A Limp in the Woods (Day 7)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 7: Sunday, March 31st, 2013
Red Clay Gap to the Old Cheese Factory Site = 8 miles
Miles to date: 56

Common Ground

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” ~Anatole France

“Thru-hiking ain’t wandering.” ~Funnybone

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Last night Ruth and I pulled out some headlamp material, but we were too red-eyed to read and nodded off soon after. Our lights continued to illuminate our nylon chateau. This is normal behavior for the beaten backpacker, but that’s not the worst of it. Sometimes the thru-hiker forgets to wake up altogether, sleepwalking for hours on end.

I was doing just that most the day, an auto-pilot pedestrian. This isn’t to imply the miles flew by. I slept, they crept. It’d rained all night and the nights are long, so the trail was submerged. Worse yet, the tent we’ve brung--The North Face Rain Magnet--sprung leaks. Ruth joked that its roof has more holes than Swiss cheese. I could not laugh; it was a nonfiction depiction. Most our stuff wasn’t damp. It was saturated.

Wet wear is revolting. It is also decidedly heavy. What may have weighed three pounds dry now tilts the scales at six or seven. Thankfully, in just a couple days, when Ruth heads home, I’ll be swapping this el-junk-o enclosure for a lighter, less absorbent get-up. Tent Sweet Tent. I’ll also be replacing other items, including headlamp batteries. A pack-transplant.

The svelter shelter is made by Tarp-Tent, an ultra-small company rightly credited as the prime movers of the ultralight movement--my kind of movement, along with the bowel movement. That tent can withstand--and continue to stand in--the rain. The Jaws of Life are required to extricate yourself, but the shelter keeps anyone inside free from Nature’s fury. Inconceivable! It weighs a quarter of what the Rain Magnet does, even when wet. I call it Rancho Costa Plenty--affordable housing it is not--but the porta-shed sheds water and weight. It even comes with a cup-holder--me. I can’t wait.

One of the many rocky stretches

Clouds foretold of more chaos--Ma Nature was licking Her chops--but the early going was almost comfortable. At Unicoi Gap, we met another trail angel, a chatterbox named Crystal from the upper Carolina. Other neoplasm had gathered, and everyone looked pleased. We found out why when Crystal handed us handfuls of chocolate Easter treats. It wasn’t till yesterday we realized today was a holiday (every day is a holiday on a long trail). We joked that the rain scared off the Easter Bunny; harebrains disdain rain. We’ve not seen any of the creatures yet, just some leporine hikers as they race Maine-ward.

We thanked Crystal and wished her well. She seemed forlorn. Her children were spending this human holiday with their father, whom Crystal divorced after he kept committing adultery. Committed to noncommittal--I know it well. It was the first time the kids had been away on a holiday, she’d mentioned, her voice faltering. We didn’t know what to say, so we hugged her. Her graciousness was not lost on us. If everyone in the world was as kind, it’d be a world I’d want to live in.

Crystal (in bright pink) and hiker crowd

We pried open another can of worms after Unicoi Gap, in the form of another climb. This has been the case at almost every road crossing so far. It’s testament that WHAT GOES DOWN…MUST COME UP. It’s easy enough to despise roads, but the hatred is that much easier on the AT; the trail isn’t so much steep as it is vertical. Such is the way when you leave a road.

Still, because the highway at the gap was so raucous, we were happy to get back into the woods, where stillness reigns. Spring hasn’t hit yet and so silence is the order du jour; the calm before the warm. Not a complete absence of sound necessarily, but a deep quiet that simply doesn’t exist where humans congregate. In addition to the dearth of bunnies, we’ve yet to lay eyes on any deer or birds (or even any worms). The only wildlife wandering about has been those weird two-legged creatures migrating north.

An Eastern Easter

After negotiating a peak called Rocky Mountain--which brought thought of John Denver’s tune--a wide-eyed teenager caught us. A boy among men (and women) (and others), Wombat was twelve pounds of cool in a three-pound backpack. The home-skooled kid from Vermont was homeward bound. He started his hike just two days ago, already averaging some twenty-odd miles a day. (It gives new meaning to the phrase whizkid). This is substantial mileage in AT terms (or in any other). He seemed unfazed by the gravity of the undertaking that he was, um, undertaking.

I asked about the home-skooling. “Did ye gradgeeate near da top of yer class?”

He didn’t laugh.

In spite of his ostensible rush the seventeen year-old stopped to share more conversation. He wasn’t afraid of eye contact, a rarity for those his age. Then again, he’d already proven himself unique for attempting the trail in his teens, and solo no less. It was not likely I’d run into him again, so we wished him well and bade sayonara.

“How cool is that?” I said to Ruth. “Homeschooling on the AT! He clearly ain’t helicopter-mommed.”

It was peculiar: I kept thinking how smart it was of Wombat for being out here, yet how dumb I was for it. He’d manage fine, I figured. I wasn’t so sure about my chances. I walked on, thinking about chance and choice. We were just two percent into the trail and my body felt like a wrecked wrecking ball. I felt I was impersonating a thru-hiker. A poser, a pretender, an impostor. Wombat was the real deal.

But the analytics tell us the odds are against us both. Dreams die daily in this cold, dark world. A huge percentile of hikers who attempt the whole shebang don’t make it, vanishing without a whimper. Unfulfilled aspirations. A ruptured rapture. Failure is not an option…it is a given; we’re boxing way above our weight class. Mission Improbable. (It’s crazy, because my granddad tells me he used to walk the entire Appalachian Trail each morning just to get to school. “It weren’t always so easy in the dead of winter.”)

Having subjected themselves to an immediate primordial manifestation of rigorous natural selection, many of the uninitiated don’t even get out of Georgia, accepting defeat with a disturbing readiness. <Ctrl><alt><defeat>. The trail didn’t even have the chance to defeat them; they defeated themselves. If this turns out to be an especially tough weather year, as it’s been so far, the number of failed attempts will escalate.

If this proves true--and knock on Appalachian hardwood it doesn’t--of the four or five thousand hoping to navigate the totality of this common ground, fewer than a thousand will do so. The path is rated E for everyone; there are no background checks; we all belong. But not all last long. There’s risk at every turn. In time, the AT chooses its thru-hikers. I shall observe a moment of silence for those who fail to make the cut, so long as I’m not one of them. Dammit, Funnybone! You had one job.

But again, none of it concerns me. It’s one step at a time...for the time being and the time to be. Let it be! The poor prognosis is precisely the path’s appeal. Uncertainty is the adventure.

By late day we reached the old cheese factory site. Here in the mid-1800s an eccentric New Englander built a dairy. It was fifteen miles from the nearest farmhouse. Other Georgians, who received parcels in the mountains after a government survey of former Indian lands in the 1830s, opted to sell their land to speculators rather than attempt to tame the untamable. For several years, the man ran his dairy successfully. He produced a superior cheese that won several awards at state agricultural fairs. So said our guidebook, anyhow.

Little evidence of the place (or the cheese) remains today. The spot is now a designated campsite, replete with spring. We couldn’t find either. We searched for a suitable sleep spot, but a torrential rain put an end to patience and perfection. I panicked, knowing I’d freeze in minutes if we didn’t get the tent up. The temperature was in the low forties. Rain at forty degrees is colder than snow at half as high. My hands were quickly inoperative; the effects of cold were closing in. Like a lariat.

“It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.”

~Dave Barry

I barked at Ruth--Georgia can be rearranged into I Go Rage. She took my pugnaciousness in stride (hikers always take things in stride), even though she too was suffering. We got the Rain Magnet up and proceeded to dry the inside with bread and toilet paper, two items we’d hoped to use for other purposes.