Tim Pegram's memoir about hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway

Meet Tim Pegram

He will discuss and sign copies of his book.

• Franklin County Library in Rocky Mount, 6:30 p.m., Monday
• Ram’s Head Book Shop at Towers Shopping Center in Roanoke, noon to 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Tim Pegram was four days into his hike down the Blue Ridge Parkway when he figured out what he was doing.

He had planned to weave his thoughts and experiences into a novel. Suddenly, the one-time Roanoke Valley ranger had a better idea.

As Pegram describes the moment, he was stuck on Boston Knob Overlook (milepost 39), waiting out a rainstorm, when the proverbial light bulb popped on in the soggy sky. What, he wondered, if he just wrote a book about the hike itself?

The result, "The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot -- a Park Ranger's Memoir," was published last month by McFarland and Company press of North Carolina. It is part travelogue, part autobiography, part parkway history. And even at $29 -- a hefty price for a paperback -- it is jumping off the shelves.

The reasons aren't too hard to find. A book about a trek down the Blue Ridge Parkway written by a former ranger is almost a can't-miss. After all, some 20 million people visit the parkway annually. And Pegram's book is being stocked at visitor's centers, which is the parkway equivalent of an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey.

And then there's the October release date -- just in time for Christmas. Some people are buying whole stacks of the book as presents, Pegram said. At one recent book-signing event, he spied a lady at the checkout stand holding eight of them.

But it's also more than that. Pegram is a natural-born storyteller. Weaving tales from his ranger years into the chronicle of his hike, Pegram gives the impression of someone settled comfortably by the fireside on a winter's night, spinning yarn after yarn.

"I had all these ranger stories in my head," said Pegram, who worked 16 years as a ranger, including six years at the Vinton ranger station. The ex-ranger is now a grandfather living in Oak Ridge, N.C. "It was sort of a trip down memory lane."

Memory lane

So, what's so special about a man hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway?

To begin with, as near as Pegram could discover, it had never been done before.

The parkway is not generally considered a hiking trail, what with cars and motorcycles always whizzing by. There is no trail that corresponds exactly to the winding route of the 469-mile scenic highway, which extends from Rockfish Gap, Va., to Cherokee, N.C. A hiker must share the road with cars, motorcycles and sport utility vehicles.

Pegram, who retired from the federal government at age 50 in 2002, hiked the length of the parkway in September and October 2003.

He had vague notions of doing research for that (still-unwritten) novel, the way Herman Melville shipped out on whaling boats before writing "Moby-Dick."

For his hike, Pegram packed a single change of clothing, as well as granola, nuts, fruit, beef jerky, pasta, grits, oatmeal and a WhisperLite stove. He also stopped at every restaurant he could find.

Walking down the parkway's shoulder, on the border between the automobile culture and Mother Nature, wasn't always pretty. Pegram saw wild animals and gorgeous sunsets, but also traffic accidents and road kill.

He saw the steady encroachment of homes and water towers on the parkway's precious sight lines. He heard coyotes -- something that had never happened in his ranger days, which ended in the early 1980s. "They just wailed at night."

And he met people. Lots of people. Joggers, bikers, walkers, hikers from nearby trails. And store owners such as Christa Poore, who let Pegram sleep in her barn.

"He got him a bite to eat and set out on the front porch and watched people come and go," recalled Poore, whose store near Pinola, N.C., is at 3,750-3,800 feet of elevation. "It was a beautiful day. But it was supposed to get really, really cold that evening. He stayed up in the loft and fixed him a bed on a hay bale."

Pegram shared the barn with a horse, a dog, a cat and a donkey that brayed all night, Poore recalled. She doesn't think he got much sleep.

The next day, "He said he knew how Jesus felt when he was born, sleeping in a manger."

Altogether, Pegram lost "30 useless pounds" on the hike, he said, "regained all too soon."

'Just lucky'

Pegram is the first to tell you the parkway is not always a nice place.

"Some meanness goes on up there. Bodies get dumped. Very disturbing things happen."

But none of them happened to him. Quite the contrary: "I had absolutely no negative experiences," he said. Old acquaintances from his ranger days invited him into their homes and served him venison steaks. Total strangers invited him to sleep in their barns. "I guess I was just lucky."

Asked what he learned on his hike, Pegram pointed to what he considers the book's overall theme. Human kindness, he said, can outshine "even the most beautiful scenery on Earth."

Pegram left Rockfish Gap on Sept. 1. He finally reached the end of the road, at the Oconaluftee River bridge, on Oct. 11 -- 41 days later.

He describes the moment this way in "The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot":

"I could hardly wait to get home; my head was about to burst with a book it had already written."

David Alff, Pegram's editor at McFarland, said Pegram wrote to them a year ago in September, outlining what he had done. As soon as they saw the completed manuscript, Alff said, they knew they had a good one. The book was published last month as part of the textbook publisher's "Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies" series.

"For a first-time author, he is a terrific author," Alff said. He confirmed the book has been selling well, though reviews have been slow in coming. "It's definitely a success." (Scott Shackelford reviews the memoir in Sunday's Books page of The Roanoke Times.)

Pegram has not been idle since his parkway trek. He is currently writing a book about a more recent hike -- this one across North Carolina, along the route taken by the fictional hero of Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel, "Cold Mountain."

That trip, noted Pegram, was more difficult than the parkway jaunt, involving fences, private property and suspicious eyes. He said the book will have a surprise ending, "known to no one."

Afterward, Pegram plans to hike the Appalachian Trail -- though he doesn't plan to write about it.

"It's a worn-out theme," he said.