Hellbender Leg 2 – Along the Misty Mountains 

2026 Eastern Hellbender Semester Blog #3

I haven’t showered in a week 

I bow to the mountains, low so the bluestem of Virginia, of the autumn torches light on my cheek.
And I feel the raw black mouth of the earth
The sumac stands sturdy in the wind
The sun streaks south on the wrong side
This old shirt is wrecked
And we are chasing! We,
Sparkles on a moonlit sea
Feathers unmolted on the bluebirds nose
The crispy edge piece of the universe
Running in hot soup and dying for tomorrow
we are lightning on this gravel slope
Clashing tooth on tooth on rubber on rock
As the moon waxes behind San Clemente
And the jet planes wheeze
There’s love in my fingers
Home leaping in the field. ~by Gigi

The train from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland goes by in a flash. Finally some time to rest and relax, read our letters, catch up on journal prompts, or just nap and enjoy the rumble of the wheels (unless you are the scribe, in which case you are typing on the Kroka laptop with the madness of a thousand tales to tell). Soleil, Uli and Willow are collaging in their notebooks using magazine scraps collected along the road and free color samples from a Home Depot. 

From Baltimore, a rental van takes us to the Chesapeake and Ohio Rail Trail, which runs along the Potomac River in southwest Maryland. There we reconvene with our next instructor, Ezra who has brought down the iconic Kroka trailer, jam packed with all our bicycles we stuffed in once we arrived in Brooklyn. We unload and repack our bikes at the trailhead, preparing for our next section of riding. It will be mostly tent camping from now on as we begin our journey into Appalachia: fewer local communities and farms putting us up every night, fewer paved roads, more wilderness, more gravel paths, more relying on the kindness of strangers. But, the biggest change of all: another beloved instructor leaves us – mama Jae. They say if you listen closely to the wind you can still hear the cries of the Hellbender students wailing out for their lost instructor… However, as sad as we were to watch Jae go, we quickly discovered the unique greatness of our next instructor, Ezra.*

*Note: while some instructors stay with us the entire semesters, others switch out for different legs depending on scheduling and the unique skills and experience of each instructor*

Down here in Maryland, especially in the valley, the weather is nearly a month behind. The leaves are still green, the river is still warm, fall has only just begun. As we bike along the Rail Trail we come across the remains of the canal: tall deteriorated stone walls – each stone placed there by human hand a hundred or so years ago. Other sections further down still hold water; patches covered by lily pads and duckweed make a habitat for painted turtles. Throughout the day Arlo counts 93! To our left, the Potomac River: beautiful and big and winding and wild.
On the second day we have lunch at the mouth of the Paw Paw tunnel before biking single file, blindly through the darkness for nearly a mile. Singing the cowboy song that Jae taught us and hearing it echo through the long chamber as we nearly crash over invisible pot holes and protective railings.

That night we swim in the Potomac and skip rocks from Maryland to West Virginia, just on the other bank. When we get back to camp, before we go to bed, we lay out in the grass of our campsite and stargaze. Hanah begins to sing a lullaby that her father used to sing to her, and as she sings a brilliant shooting star streaks lightning across the night sky.

As the lord god made the earth and the land
She held all the stars in the palm of her hand
And they ran through her fingers, like grains of sand
And now were all dancing in the stars…
And now were all biking in the stars…
And now were all sleeping in the stars…

By the third day of Leg 2, we are off the rail trail, now following this long knobbly road over miles and miles of rolling hills through the West Virginia countryside. Up and down and always a little more up again, we get the feeling that we are entering the mountains. As the day goes on and the hills keep coming we’re all getting more and more exhausted. At one point Bennett, our noble sweep, biked over to Philadelphia, and, using all his power, gave him a mighty push up the hill – sacrificing himself in the process and immediately falling into a ditch (unscathed). Aiding in the exhausting, was also dehydration. Visions of full nalgenes, the rushing Potomac, even the crusty rusty well water from the Canal, flood our minds as we take the last couple sips from our squirt bottles. All hope seems lost, all lips chapped and throats parched, when suddenly Ezra rides his bicycle right off the road and over to the edge of a stream bed and starts pulling at an elephant trunk-like contraption hooked up in a tree until it comes free, blasting all of us with cool clear glorious spring water flowing with such velocity right out of the side of the mountain. 

