Well, this past week I was looking down into the holler toward Webb’s Creek thinking about the only thank you letter I ever received that began, “Dear Sherpa John.” I had served a brief stint as a Great Smoky Mountains sherpa for National Geographic magazine and that letter was a badge of honor. Sherpas are those guys you see on TV hauling heavy supplies up to the top of Mt. Everest for the trekkers or helping carry tents and food for a jungle expedition searching for King Kong. A sherpa is usually a nameless human pack mule who hauls other peoples’ stuff to some challenging destination, sets up camp, cooks up a feast and then later packs up the garbage and supplies and heads back to the trailhead. If you prefer a sand wedge to an ice pick or a glass of merlot to a fresh and personally squeezed beaker of goat milk you might want to leave Himalayan Sherpa off your resume.

I received a call a while back that National Geographic needed a couple of sherpas to set up a backcountry campsite for a small expedition. I called up my friend, “Sherpa Mark” and he happily agreed to join me in this new exciting career opportunity. A real Tibetan sherpa can actually carry his own weight so we were more aptly described in the “unreal” category. It was about 98 degrees that day and the humidity was hovering near 99.9% as we headed up the mountain to our base site destination. We were loaded beyond description. After ten yards of successful trekking Sherpa Mark’s antique aluminum exterior frame backpack broke from the severe weight. Progress came to a literal standstill and so we asked ourselves “What would survivorman do?” We found some rope, tied the giant mess together around Sherpa Mark’s back and experienced one of those “What were we thinking” kind of discovery moments. We continued hiking for about 15 minutes before Mr. Pain arrived with his good friend “Sweaty.” I opened up many unusual and previously unknown sweat glands and burned muscles that had been lying dormant for years.

Totally exhausted, we barely made it to the top of the ridge and then built our little village of tents. I cooked a mountain man barbeque over the fire and Sherpa Mark contributed his special beverage. With perfect timing the National Geographic party strolled into camp. We pigged out and sat around the fire for hours listening to stories of ancient Roman highways and the secret places that the writer had visited around the earth. Later, I apologized that we hadn’t had time to arrange for ceremonial dancers, but he said the moonshine made up the difference. Months later…the poetic introduction to the beautiful article in the National Geographic magazine included these words,

“…fog drifting off a breathing canopy of trees, mist rising above a waterfall, the soft warmth of southern air. Perhaps, as well, the tang of barbeque chased down with moonshine whiskey.”

That was my barbeque and Sherpa Mark’s beverage mentioned in one of the most prestigious magazines in the world! Since none of my friends would ever believe it was mine I asked the National Geographic to offer official confirmation….thus the arrival of a wonderful thank you letter that began… “Dear Sherpa John.”

In a way we all are sherpas and in a way we all have sherpas. A truck driver is a motorized sherpa and the guy who bagged my groceries didn’t carry them to my car on his head, but he’s a sherpa too. If you have a job and you carry a heavy load for someone else and then haul the garbage out …you’re a sherpa. Sherpa thank you letters are much too few and far between. Have you hugged your sherpa today? That is just how it looks from my log cabin.

John LaFevre is a local speaker and co-author of the interactive hiking book series, “Scavenger Hike Adventures, Falcon Guides” by Globe-Pequot Press. E-mail to scavengerhike@aol.com or visit his blog at Falcon.com. G. Webb of Pittman Center does the illustrations for the column. Visit Gwebbgallery.com.