her sister, Polly, says. “Oh yeah,” he said. Joel was nowhere to be seen. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the shelter. By then he’d read everything he could find about the Appalachian Trail and was a regular at the Backpacker, where he made an impression on the owners, brothers Lewis and Malcolm Jones. Lewis didn’t know at the time that his granddaughter had quit playing for good and that her family had stashed the fiddle in the attic. She finished high school in three years and turned 17 just days before arriving at the University of South Carolina. “He didn’t have that many friends,” his brother says. Our Tax ID number: 526046689. STAY SAFE OUT THERE and SEE YOU ON THE TRAIL. Please support Outside Online today. Ralph practiced Joel’s signature, so he could cash his traveler’s checks. Inevitably, his interest in the outdoors and arcane gear fused into a new passion: Joel started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Just one of the three has outlived the story. “He had no choice, because I stuck a .357 right in his nose.”. My family and friends aren’t so concerned with the natural hazards that I will be encountering as they a… “He got hemorrhoids,” Johnny Polson says. This is a challenging trail that requires preparation and training. She did a lot of thinking. The wildlife along the trail is plentiful, and hikers … At a gas station up the street, Ralph forged Joel’s signature, and they walked out with $20. I’ll leave a note in the shelter saying where you are. He had her demonstrate that she could reach both with her mouth. The Appalachian National Scenic Trail is a public footpath that follows more than 2,100 miles of Appalachian Mountain ridgelines between Maine and Georgia. (Photo: Courtesy White County Sheriff's Office). Welcome to the Ultimate Appalachian Trail Store! But the view carried a price: the trail climbed steadily, unmercifully, and burdened by their overloaded external-frame packs, the unseasoned hikers felt every foot. Of the 14 Appalachian Trail states, West Virginia is the shortest by far. “It’s not as though she’s throwing herself in the face of danger, but at the same time it doesn’t scare her.”, Margaret herself is matter-of-fact about her life’s trajectory. He demurred. They packed and walked to the Wurst Haus to cash more traveler’s checks, Margaret amazed by every new step he allowed her to take. But once he’d closed the door behind them, Ralph was interested only in whether the TV carried word that Joel’s body had been found. And she was willful like her mother, whose childhood polio had not kept her from college and a career as a clinical pathologist, raising four children, and juggling a crowded social calendar. He knew she’d go to the police and that the cops would be looking for a man with a big green pack. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t danger out there. She’d been strangled. They had the bullet. She sat in the waiting room, awed that she was alive, scared that he’d be back, and wanting nothing but to get home to her mother. She roams the countryside around her home. After the Appalachian Trail racks up 78.6 miles in Georgia, the trail crosses into North Carolina at Bly Gap near a gnarled, iconic old oak tree. “He was just a friend to everybody,” says a college buddy, Marguerite Ewing. “The subject’s head was in a plastic bag and the bag had been tied around his head with a piece of string,” Thompson wrote in his report. He remained a quiet misfit. She had change in her pocket. She strained her ears, dreading the sound of footsteps, certain that if Ralph returned it would be to kill her. Even so, he seemed “childlike, kind of naive,” a friend, Kenneth Krueger Jr., remembers. “No,” Ralph told her, “he’s just hurt.” He said it quickly. The Joyful Alternative, which sold incense, New Age books, and roach clips. As I’ve stated above mother nature is the one to fear when it comes to safety. What if it’s days before anyone shows up? But she was also a headstrong kid. She knew where he lived. Were there clues that something awful was about to happen? Then, when he was 13 or 14, he suffered a mysterious accident. “It was just strange that he knew the whole time that it would be because of me that he would get caught and all [but] was still letting me go,” she said. To inspire active participation in the world outside through award-winning coverage of the sports, people, places, adventure, discoveries, health and fitness, gear and apparel, trends and events that make up an active lifestyle. At the same time, Ralph threw off his blanket and stepped out of the shelter. Margaret did not dwell on her options. The Low Gap shelter stands just within White County, Georgia. Then