The Big Climb.

Rumors spread. Fear mongering was in extreme effect, whispers of a 3000 foot climb drifted from tent to restless tent. But after nearly a week of looming dread mixed with excitement, we found ourselves crushing the enormous climb up the east side of the Allegheny ridge, the high ridge of Appalachia. With legs tingling tender and shirts soaked with sweat, we crested the top of the ride to be greeted by a breathtaking view of those roaring blue Appalachian mountains– the folds of the earth’s crust pushed up together by seismic tectonic ripples, crawling up the North American countryside from down south in Alabama up the northeast all the way to Canada.

As we rode south along the ridge we watched a short red shrubland on the western side slowly grow and reach and turn into the deep dark wooded forest of the Monongahela wilderness. Then to our right a perfect rainbow, and just past that, dark grey clouds in the distance twisting and contorting and spinning themselves up into thickly woven swirling storm cells–the arms of a hurricane. We rode on the wooded ridge for half a day, totally exposed to the elements, before descending down the other side of the mountain in rain so thick and wind so harsh it washed our eyeballs through our lashes as we struggled to see the gravel road in front of us. The whole experience was incredibly fun, and we continued biking through the weather on beautiful rolling West Virginian hills for another day and a half before arriving at Davis and Elkins College, where we stayed in their fancy, historic (and supposedly haunted) hotel called Graceland. 

After spending some time in the town of Elkins, enjoying a traditional Appalachian music class at the Augusta Center and learning about cryptid folklore at the local museum, we took off, heading back into the mountains for our next wilderness leg. That night we huddled together eating heavily salted *Rababu around our flickering candle lantern, the thunder in the distance sounding its mighty rumble and the rain coming down so hard that we have to yell to be heard over the sound of it thrashing on the tarp. We sckooch another foot closer, shoulders pressed up against shoulders in an effort to save those on the edges from getting too wet. Philadelphia has their guitar and decides It is the perfect night to teach another old cowboy song. 

*Rababu is a delicious Kroka staple stew of lentils, rice, and veggies.

“Yippee-ay ayyyyyyyy! Yippee-ay ohhhhhhh!” We yell through the pouring rain, “Ghost riders in the skyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

It is the 15th of October and we have climbed so much elevation that fall has once again caught up with us. Back in New England, the landscape had been a sea of golden yellow leaves; now the forest is aflame in deep ember orange. As we bike higher and higher the trees become darker, almost black in bark, tall and slender and mysterious. The runoff water from the mountains forms a small creek that runs alongside the trail and in it Willow spots a huge orange lizard. It’s not the illusive hellbender we’re searching for, but a beautiful cheat salamander. That evening, we discovered a campsite right on the banks of the Cheat River, tucked away within a maze of impenetrable thickets of rhododendrons. It was raining and we were wet, but the atmosphere was humid and warm and we were able to bathe in the river and not risk getting cold until the sun had well set. 

Depending on which Hellbender you ask, mud is either a great delight or an evil nefarious spirit who tricks your tires into being painfully slow, or worse, slipping right out from under you. The typical answer is a combination of both. On our way up to Bald Knob we were met with soppy, spongy soil which made parts of our 2,000 foot ascent even slower and more difficult than usual. Still, as we do everyday, we peddled and peddled and slipped and fell and got back on our bikes and pedaled some more, all the way up to the bald little head of the mountaintop.

A train whistle shrieked right beside us. Somewhere unseen behind the trees, it’s a deep, rich, unsettling siren, and for a moment we wonder if it really belongs to a train engine or if it’s the wail of some ancient hill dwelling cryptid. Nonetheless, we sweat up the final muddy ascent and out into a little clearing. On the Bald Knob we find an old wood cabin and a steel fire tower which we climbed, sardining ourselves into the little metal box at the top; all 14 of us up there peering out just barely over the tips of the trees at the rolling mountains around us.

