wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Charlotte Presbyterians on Appalachian Trail come to

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8730 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05244
May 9, 2005

Hikers turn helpers
	    
Charlotte Presbyterians on Appalachian Trail
come to the aid of a woman in trouble
	    
by Ken Garfield
The Charlotte Observer
(reprinted with permission) 

CHARLOTTE, NC ? Even before the rescue, their hikes along the Appalachian
Trail meant the world to four friends from Charlotte.
	    
	Two or three times each year, the buddies from Covenant Presbyterian
Church in Charlotte take time off work and spend several days hiking and
camping along one of the most spectacular trails God ever made. Their goal is
to walk the entire trail, in segments, before they're too old to finish.
	    
	Alan Kuester, Henry Lafferty, Toney Mathews and Wade Cantrell come to
these hikes with different careers, aspirations and ages. 

	But once they start walking, they leave behind their differences and
the occasional disappointments that mark life in the real world. It's just
four friends, and a brotherhood that makes their backpacks seem as light as a
feather.
	    
	No wonder, then, that a cold rain on April 22 could do little to
dampen their spirits.
	    
	They were somewhere near Fontana Village in the Great Smoky Mountains
? "Gosh, it's pretty up there!" Kuester said ? when they first saw her. She
was sitting on the edge of a slope along a narrow part of the trail, her
backpack on the ground beside her, her legs covered in mud.
	    
	It didn't take an expert outdoorsman to realize Carolyn Bowers was in
trouble.
	    
	Bowers, who turned 61 on May 7, is a mother of two and grandmother of
three from Alexandria, VA. She retired in May 2004 from her job as an auditor
with the Environmental Protection Agency. 

	At that point in life, some of us take up knitting. An avid walker,
Bowers decided to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone ? some 2,100 miles,
from Georgia to Maine. The plan was for her husband, Chad, to meet her along
the way with supplies and support.
	    
	Her adventure began on March 29 in Georgia. It ended on April 22
around 10:30 a.m., in the North Carolina mountains, 90 minutes into her walk
that morning. 

	Picking up her pace because it had begun to rain, she slipped in the
mud on a downhill part of the trail, fell and hurt her left arm when it
became tangled in the straps of her walking pole.
	    
	Right away, she knew it was probably broken.
	    
	She had been sitting there five or 10 minutes ? arm throbbing,
growing nauseated, blowing a whistle to signal for help ? when she laid eyes
on four men coming down the trail.
	    
	"They just materialized right there when I needed them," Bowers said,
recalling exactly what she said to the four strangers, who didn't remain
strangers long. "I said, 'Excuse me, I have a serious problem here. I think I
broke my arm.'"
	    
	The group's response?
	    
	"He (Kuester) told me they were four Presbyterians," Bowers said, "I
guess to let me know they were nice guys."
	    
	The pleasantries out of the way, Kuester, Cantrell, Matthews and
Lafferty sprang into action.
	    
	With lightning and thunder giving them cause to hurry, they got
Bowers into dry clothes, fashioned a splint out of a couple of sticks, gave
her ibuprofen from her backpack for pain, picked up her 33-pound backpack,
put their arms around her and began walking to the nearest shelter.
	    
	"Alan stayed right with me," Bowers recalled. "He held on to my coat
in case I slipped."
	    
	It took them 90 minutes or so to walk nearly three miles back to the
shelter from which Bowers had come ? "a little lean-to in the middle of the
woods," Kuester said. The weather grew worse as they walked.
	    
	Once at the shelter, the help continued.
	    
	Fearing hypothermia, they got Bowers into more dry clothes, put her
in her sleeping bag, gave her more ibuprofen, made her hot tea and hot
noodles and re-splinted her arm with the help of other hikers  they met at
the shelter. Cell phone service is spotty at best on the trail, but Toney
Mathews managed to get through to park rangers to relate what had happened.
	    
	Two rangers reached them that night and spent the night in the
shelter with Bowers, checking her blood pressure and other vital signs and
making sure she was OK before taking her out the next morning. She went to
the hospital and then home, where she's on the mend. 

	She hopes to walk the trail again.
	    
	The four buddies said goodbye to Bowers that night when they knew she
was safe. In all, the men from Charlotte and the grandmother from Alexandria
were together maybe three or four hours, tops. It wasn't long enough for her
to learn all the guys' names.
	    
	But it was long enough for everyone involved in the rescue to
appreciate what it meant.
	    
	Bowers, who describes herself as a believer but not much of a
church-goer, said it was as if someone were watching over her.
	    
	"It just seemed so perfect," she said. "I needed help and they just
came at the right time. I couldn't have asked for more, really."
	    
	Kuester said he was humbled by the chance to show kindness to a
stranger, and humbled, too, by the timing.
	    
	Surely other hikers would have come along, seen a woman in trouble
and stopped to rescue her. But they saw her first. They were the ones given
this opportunity to turn a hike among friends into something more.
	    
	Surely it didn't happen that way by chance. "Who knows how that
works?" Kuester asked.
	    
	However it worked, there's a group of four buddies from Covenant
Presbyterian Church who will never forget one hike along the Appalachian
Trail in late April.
	    
	And there's a woman on the mend in Alexandria who will never forget
four men who embodied the kindness of strangers, and who showed her what it
means to be saved.
	    
	"She said she'll have a soft spot in her heart for Presbyterians
now," Kuester noted.

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