A Life Wasted

Off the Grid

From the Holiday Inn I walked to a mall a mile away, then called a cab from there. I took the cab to an office building across the street from the jail in downtown Reading then walked a block to the Greyhound bus station. From there I rode a bus to Harrisburg, then took another cab south to the small town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Earlier in the year I had spotted a foot bridge that crossed a busy road that had a sign on it saying, "The Appalachian Trail." This showed me the exact location of the Appalachian Trial, which was conveniently two miles off Interstate 81 and only a half mile from a sprawling motel. Believing I would eventually need a place to hide out when things got too hot, I had hidden prepositioned supplies in the woods near the Appalachian Trail in this area.

So I had the cab deliver me to the back portion of that motel, to a spot I had earlier scoped out. When I got out of the cab I took my small pack and walked through an outdoor passage way into an inner section of rooms. From there I walked out the outer side of the motel, across a parking lot and into a dark field beyond. From there I continued through a small industrial area, through a small warehouse's parking lot and into the woods behind it. Walking straight east through the woods I found the Appalachian Trail ten minutes later.

No one put together that I had taken that cab to the Carlisle area motel. Had the authorities put it together, I believe they would have thought I was meeting someone there. It was possible that a smart local cop would draw a connection to the Appalachian Trail a half mile away, but that connection would be weak. Though I didn't believe that connection would be made, I had allowed for the possibility by planning on putting considerable distance away from that starting point the first night. The small pack I carried looked like an overnight bag, as opposed to a hiker's backpack, and in fact it carried only what I would need for the first part of the night and a few things I carried that I wanted to hang on to. Stuff like my laptop, cash, various sets of ID's and a hand gun. But most importantly, a handheld GPS.

One of the early things I did was purchase a high quality survival compass. It was flat and compact, designed to clip on to a pack strap. I wore it on a string around my neck. It never came off my neck. So when I hid my prepositioned supplies in the woods off the Appalachian Trail I had written the latitude/longitude coordinates on a piece of masking tape and attached it to the compass. My thinking was that if things went bad I could lose my hand held GPS, but I would always have the compass around my neck unless I was captured. This turned out to be good planning as my hand held GPS was in my go bag, which was still in my wrecked car in Memphis. If I had saved the coordinates on that GPS then I would not have been able to retrieve my supplies now, even if I could have found them without the coordinates. I'd have had to abandon the entire Appalachian Trail idea as the FBI would have eventually went to those coordinates and figured out my plan. At that point none of the long trail would have been safe for me.

Also in the pack I carried a few items I had added on the drive from Memphis, part of an idea I'd been working on. While on the bus from Allentown to Harrisburg I programmed the coordinates of my stash into my new hand held GPS, and I used black electrical tape to attach a very small flash light to the end of an extendable pointer. The flash light had a red lens, which serves to preserve night vision, but red light is also handy in that it is difficult to see from a distance. So as I walked through the woods hunting for the Appalachian Trail, I used this small red light attached to the fully extended pointer. The result of this rig is that the ground ahead of me was lit with a very soft light, but with the light down near my feet it would be impossible to see from twenty feet away. The "light-on-a-stick" was an idea I had developed after being out on this very trail hiding my supplies. What I realized that night was that any light bright enough to illuminate the trail as I held it was too bright in that it could be spotted from far away. That night I had partially covered the flashlight lens with my fingers, but this made it difficult to see the path and was still too visible to others. This night was the first time I had used the "light-on-a-stick" and was pleased with the results. It worked so well that even with the small red light I had more light than I needed, so I partially covered the lens with electrical tape. The result was a light bright enough for me to see where I was walking because the light was down near my feet, yet so slight that it couldn't be seen from a few feet away. It was the perfect tool for my covert march.

Within a few hours I retrieved my large and well equipped pack and was back on the Trail hiking south. On the night of September 8, 2001, I hiked all night and through most of the day. When I reached a point where the Trail ran down a section of road I stopped and slept until dark. That night, September 9th, I again marched through the night and much of the day, only stopping to sleep when the Trail passed through an open section of ground that I didn't want to cross in the day light, so I slept until dark. At dark on the night of September 10th I started hiking again and made it until 11:00 p.m. when fatigue had finally overtaken me and I knew I had to get a good night's sleep. So I went into the woods about a mile east of the Trail, set up my simple camp and fell into a deep and much needed sleep.

My awakening the next morning would be an odd but memorable event.