The decent back down was exhilarating, slipping sliding down the muddy mountain side until we come to a halt, check the map, and discover that the trail we had been planning to take had been relinquished from the Forest Service and now belonged back in the arms of Mother Nature. Our next best option, it seemed, was to ride along the side of the old railroad tracks all the way down into a town we weren’t even sure still existed. Ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk go our bikes, ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk go our butts for nearly an hour as we jostle down the tracks. It’s getting late, we’re getting sore, all our tired brains can remember is just the chorus of All My Love by Noah Khan, so that’s all we sing over and over again. But, just as the sky begins to dim and the clouds start rolling in, the tracks spill out into an old abandoned train station with these huge red antique train cars sitting perfectly still, tucked away in the middle of the woods, a time capsule of some preserved Appalachian history waiting there patiently to be  explored.

From the Greenbriar Rail Trail down through the town of Marlinton, West Virginia, back onto the rail trail and then into the mountains, along a beautiful open country road, all the way up to the Yew Mountain Center, we finally break the Kroka biking record with 50 (and a half!) whole miles in one day! We celebrate this achievement by crashing a wedding, before realizing that our camp spot was actually somewhere else on the property and quickly evacuating. 

After spending the day on the Yew Mountain Center property learning about the local culture around native plants such as ginseng root, we all file into the common room for some Big Job work/free time before a community potluck. Lucca plays Clay Pigeons on the guitar while Uli organizes 15 different outdated maps, while the food managers, Soleil, Rosie and Gigi, huddle around a table discussing matters of future lunches and dinners. Bennett had his hands full fixing the many issues that plague the bicycles, and so did Eoin, who had two ripped panniers and a broken tent to repair. As much as we love being on our bikes, we are all thankful for our layover days. 

Dawn 

Wake in the bathing crescent light,
Frost of night come blanket white
Wake to supple rise and fall
Dove breast cooing, sooth raven squall
Velvet mother disarm my guard
Let us shed tear fallen hard
Embrace my mercy tired true
Forever grateful to wake with you
Blessed my soul to wake a new. ~by Arlo 

Each morning of our layover at the Yew Mountain Center we awoke to a brand new weather pattern: Frost. How crazy it was for the first time to step outside our tents in the morning and feel the frozen blades of grass crunch beneath our feet; the first signs of winter moving in. The tent flies must have the ice shaken off them before they can be packed away by cold, frost-nipped fingers, and the morning cooks must use their knives to shave away a layer of ice off the wood before it’ll burn well in the solo stoves. These days, however, had another uniqueness to them:  by noontime the sun had always melted away the frost and began to warm the earth enough that all layers had to come off save for shorts, skirts and t-shirts. It was an incredible sequence, to be brisk like fall and warm like summer, to feel the hot breath of sunlight on your bare skin after spending the night shivering in your long johns in your 20 degree sleeping bag.

Caves caves caves!

My boots are on, My helmet strapped
My coveralls cover all I have
As I enter the cave of joy and delight
I trip on a rock And turn on my light
One million critters, oh so small
A cricket part on the wall.
Calcium carbonate comes trickling down
We lick it left then right then down
Then just above, a little thing
Using tiny feet to cling
Onto a crevice that forms a shelf
Of buried time, fossilized shells 

Having traveled the roads, forests and fields of the surface-land, the Hellbenders left behind their bicycles, dawned their headlamps and entered a portal: following the whisper of chilly air through a crack in a wall, a hole in the ground, an entrance into the underworld. 

Throughout the week, we explored 3 extremely unique caves, each with their own special encounters. Friars Hole Cave was the first: dark shale walls with little specks, fossilized shells embedded into the stone, then a narrow passageway opening up into a huge cavern big enough to fit 5 or 6 Kroka barns. Bone Cave came next, thankfully named for its bone dryness and not other bone-related shenanigans. This cave was utterly tan, a thick layer of yellow sand covering the ground and floating up in big plumes at our heels, swirling through the air in the light of our headlights. Small brown bats cling to the walls or nestle in tiny holes, too deep in hibernation to be bothered by our intrusion. 

We arrived at a room with a huge stalactite structure growing in the wall to our right and no visible exit. Upon further examination we discover a small horizontal slot where the wall lifts from the ground by only about a foot. One after another we get down on our bellies and army crawl through the passage, sandwiched between two earthen slabs our minds consider the miles of rock pushing up from below and pressing down from above.

