By Susan Stevenot Sullivan

Father Bill Hoffman, pastor of St. Michael’s Church in Gainesville took a sabbatical in his 58th year. He needed some fresh air and a change of scene so he went for a walk, from Georgia to Maine, along 2,150 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

“Revie,” as he was known on the trail, started the longest leg of the trip the day after Easter, April 11, 1993, and finished September 20. He was accompanied from North Carolina to Massachusetts by parishioner John Avery.

Father Hoffman’s parish boundaries became the dew-dampened earth and the breeze scattered clouds above the treetops.

His pedestrian day was defined by morning and afternoon rosaries, the smell of smoke from a crackling fire, evening Mass and simple shelter for the night.

His weeks were shaped by state boundaries, artistic and political privies, spectacular views, historic markers, encounters with black bear, moose and hungry mice.

Yet none of those things were the highlight of what became a spiritual journey, he said.

The journey was remarkable for the people he encountered on the way, for fellow hikers who became sojourners for a day or a week sharing life’s trail, a changing band of trudging travelers mulling over which direction to take with their feet and with their hearts, seeking peace and renewal of spirit.

“The meeting of people became a tremendously important part of the trip,” Father Hoffman said. “The scenery was great, but the people were the real lesson.”

No lesson was easier to appreciate than when his path through New Hampshire crossed that of Bostonian Bob Garvin. “B.O.O.T.” (Bob Out On Trail) became a Catholic one afternoon with Father Hoffman’s sacramental assistance.

It was the highlight of both their trips.

“I used foul language around him before I knew he was a priest,” Garvin recalled in a phone interview. “We spent a whole day walking together taking breaks, and then one night we shared a shelter together and got to talking. Finally I told him I had been going to Mass for 38 years, since (after) I was married in the Catholic Church, and that my wife and five children are Catholic, but I wasn’t.”

Garvin told Father Hoffman that he’d never made the commitment because it seemed to indicate the need for a “whole lot of rigmarole.”

“He said we could discuss any problems or questions I might have and then do it any time I wanted,” Garvin said. “I thought about it for a while and said okay. He said we can do it this afternoon.”

“I remember Bob saying, ‘You can do that out here?’” Father Hoffman recalled. “When he said he was ready I asked him to prepare for his first Confession before Mass that afternoon. I told him he could use the Creed during Mass for his profession of faith and I blessed some cooking oil for Confirmation.

A sometimes fellow traveler, who attended trail Masses frequently, was asked to act as sponsor and official photographer.

Garvin professed his long-held faith and received First Eucharist and Confirmation that afternoon on a slab of rock jutting into a mountain lake, Moxie’s Bald Pond, in Maine.

“The whole trip was a spiritual experience,” Garvin said. “That was the cap of the spiritual experience, but just walking the trail is a spiritual experience. It’s very evident that there’s a greater power.”

“I probably wouldn’t be a Catholic at this time without Revie,” Garvin continued. “Perhaps I would have done it to prepare for death and make it easier on my wife to bury me. If there was anything that kept me out of the Catholic Church it was a lack of simplicity. The only thing the matter with religion is what man has done to it.”

“Revie pointed out that it is not a complicated situation (joining the church.) I don’t know if the archdiocese or the Vatican agree with him, but that’s what works for me,” Garvin concluded.

Both men expressed surprise at the ways in which God works.

“I look back on it,” Father Hoffman said, “and I think we both feel this wasn’t a coincidence, that God arranged it in a beautiful way.”

Father Hoffman said he was further convinced of this when he submitted the pertinent dates, names and other official information to Garvin’s parish. The parish refused to enter the information into their books because the sacraments of initiation did not occur within that parish or any recognized parish.

“So I entered the information at my parish,” Father Hoffman said. The resident of Massachusetts who became a Catholic in Maine is documented in Georgia.

Father Hoffman, Garvin and some other hikers concluded their Appalachian Trail trip officially on Mount Katahdin, in Maine, with a final outdoor Mass.

Afterward, Father Hoffman met Garvin’s wife, Eileen, who, he said, was surprised and pleased with her husband’s new commitment.

“It was a delightful experience,” Father Hoffman said. “It amazed me that it could happen, that someone’s long trip to the church could happen under these circumstances.”

Other memorable sojourners included “Slim Jim,” a musician who wants to become a monk, who frequently attended daily Mass and kept contact with Father Hoffman from North Carolina to Maine and “Doc Hank,” a Houston physician, who needed guidance on exploring a call to priesthood.

There was “Soley,” a college student from Rochester, N.Y., who wanted to be as sure of the destination of her future as she was of the trail and “Steady,” the Tulsa, Okla., mother of two who for a time regularly joined Father Hoffman for morning and evening prayer. Evening prayer was the highlight of an encounter with a troop of 20 Boy Scouts sponsored by a Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, many of whom turned out to be Catholics.

Shelter on the trip was as simple as a tent, as basic as a trailside cabin maintained by local trail enthusiasts who are called “ridge runners,” or as ecumenical as hostels operated by churches.

The excellent “all you can eat” fare at the monastery of the Franciscans of the Atonement, 50 miles north of New York City, was especially sustaining of both body and spirit, Father Hoffman recalled fondly.

More often sustenance, in the form of dehydrated meals prepared and mailed by Father Hoffman’s cousin Ann Carroll and Avery’s wife Barbara, was collected at post offices along the way. When potable water was unavailable a filter was used to make surface water safe to drink.

“It was a joy to be able to enjoy nature and stretch my physical and mental capabilities,” Father Hoffman said. “There are physical difficulties encountered, but people say the mental difficulties are more of a challenge – the day-to-day walking and eating the same food.”

The smallest details of life could not be taken for granted. The most important decisions could not be left behind. God’s presence permeated each day in gifts of food, shelter and companionship.

“This sabbatical was a gift from God,” Father Hoffman said. “I was uncertain what God wanted to do, but I thought He would use this to renew me. I can’t point to this or that as evidence God pulled it off, but He did.”

“I took each day, where I was, what I was doing, whatever the weather or trail conditions, as it came,” Father Hoffman said. “I was content to live in the present. I thought I’d be impatient or want to be somewhere else, but I didn’t. I just enjoyed it and let God achieve his purposes.”