again, it might be tomorrow. Beautifully written. In 1963, when he was 20, he ran off to New Mexico with a teenage girl and was arrested for statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Awesome. Margaret bought a $10 ticket for Columbia. They rested once more a little farther on, and again after that. Find more newsletters on our. kayaking in rivers in the middle of trees is pretty amazing too . Cheoah Bald offers panoramic views of western North Carolina. The Greyhound station occupied a downtown storefront, and when Margaret and Ralph arrived shortly before noon, they found the door locked and a sign on the glass: Gone to the doctor. The Appalachian Trail (affectionately referred to as the AT) first opened as a continuous trail in 1937. According to my research (references included at end of post) there have been 11 people murdered on the AT since 1974. I promise you, he said, that if you call the police as soon as I leave, and they’re waiting when I get to Atlanta, innocent people are going to die. “What are you going to do with me?”. Help fund our award-winning journalism with a contribution today. Late that afternoon he did. But when his older brother died, in July 1991, he was granted a one-month reprieve to attend the Michigan funeral. There is a very good article in Outside Magazine that revisits this story and the people it impacted 25 years after the murder. This time he dispensed with the blindfold. I was much more serious.”, “It was almost as if God took a big old branch and whacked me across the head and said, ‘Wake up. When she walked in, he opened fire with a rifle. Joel asked many to join his hike—friends, acquaintances, and, as in Margaret’s case, near strangers. They were, all three, green to the outdoors, new to the dragon-backed highlands near the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. He counted on having a few hours’ head start. Though he was good-looking—“beautiful,” Myra Polson says—no one recalls him having a girlfriend. This couldn’t be real. Still, in early May, she found herself 38 miles from its southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia, beginning their first full day of hiking. South Carolina wasn’t much for counterculture in the fall of 1973, but she found a pocket of it a few blocks from USC in Columbia’s Five Points district. The Appalachian Trail’s history, just like its geographical coverage, is long and full of remarkable changes. Margaret sat up in her bag. “But that’s not exactly accurate. He admitted owning the gun, which he said he’d bought on a Florida beach; it was later matched to the bullet taken from Joel’s head. “He came back on a Greyhound with his bike.”. Wake up right now.’”. The Chattahoochee Motel was an unassuming place, with six rooms facing the road and its namesake river chattering fast out back. Find professional Appalachian Trail videos and stock footage available for license in film, television, advertising and corporate uses. It wasn’t long before Margaret had a blister forming on her heel. The sheriff had ­already found Joel. “Is Joel dead?” she dared to ask. For three years, my dad prepared to hike the Appalachian Trail. Joel was intrepid as a kid, into scouting, playing soldier. He didn’t know that he trusted this Ralph character, he told her, keeping his voice low. Margaret had her hair in pigtails, looked barely into her teens, and was dwarfed by her enormous red JanSport pack. The Low Gap shelter today. She was as confused as her listeners about one piece of the narrative. He was president of the Photography Club, was a DJ on the school radio station, and worked the counter in the student store. You’d die, and I don’t want that. “Not of the world. Appalachian Trail is a 3 mile blue singletrack trail located near Pinkham Notch New Hampshire. The Backpacker store. (Photo: Jacquie Haymond). He’s probably OK. Of those who stated that they felt unsafe on the trail, on average only 40 percent of those were involving a strange person, or meeting a strange person. “I’ll always have that violin. “Joel Polson was one of the most gentle persons I’ve met through the years,” Lewis says. Just as likely, this is where he’d kill her. I an outdoorsy girl who loves animals, photography and sleeping. In all honesty, there have been instances of murder and foul play on the trail. A good hike. A car pulled over. You can catch an eastbound bus there. Appalachian Trail Terrain in North Carolina. Even they could cover the distance by nightfall. After a few minutes of conversation, Margaret crossed the clearing to wash up in the stream. One died there, leaving scant trace of his decent and well-meaning life. 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