THE MUD WAR…

Our last cave was called the Culverson Creek Cave, which is considered one of the wettest and bestest caves in all of West Virginia. After slipping in through a small crack at the base of a cliff face, we followed a wide underground cavern for a time with little streams running along the floor and through eroded channels in the karst*. As we round a corner, a cluster of Hellbenders stand encircled around a medium sized puddle, before our eyes: an ancient creature! “There are some fish that have evolved to be blind, but I don’t think this is one of them”, says Ezra, staring into the motionless eyes of this mysterious and majestical fish, pale scales with long ribbon like fins and dainty whiskers: a species none of us could identify. Debates began about where he had come from and how he had gotten there. Was he a cave fish born in the dark and dank? Or was he an extremely unfortunate surface fish washed into the cavern during some terrible storm? The answer unknown, we paid our respects to the ancient creature and moved on further into the cave.

On the ceiling, patches of glowing-gold-somethings are illuminated by our headlights, crystals or minerals we assumed, but upon further investigation they turned out to be yellow powdery fungi. Soon we came to a pool of water reaching nearly up to the ceiling: the Death Syphon. Ezra bravely went ahead and disappeared into the dark, calling for us to follow. One by one we waded into the 50 degree water, shrieks echoing off the walls. Some practiced strategies to stay dry, following closely along the edge of the wall where the water was thought to the be shallowest, other tried a different technique of loosing their footing, falling completely into the water and simply doggy paddling across the middle. All ended up decently soaked in the end.

On the other side of the overhang, the death syphon opened up into Death Canyon, a beautiful underground slot canyon, with smooth dark curving rounding walls, the desired path of an ancient underground river still flowing. Lucca began to sing an old miners song, and we all joined in… 

Come all young fellows So young and so fine
And seek not your fortunes in the dark dreary mine
It’ll form as a habit and sink to your soul
Till the blood of your body runs black as the coal
Its dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mines.

We followed Ezra single file, wading through the narrow winding canyon for a time until we spotted a small passage branching off to one side. As we followed it deeper the the rocks, all around us slowly became squishier, brown and supple, until eventually all the walls and the ground and the ceiling had all turned to MUD. Nobody knows who threw the first projectile, but soon enough everyone was tearing chunks of mud off the walls and hucking it at each other as hard as they could. Naturally, factions were quickly formed and a full on mud war broke out. Allegiances were made, loyalties were broken, casualties were many: no one was spared from the Mud Massacre.

Finally, Ezra called for a truce — bravely walking out into the middle of the battlefield only to be met with several mud balls to the helmet. Eventually the truce was accepted on the terms that no one could feel their toes and that meant it was probably time to start exiting the cave. But first, one last adventure… The journey up ‘Mud Everest’ was perilous. We crawled on our hands and knees, digging our fingernails into the surface, slowly clawing our way up the slick steep side of the underground mud mountain. A ways up, Soleil hung onto a slippery rock, her knees feeling the mud beneath her begin to give way. She knows she must move, so she makes a leap for a dryer looking patch of mud to her left but she loses her footing. Down she goes and we watch as she disappears, slipping and sliding into the all consuming darkness. The rest of us continue on our journey to the top where the humungous pile of mud touches the ceiling of the cave. There, we cheer for victory, empty the sock water from our boots, slick our rumps with mud and go to join Soleil, sliding all the way back down to the bottom.

(*Karst = eroded limestone, the material of sink holes, caves, etc..)

On October 24th, we rolled into Lewisburg, West Virginia, the alleged ‘Coolest small town in America!’  We were given 10 dollars each and sent out to wreak havoc on the local cafes and thrift stores. Some noteworthy purchases included Uli’s rockstar gemstone sun glasses, a comically large lollypop bought by Liam, Lucca’s vintage jacket, bags and bags of candy for Lewella and Willow, Arlo’s white chocolate dream (a specialty latte), and a massive burger bought by Philadelphia and Bennett costing them both their budgets combined  (described as “incredibly worth it”). That night we made camp at the Green River campground and made each other bread on a stick over an open campfire: a special Kroka dessert.

It was the morning of our last trail day for Leg 2, Arlo was our Leader of the Day and had us all up at 6 am to start taking down camp and packing our bikes for what was supposed to be an easy 18 mile day to our layover. By 6:45AM everyone was out and about except for the instructors, who were suspiciously late to exit their tents. Seeing this, Lucca and Lewella went over to investigate only to find an empty tent and a letter in Ezra’s handwriting. It said something along the lines of… “Dear Hellbender students, We have abandoned you in the woods because we believe you are ready. You have everything you need, follow the maps, stick together, take it easy on the downhills and we’ll see you in Newport, Virginia no later than 4 pm!” 

