A Limp in the Woods (Day 16)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 16: Tuesday, April 9th, 2013
The Fontana Dam “Hilton” to Spence Field Shelter = 17 miles
Miles to date: 183

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Interesting is a shameful word, but last night was just that. Nights periodically do this, especially if one is diligent during one’s teens and twenties. When hiking a long trail, it’s better that nights aren’t interesting. Interesting implies striking interest--something of significance or consequence--but I was more interested in sleep. None was had. If shuteye was scored, I’d just been shutout.

The culprit: frogs.

Yep, the leggy, green amphibian. They weren’t being boisterous, at least no more than the cluster of nocturnal hikers convening in the neighboring shelter. Rather, they were more stealth-like. Silent, but giant and violent.

I awoke when the first one leapt atop me. I awoke again thirty minutes later when a second one tried slinking into the sack I call a sleeping bag. When a third one hopped atop my face I grabbed my gear and went elsewhere. Sanctum was sought atop a cement picnic table, where only dreams could perturb.

Just about the time the dreaded dreams died down, I began to doze off for good. ‘Twas not to be. A tree across the river-wrecking reservoir snapped and came crashing to the ground, reverberating noisily enough to rouse us in the campsite. “What the hell was that?” an old hiker yelled needlessly loud, only to launch into some emphatic snoring seconds later. He never stopped. (The sound of snoring needs no translation.) Phlegm brulêé.

All told, and I like to tell all, sleeping was a lot like being awake. I should’ve walked on, I should’ve walked on.

A small congregation of us began the day’s traipse just as the sun crested the hilly horizon. Not long after that we were strolling atop the Fontana Dam proper. At 480-feet, the concrete canker sore is the tallest dam east of the Rockies. Built in 1944 by a super breed of beavers known as “mankind”--that perverse, pervasive ecological contagion--it does what all dams do: rapes a river and destroys the natural setting while generating electricity, which is necessary to feed additional unwanted growth. Rivers don’t think of mankind as all that kind. We are, as Jeffers put it, a sick microbe. A tried-and-true misanthrope, I prefer beavers to humans.

Soon after the water impoundment (the blue death) and our many photographs, the six of us breached Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were almost ready to embark on a climb that would take us from seventeen hundred feet to over forty-seven hundred. That’s a three thousand-foot gainer if math serves me right(1). People skydive from lower heights.

First though, we deposited the receipts for our mandatory backcountry admission fees. (You have to be admitted into these woods.) We also snapped more pictures, this time of signs telling us we were now in federally-protected land, among federally-protected bears and boars belonging to federally-protected unions, like those of US postal employees. We realized with singular consternation that any mischief could result in a federal penitentiary. It was time to behave as a thru-hiker should (but rarely does).

A simple wrongdoing here, like burning a bong or participating in any other act that might offend a grand total of nobody, could land you in deep water. (That water would not only be deep, but presumably smokey, having been in a bong and all, let alone in the Smoky Mountains.) But is it truly possible to land in water?

The permits were implemented just this year. (Bill Bryson, of Bill Bryson fame, wrote in A Walk in the Woods, “one of the noblest traditions of the Appalachian Trail is that every inch of it is free.” Not no mo, Billy Bo.) They’d set us back one Michael Jackson each, or whomever’s on the $20 bill. Where the permit asked for an ‘Emergency Contact Number,’ I astutely put, ‘911.’ Why mess with amateurs?

The fee’s purpose is not yet known. It may never be known. But knowing the National Park Service (and I do, having once labored under them), it’ll go to something bureaucratic and/or useless. A fine for not paying for the permit would run the hiker fifty smackers, assuming he or she got caught.

“I’m going to have to cite you,” the ranger might say.

“That’s fine by me,” the quick-witted hiker might retort.

I wouldn’t care, though. I’d plead insanity. After all, I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail.

By late afternoon I’d made good mileage. Most mileage on the AT is good mileage. I hiked with a number of characters, including a speedster named Spanky (guy, 23, Wastewater, TN or some such); the fleet-footed Fatty (girl, 29, Calgary); the red-bearded Sleeping Beauty (guy, 29, Maryland); and a pair named Paddycakes & Puddin’ (guy/gal, 30s, ? / Mississippi). I’m not sure where Paddycakes is from, but I think somewhere near the Cheddar Curtain.

This seems to be the crew I’ve migrated toward, and they’ve yet to ask me to go away. It’s a temporary team of sorts, and it’s the most enjoyable and memorable way to hike a long trail. Lately the sorest part of my body had been my feet, but as of now it’s my cheeks, from all the grinning and laughing. It ain’t about the mileage; it’s about the smileage.

And it is pure and sure we concur, for that is the allure we wish to procure.

"Fractional"note 1: Math serves no one right.