A Limp in the Woods (Day 3)

An Appalachian Trail Tale

Day 3: Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
A mile past Hawk Mountain Shelter to Justus Creek = 6 miles

(AT) Miles to date: 15

Trial Trail by Flamethrower

Upon waking Ruth and I decided to go back to sleep. Words weren’t involved; it just happened. This conscious/unconscious process repeated itself till we altered our tactics and woke up for good. Good is relative, but on the AT, nearly every day means waking up for good. Or so we’ve been told. I could just as easily become the first to thru-sleep the Appalachian Trail.

As we tore down camp and settled into the new day, I tried to get my brain back into this writing ritual. It’d been a a few months since I’d observed or listened or recorded; the writer’s bump on my middle finger had atrophied. Although writing about walking a long trail isn’t all that exciting, since walking a long trail isn’t all that exciting, I want to make it a habit. (Reading about walking is less exciting yet.) I have my reasons; I just can’t remember them.

Despite striving for style and laughs, I don’t write for an audience. But I like to have something to write about when writing this foot-print, that way, when I pick up ye olde trail journals, I have something to read when reading. It’s those journals containing stories and terrible attempts at humor I enjoy most. And so I try to create a life full of stories. Unfortunately, life seems to do whatever it wants. Even when hiking.

And that’s the intriguing thing, or intriguing to me, anyhow. Why does someone set out to walk all day, every day? If there’s no excitement, and little potential for a story, well then, what’s the point? I’ll get to that in the next five or six months, I suppose.

Excitement may be too strong a word. No one in his or her right mind, assuming they have one, would walk all day for excitement. I’m not sure we’d walk all day even to seek excitement. So why should reading about the act be any more thrilling? It’s hard to hike vicariously. I know myself well enough now that I do live vicariously through my past. Aging does that to many of us.

I could try to describe the rocks or the trees or the trail itself, but few authors could make these things captivate, and I ain’t one of them. What kind of person reads about a rock and gets their rocks off? (My apologies to all you geologists. Geology rocks, but geography is where it’s at.)

Just as it is with living it, we sometimes keep track of the story with no idea of its conclusion or even the direction it’s headed. And that, to me, is precisely the point. And how I found myself here.

Verbal hogwash aside, it’s time for a rundown of today’s walk, or a walkdown of it.

As this entry suggests from the start, wind, snow and frigid temperatures assured me sleep would not come in its hoped form, but rather in a series of short naps surrounded by lots of tossing and turning. Plus, Ruth snores. Ceaselessly. A complete snorchestra.

But all was good when we awoke for the final time, to an undisturbed azure sky, gloriously free from clouds. As it seems, when the clouds lift, so too does our spirits. The problem was we were dehydrated and in need of replenishment. Ruth was suffering a meltdown much of the morning and I too, though to a lesser degree. (The temperature was also a lesser degree, but never mind that.)

Another downed sapling; we left it where we found it

Our usual upbeat-ness was downtrodden and our pace was anemic, if not lifeless. The climb from Horse Gap up Sassafras Mountain was the steepest stretch yet, almost laughably so (“We’re starting to get you, AT.”), and there was no water to be found. The white rain had melted into the mud and our spit wasn’t enough. A stupid, stupid mistake.

We were spared our agony at Cooper Gap, where a fellow named Captain Guts of Peoria, IL met us and a few other hikers with cans of soda and hotdogs, the latter of which we passed on, the former of which we gladly took part in. Root beer is a slice of heaven when you’re thirsty, even in winter.

Captain Guts (on the left)

Captain Guts was born with a distortion pedal in his vocal cords. And his voice was unnecessarily loud. He had taken a crack at thru-hiking the AT, twice in the past two years, but the trail got the better of him both times. There’s a lot of better of him, as you can see above. This year he chose to play trail angel, providing others with trail magic(1). We were the beneficiaries. Our timing could not have been bested. Predictably, our moods followed our blood sugar levels.

After the pause, Ruth and I groveled along valiantly. I was proud of her; the girl can rally. By six p.m. we’d walked six miles. We made it to Justus Creek, where six of us have dropped anchor. (“It’s Justus six,” someone joked.) There’s a rangy guy named Chris, from my birth nation of Minnesota; a comely Canadian triathlete named Jenna; an ex-Marine mountaineer named Justin, from Chicago; and a thirty-something year-old fellow named Scott, from Carolina’s northern half, Tar Heel heaven. It’s dirt heel heaven here, although bear tracks dot the area. (“I guess it’s not Justus six!”) Most the imprints are the size of a human hand, but with claws. Untrimmed claws. We’d socialize till clawing temperatures forced us to take cover under covers.

"Foot"note 1: Trail magic is an act or acts of kindness, often in the form of drinks or food. It can be a load of laundry done for the hiker, or a home-stay, or a ride down from the mountains. The term was conceived by long-distance hikers to describe an unexpected occurrence that lifts a hiker's spirits (or blood sugar) and inspires awe or gratitude. The real magic, however, is found on the trail. Not in a drink cooler. You wouldn't always know this though; so many young hikers consider the trail an inconvenient truth, strung between places to party or take advantage of others.