A good friend of mine recently lived outdoors for about two months on the Appalachian Trail.He spent the cool, bright spring days traversing some of the wildest woods of the south, hiking about 500 miles from the trailhead in Springer Mountain, Ga., to a little past Damascus, Va.

My friend returned with a bushy beard and wild eyes, and he kept raving about something called “trail magic.”

I couldn’t really understand what my furry friend was talking about so I made him promise to take me on a hiking trip once my summer job ended.

I love the outdoors and I’ve done multi-night trips canoeing and mountain biking before, but never backpacking.

I had never put my belongings on my back and just started walking through the woods, knowing I would only go further in each day.

I wanted to experience trail magic. And after our trip, I can safely say I received a powerful dose of it.

We spent a fun Saturday night in a cabin with some old college friends and then headed towards the trail on Sunday afternoon.

We had planned to start a little past where he’d left off, in Marion, Va., and hike about four days and 40 miles to a town called Bland.

We wanted to add a little extra adventure to the excursion so we just took one car, left it in Marion and planned to hitch back to it when we got off the trail.

I could talk for pages about the breathtaking beauty we encountered, the views, the grueling climbs and the euphoria we experienced upon completing them.

I could talk about the running jokes, the chaffing, the perpetual sogginess, the battles with the local insect varieties who plagued us as we tried to catch some sleep under the shelters, and the constant search for a good water supply.

I could talk about the trance-like grooves I would get into where I would hike alone for 10 miles totally in meditation and communion with the earth around me.

But the most interesting and surreal thing that happened on our whole trip occurred once we had left the trail.

We got off about a half day early because we had reached a service road and we knew we wouldn’t be able to cover the remaining distance to the next shelter before nightfall.

We were able to get a ride down to the closest highway.

However, it was nearing dinnertime and we were at a crossroads. Literally.

Three small state highways crossed and the signs told us one route would get us into Bland in five miles.

We could do this by dark but we would have to hope for a cheap motel, and then we would have to work the whole next day on getting to Marion.

The other route worth taking went about eight miles to I-81, but then we would still have to get a dozen or so more miles on the interstate back to Marion. What a bind.

We were just two long-haired, bearded men with dirty gear and wild eyes. Who would take us? We planned to start walking towards Bland if we didn’t get a ride in 30 minutes.

We got one in five minutes – with an amazing, inspiring man named White Top.

White Top was in his mid-seventies and had section-hiked almost the entire trail, much of it recently.

He asked where we were going and we said, “Oh, it’d be great if you could just get us to the interstate.”

“No, where are you trying to get to?”

We told him Marion and he said, “Sure, I can take you to Marion no problem, but first I have to take my grandson home to Bland, and then you’re going to have to come join my wife and I for dinner on my farm.”

White Top’s farm was a massive spread with several homes inhabited by various family members.

It had a detached, full-service garage full of young men working on various ATVs and motorcycles and pickups.

There was a large detached open-air kitchen with a commercial grade grill and just past that, there was a beautiful spring-fed pond with a water slide and several floats. Dogs and chickens abounded and roamed free.

“Boys, take a swim while I get some burgers going. Oh, and I forgot to mention my wife has about nine young ladies over for a quilting class, so they will be joining us.”

The young ladies were Amish and most of them were related, and they were kind, beautiful, innocent and wise. A few of them even played in a bluegrass gospel group together. White Top’s family was equally hospitable and lovely.

They were all fond of telling a story about a specific hiker who had gotten somewhat lost and almost froze to death trying to hike in the dead of winter. The hiker went off the trail and hacked through brambles until he made it onto White Top’s farm in a daze.

The hiker was Israeli and apparently hadn’t done much research.

He was also extremely eccentric, wearing a parachuter’s jumpsuit and claiming to live solely on bear claws (or some other frosted treat).

He had wildly long hair and beard and they said he was the foulest smelling person they had ever met. Yet White Top and his family accepted the hiker, fed him and let him stay until conditions improved.

In addition, the family runs a quilting school and ministry, sending home-made quilts to prisoners and to orphanages in Eastern Europe.

White Top used to be a successful business man up North and he works with a local non-profit that builds quality low-income housing and runs job training courses.

And they take in hikers, just like the wild Israeli, and just like us, all through the hiking season.

White Top fed us a feast and then drove us 40 minutes back to Marion at 9 p.m. on a weeknight.

When we asked the remarkable man what we could do to repay him, he simply said, “Pay it forward.”

I hope I get the chance to do something as kind for someone as he did for us that night. I experienced trail magic in its purest form.

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