In Remembrance of Ellen

A wonderful friend from long ago passes on

Ellen died on Thursday 20 January 2022. Her transition was peaceful. She and her wife was surrounded by dear friends local to the area. Pancreatic cancer is a horror. So many people I know have battled cancer of all kinds. Some died, such as my parents, a grandfather, and my partner’s Mum. Cancer is an umbrella term for a complex of nightmarish diseases. May cures for all cancers be found. Put cancer in the past. Make it history. Kill it, dammit. Kill it! Because I miss my friend. Wish we’d had more time to visit. Last saw her in circa 1995 when she and Ron last visited me and Gwen at Orca Landing, an urban cooperative household in Seattle. They were on their way from southwestern North Carolina to bike the West Coast. Decades slid by in time. She and Deb were gonna come out and visit us in Seattle before heading into the North Cascades National Park Complex back in the Summer of 2020. The double punch of the COVID-19 Pandemic and megawildfires with smokestorms, unfortunately, caused them to cancel. So never got to reconnect in person. We texted a few times. She and Deb decided to get away into the Boundary Waters Wilderness instead. There they had a great time canoeing and camping, and that was the last I heard from her.

Yeah, I miss my friend. Ellen had a delightfully chuckley laugh that could range from a loud bark to a jolly trainwreck of silly giggles. Ellen loved animals and spent much of her later life rescuing and caring for them. Was an activist in PAWS. Born in New Jersey and worked in New York. Worked for Playboy even! For the corporate NYC side, that is. Was too much for her. So she met Ron and together they moved away from the big urban corridors for a life of outdoor adventure and rural, small-town living. She had strong opinions and fierce convictions. Loved exploring the wilderness by foot, by boat, and spent many long miles pedaling her bike. Ellen Kilgannon is forever unforgettable.

From my words to her on the Caring Bridge site: Continue reading

In Memoriam: A Letter to Nancy’s Family

Rev. Ms. Nancy Patricia Griffin Hughes, 1932 – 2019. Foto from one provided to the public by the family for her obituaries in various newspapers.

This letter was written to the family and friends of Nancy Hughes, the mother of my ex-wife Gwen and grandmother to our two children, Dylan (formerly Morgan) and Kathryn, aka “Kate.” Although she passed in June of this year, her family elected to celebrate her transitions this past October at a wake they dubbed Momfest, held out at the Hughes family cabin at Willow Lake outside Lynchburg, Virginia.

Had hoped to attend and read a version of this letter, and was unable to do so. My printer wouldn’t work, didn’t have everyone’s email addresses, and didn’t wish to burden my ex-wife with reading my letter out loud for me at such an emotional gathering nor make copies to hand out to people. I think she emailed it forward to her siblings, but not everyone in the family knew of the letter. So now this letter is shared here this Xmas Eve for anyone to read. For Nancy was a Gift for the whole world.

Goodbye, Nancy. May the Afterlife be the journey you always imagined it to be. Thank you for sharing your life with so many people from Egypt to Tibet, from Canada to Ireland, from France to all over the United States and elsewhere. Here’s my letter as follows:

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Sleeping with Ghosts on the Appalachian Trail

Ruminations, Romance, and the Lives of a Family Long Dead

Story and Photographs by William Dudley Bass

With extra stories & photos added later about recovering the original 2001 published article with related media controversies, found 1991 pictures once lost, new history of the old homestead with a “new” trail shelter, and of the Pregnant Rhinos’ eldest daughter’s 2015 attempt to thruhike the AT. There’s often more to a story than the tale itself.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

In late May 1991, almost three months into our odyssey along the Appalachian Trail, my wife and I planned to sleep among ghosts. Old-timey Virginia ghosts. It seemed like a fitting thing to do while walking across our home state, a journey as rich with rumination as it was with hardship and joy.

Gwen and I had embarked on the first day of spring from the top of Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to backpack the whole Appalachian Trail end to end. The AT, as we hikers called it, or simply “the Trail,” stretches more than 2,000 miles northwards across 14 states to the summit of mile-high Mt. Katahdin in north-central Maine. Almost a quarter of the Trail passes through the Old Dominion, making Virginia home to the longest section of the AT, more than any other state. Gwen and I took six-and-a-half months to backpack the whole Trail, climbing Katahdin in early October on the day after our third wedding anniversary.

Rich in both history and wildlife, the Appalachian Trail is an intersection of people and wilderness. Those who backpack end-to-end in one push are known as “thruhikers,” while those who attempt to complete the whole thing in stages are called “section hikers.” Most take on trail names. Gwen and I were thruhikers, as such a distinct minority among the day hikers, weekenders, and picnickers. We called ourselves the Pregnant Rhinos.

Our trail name arose from a backpacking trip out West the previous year, when we got teased about the huge new internal-frame expedition packs bulging from our backs. “Damn, y’all look like a coupla pregnant rhinoceroses,” exclaimed a teenage boy, his own rickety, external-frame pack jangling with pots and pans and sloppy blankets.

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