Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 3, 1995 TAG: 9510030115
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the fall of 1931, 5-year-old Allen de Hart and his big brother Moir hiked down into Patrick County's Smith River Gorge, toting a tent, cans of pork and beans and vienna sausage and a stash of their grandma's honey-baked cookies.
Allen's dad had died before he was born and Moir, 17, had been the closest thing he'd had for a father the first years of his life.
To the little boy, it was a magical trip. The woods seemed like the forests he'd read about in fairy tales. The modest Smith River Falls looked like Niagara to him.
"It seemed like we went to the end of the world," de Hart recalls.
He wasn't scared. His brother was there, and that made everything right. They camped away from the river - but close enough so they could hear the rush of the falls - and built a fire to fry the rainbow trout they'd caught.
One morning, Allen looked longingly up to the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains above them.
Can we climb up there? he asked.
Gently, Moir explained that Allen's legs were too short. But someday, when he was bigger, Allen could climb the mountain and see what was on the other side.
The idea grabbed hold of Allen de Hart. It never let go - and it grew well beyond the peaks and hollows of Patrick County and the Blue Ridge.
"I had the dream of seeing not just what was on the other side of that mountain," de Hart, now 69, says. "I wanted to see what was on the other side of a whole lot of mountains."
His dream propelled him on a lifetime journey. He's hiked in 46 states and 18 countries. In all, he estimates he's hiked 50,000 miles or more - equal to twice around the earth at the equator. He's covered more than 30,000 miles since 1952, when he began keeping detailed records of each hike.
He's spent six decades hiking, designing and building trails and writing about them. This year the University of North Carolina Press released a new edition of his book, "The Trails of Virginia: Hiking the Old Dominion."
De Hart, a Patrick County native who has degrees from Ferrum College and the University of Virginia, is an emeritus history professor at Louisburg College in North Carolina. He's written eight books in all, including academic works and outdoor guides for five Southern states.
For de Hart, hiking is a way of knowing yourself - and the world. You learn zoology, biology, history, geology, and more. It's all about putting one foot in front of the other - but keeping your eyes open along the way.
"I think the true explorer wants to know more about everything," he says.
|n n| The forests and farms of Patrick County were a great place for a boy to grow up in the years between the Great Wars. Adventure was just outside the door.
Moir de Hart had taken Allen into the woods before their camping trip that fall of '31, but it's the camping trip that has stuck in Allen's mind.
"I may have stubbed my toe and I may have fallen down," de Hart says. But he can't remember anything bad. "In my memory, it was perfect."
"My brother knew what to do," he says. "It rained and the tent didn't leak. I thought most tents leaked. I still think most of them do. There have been some I've had on the Appalachian Trail that I paid a lot of money for and they still leaked."
Allen de Hart was born near Woolwine on Sept. 3, 1926. His father had died a few months before from influenza. His mother survived the influenza, but she was so sick she couldn't go to her husband's funeral.
Moir was already 12 when Allen was born, but he always had time for his little brother.
After Moir grew up and moved away, Allen became the big brother - to Richard and Willie Lee Elgin, born to his mother after she remarried.
"There wasn't a stream, there wasn't a hill, there wasn't any place that we didn't know like the back of our hands," he says. "We knew where you could catch the best rainbow trout. We knew where the mulberry bushes were."
De Hart was a farm kid, but he got a taste of the city lights on his visits to Roanoke, where his uncle Ed Weaver managed the Hotel Roanoke. He was dazzled by the wide streets and the smartly dressed folks who came in and out of the hotel. His city cousins were likewise intrigued by the excitements of the country - the animals, the creeks, the de Hart boys' swinging vine.
"I think we need to do more of that in this country," says de Hart, who's hiked many urban greenways along with mountain trails. "The city folks need to come see what's out in the country, with the trees, the parks and the trails. Then we need to go see what's in the city."
De Hart became a great collector. In his big house in Louisburg, he still has sticks and rocks he gathered as a boy - not to mention about a dozen bushels of sea shells.
"I still have the first shell I ever found," he says.
|n n| One snowy night when he was 4 years old, Allen de Hart sat with his brother Moir and paged through the pictures in the January 1930 issue of National Geographic. The Autochrome photos with an article, "Florida: Fountain of Youth," showed sea turtles as big as wheelbarrows and divers swimming beside fish in blue-green waters. One picture showed a multitude of alligators. Pushing the magazine closer to Allen's face, Moir told him that the alligators could eat a little boy in one bite.
A couple of years later, Allen found that same issue among the row of National Geographics his first-grade teacher kept in her classroom. The pictures seemed less scary then. One photo showed a bicyclist heading to Florida with his suitcase lashed to the handlebars. De Hart asked his teacher where Florida was, and was disappointed to learn it was too far away to ride his bike to. But he promised someday he would go.
He visited many times as an adult, taught on a fellowship at Florida State University and, in 1991, published the first edition of his book, "Adventuring in Florida."
But for all he's seen there, none of it was "as exciting as sitting in a schoolroom in Woolwine, Virginia, and looking at the pictures and being 6 years old. The childhood dreams - there's nothing that takes their place."
After high school, de Hart went off to the University of Maryland until the Korea War draft interrupted his education.
From there he earned an associate's degree at Ferrum, went on to High Point (N.C.) College and then earned a master's degree in history at the University of Virginia. That's where he met his wife, Flora. Later both took teaching jobs at Louisburg College near Raleigh, N.C.
De Hart started working on his first trail book, a North Carolina guide, after hiking the Appalachian Trail. So many smaller trails split off from the main one that his curiosity got the best of him. He started documenting the paths branching off the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina. By the time his book was published in 1982, it had grown to cover all the trails in North Carolina.
Other books followed. His Virginia guide, first published in 1984, includes a dedication to his brother Moir for teaching him "to appreciate and care for the natural environment."
Moir died in 1979. De Hart often thinks of him and the times they shared together.
"Nature has its own way of making us remember the best," de Hart says. "That's how we get over the grief for loved ones."
And he moves on, one foot in front of the other, making new memories - with the same sense of curiosity and adventure that his big brother helped stimulate when he was a boy .
He's always prepared to be surprised and delighted. "There's so many wild things out there," he says.
De Hart was hiking around North Carolina's Jordan Lake one day looking for bald eagles. The trail was flat and unremarkable, and he hadn't spotted any eagles. He thought it was going to be a dull hike. But he kept running into "the most succulent patches of blackberries. These were not the round sour ones that grow up on the side of the road. These things were an inch long. They looked like mulberries. They were black and shiny and so sweet." And not a bit of dust on them.
De Hart still has the pictures he took of those blackberries. Whenever he gets the photos out and looks at them, his mouth starts to water.
by CNB