Ok, no problem! We had done this so many times before. We had no trouble getting out of camp on time: breakfast had, dishes done, bikes packed, we rolled out of our campsite in complete confidence and began our easy ascent up the ridge. On and on we biked, over what felt like way more hills than we had been promised during the map briefing the night before. Occasionally, we stopped to check the map. Where were we? Here? There? No, maybe here? Definitely not there…

The topographic lines refused to relinquish any hints of our whereabouts. Somehow, nothing about the route we were on was matching the route we were following, yet, we continued on. At one point we convinced ourselves that we had only gone 3 miles in 2 hours because it was the only explanation for where we thought we were. Eventually, we made it to route 707, which we followed for 8 miles into the town of Newport.

From there we were able to find our way to the community center, where Ezra and Hanah had been waiting for us. Wondering how it could’ve possibly taken so long for us to get there, we set out our maps to compare our routes and discovered that we had missed the very first turn out of the campsite. As a result, Instead of crossing over the ridge like we were supposed to, we descended the opposite side, biked back up and over several different hills and ended up 10 miles west of Newport on the top of BUTT MOUNTAIN. How we ever made it to the Newport community center remains proof of our expert navigational skills (asking strangers for directions), and maybe a hint of extremely good fortune. 

Hospitality.

Throughout this leg and the first we have repeatedly been the recipients of incredible hospitality. So many small communities, like the Yew Mountain Center, Appalachian Headwaters, Mettabee Farm, Oakwood Friends Quaker School, Camphill Copake, and so many more have given us shelter and access to their facilities.

We have been showered, fed and housed for so many nights by kind strangers who have asked next to nothing in return. One particular story from Leg 2 includes a man named Denis and his wife, Crystal, who live in a small house tucked away in the Appalachian folds of West Virginia. One night we had nowhere planned to stay, so Evan knocked on doors until he found someone crazy enough to let a cohort of Hellbenders come pitch their tents on their property. Denis immediately agreed, welcoming us to camp out on his front lawn and even gifting us a jar of his favorite pickled Deeroni (pickled deer cubes) which was something none of us would likely have ever tried if it wasn’t for this particular encounter. 

Another story goes like this…

It was the day we reached the border of West Virginia and Virginia — which was a humble transition, by the way — just a half buried concrete plaque off to the side of the gravel road, way out there in the middle of the woods.

Well, we biked and we biked as usual until we came upon a tiny white church with an open door and a push pedal organ. Deeming it an especially cool spot, we decided to stop early and make camp in the adjacent field. It wasn’t long before a family came down from the nearby hill and began to make conversation with the instructors. They chatted for a while before leaving and the interaction was forgotten by most students, until about an hour later when they came back with bags and bags of goodies. Grapes and bacon and cheese, deli meats, hot homemade croquettes and the makings for S’mores! 

It’s a beautiful thing you realize as a traveler, that the kindness of strangers is not an uncommon thing at all. Cars driving by, shouting out their windows to ask if we need anything. We knock on a stranger’s door asking for water and they always answer yes, letting us into their yards or houses to fill our bottles and pet their dogs. After traveling in this manner for a while, you find that the bad taste you have in your mouth about humanity — the kind you get after spending too much time online — gets washed out by experiences with real, kind people.

Until next time,
Your scribe,

Philadelphia

Observations 

Today a cow stood still long enough that 8 birds perched on his back
And I woke up with wet socks because my water bottle spilled in my tent.
We are constantly learning to live this life, making mistakes and living with them is the only way through.
A truck drives by with a deer carcass strapped to the back
Fire heats every part of me as I spin when I get cold
And caves go deep into channels shaped like moon creators
I watch the world span out in front, twists and turns, I watch a line of high vis vests shake down a hill.
Nothing can fight the Karst landscape.
Geese tried to swim upstream and I watched them stagnant in the water.
I biked to Unus, a town of 4 houses and 30 cats
I dream up the hills and soar down them.
May I not live a life internally,
But remember the fire heat on my back
And the rock under my butt.
I am where I am.
I am where I am. ~by Uli