A Limp in the Woods (Day 23)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 23: Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
The springs past Pump Gap to Jerry Cabin Shelter area = 22 miles
Miles to date: 300

A Trail of Tombstones (I See Dead People)

When morning came crashing into my little world I couldn’t detect a pulse. But I could detect an impulse. A craven impulse. I did not want to get moving. Not mind, not body. Nor any other part of me. I’d’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, no matter the foot. It was 9am when I stirred, two hours past sunrise. I felt anything but rested or restless. The shock of the Appalachian Trail is real. 

I’d eventually get going. To my delight it wasn’t too tough of sledding. Just normal-tough. When I reached a flattish dirt road and traced it for a half mile, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. I’m walking here. Surely this couldn’t be the AT…

My route-scout confirmed it was. (Like a Bible believer, I put much faith in a book.) To boot, it was shaping up to be another dandy day. An azure sky, few wispy clouds, and no threat. Or none visible; life is a threat. A treat too, on days like this.

A well-graded, well-behaved AT, white blaze and all

Diagonal blazes denoting a turn on the “trail”

I treated myself to a nice, dawdling pace, enjoying the environs. I was a lone maverick now, an outdoor outcast. The others in my “bubble” stopped in Hot Springs to partake in a treasured day of nothingness. And though Hot Springs was my sort of settlement I wasn’t keen to stay settled. I tend to spend to no end. Towns take tender.

It’s fair to say I don’t have a budget for this hike. I never do; I’m intrinsically frugal. Thru-hiking is poverty tourism. But historically it’s not unusual for me to exit a trail town a hundred clams lighter. Lighter helps hikers, save for when it comes to funds. Those should be heavy, so the hiker can keep hiking. And most trailside establishments are known to get away with highway robbery--which is weird considering there are rarely any highways around. I’ll pull out all the stops later. Nowhere near town.

As I strode the road cars showed. Parked cars. Each was a dwelling for homeless folk. Low-income housing units, like AT shelters. One car had three occupants--a woman and her two young girls. I stopped to talk. She works three jobs and still cannot afford rent in even a rundown neighborhood. Good, ol’ USA, wealthiest nation on Earth

By the way, these are homeless people. They’re not experiencing homelessness, as emasculated politically-correct types would have you say. We might as well say homeowners are those experiencing housing. Soft wording doesn’t soften hard realities. I know; I am homeless. I have no home. Sans domicile fixe. I’ve never unpacked.

Near Tanyard Gap and the US Hwy 25/70 overpass a raggedy guy stepped from his piece of shit car. He presented a baggie of a well-known controlled substance, a substance no longer deemed illicit in my present home state of Colorado. “No charge,” he said, “just a gift from one traveler to the next.”

Hard pass. “Thanks man, but I’m already loaded,” I replied. “Dirt is my drug.” 

(I realized later I should’ve accepted his offering, then paid it forward. This way I’d have made multiple persons happy.)

I empathized with him and the others there. Homelessness is a lone letter from hopelessness. (And as a homeless guy, this hits close to home.) He told me there’s “typically twenty cars here, some lived-in by those with children.” I didn’t tell him I’d just met some.

There wasn’t a porta-potty to be seen.

Homelessness is through the roof (without the roof). It is now a nation, and these were professionals. As the joke goes, either the US has a huge homeless problem, or it’s a gigantic camping success story. Living in a van down by the river has become the new American Dream. 

There are so many homeless in the US it can be difficult to look at each of them as individuals, each with their own personal histories and dramas and triumphs and, more often, tragedies. I made sure to show my appreciation for his offer. It’s often the poorest who give the most. It’s usually the poorest who give the most.

Thru-hikers are routinely held as homeless. Not urban outsoorsmen or street people--trail people. Rurally homeless. Van-lifers sans van. There are, however, two facets differentiating thru-hikers from de facto homeless individuals. (Three, if you count Gore-Tex.)

For one, they’re much too motivated, mobile and on a mission to be dispossessed. If anything, they’re quite possessed. And two, as long as there are public woodlands or a place to pitch their tents or unroll their groundsheets, they’ve got their home, humble--and humbling--though it may be.

(A real nowhere man and one-time hobosexual, I view life outdoors as an alluring homelessness. It’s why I don’t think of myself as homeless, but as home-free. Not down and out--out and about. Trails are pay dirt. Living standards seem low, but they center on LIVING. Plus, housekeeping is much easier with a tent; there’s no dusting and no fitted sheets to fold! There are no noisy people upstairs! And no household pests! When you’re homeless you get to go camping all the time! On a serious note, sleeping under the stars outshines marriage to a mortgage or forever forking over rent. The fixed address is a modern advent, permitting the post office and the pizza guy to deliver to your door. But it also facilitates governments in imposing tariffs on what you think you own, and what you think of as your own. Humans have always roamed, yet so few do now. A tent can be more than just the ideal starter home!)

For the homeless there’s no place like home.

The thru-hiker is home on the range, irrespective of range, though it’s more often than not a mountain range. He is territorial and lives locally, everywhere. Home everywhere; home nowhere. Home is a question mark. Home is where there are no homes nearby. Home is wherever I am too tired to keep walking. Home is wherever I pitch it. Home is the homestretch.

I was homing in on my next objective, the ominously named Hurricane Gap. First I had to negotiate another thousand-foot ascent. Someone once said that on the AT there are nearly a thousand thousand-foot climbs. This wasn’t quite based in fact, but there are hundreds of them. Although I’ve already climbed thousands of feet, my feet (and everything above them) have yet to adapt. I fear I may never acclimatize to this trail. Constant up-and-downs are my downfall.

Foot, The Bill. A terrible poem...

My feet are beat
They slip, they trip
They scar, they mar
They throb, they sob
They hurt, they squirt
They smell, they swell
They ache, they break
They bleed, they plead
They crack, they thwack
They stumble, they tumble

There’s no question hiking poles help. Godsends, they are. I’ve relied on them heavily in the past, up and down large lumps of land, but never as much as I have here on the AT. I joked to Sleeping Beauty a few days back that I wasn’t hiking this trail with my feet so much as with hands and feet. And face. So goes the advertisement: You’ll just flip over our poles!

Before long I’d face Hurricane Gap, feet monopolizing my mind. I set my poles down to jot in my notes that the gap was a misnomer--there was hardly any wind. I got the feeling I got lucky.

Near nighttime, I’d end up thrashing through the most arduous terrain yet, Firescald Knob. More shock and awe. The path was little more than an old, disused Inca Trail, a twisty--twisted--waist-high tunnel, over, and under, rocks galore. I had to collapse my trusty hiking poles and carry them. They’d become not just useless, but detrimental. 

I wanted to weep, so I did; when you’re alone, the act of bravery is only an act. I could not act it out. Nor could I continue. Somewhere shy of the Jerry Cabin Shelter I laid myself to rest, right on the route.

And of being laid to rest, the AT is a Trail of Tombstones in these parts. (Defeated thru-hiker hopefuls?) I lost count how many graves I’d grovel by, but there were quite a few stiffs lying around. There were even a few live stiffs, but they didn’t count.

Eventually, all graves...

...go neglected...

...but for those along the AT

Gumby, bending to his wishes