A Limp in the Woods (Day 27)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 27: Saturday, 4-20 (I’m 4-20 friendly today), 2013
Erwin, TN to Mile 351 = 9-ish miles
Miles to date: 351

Old / News

I wasn’t born yesterday, but yesterday was my birthday. Another run ‘round the sun, done. Work it, circuit. The route may be the same, but the trip’s always changing. 

Like all things, I’m getting older. Well, all but Cher. (Father Time missed Cher’s address; we need to worry about what kind of world we’re going to leave her and Keith Richards. My doctor says not to fret over cancer or impending plague, but to worry about whatever kills Cher. He’s got tickets for her 2093 tour.) 

Birthdays suck. They remind us we get older; they remind us we get old. Old people are boring, and they have little place or purpose in society(1)--another reason to head out here. Unfortunately, we age out of adventure; we become invisible; we become obsolete. We’re one day closer to the date of our death (when we’ll want nothing more than one more breath).

I’m on the B-side of life. Life no longer stretches endlessly into the future; the future has turned sides; it’s no longer on my side. It’s bad news, but resistance is futile. The callous calendar continues to poke fun. Says it: “You’re further from the boy who once was.” A not-so-slow estrangement from the child within, too rapidly losing touch. (I’m hoping this hike helps keep the child alive. The hypothesis is this: if I stay outside he will stay in.) Still, better another orbit than an obit. Birthdays also remind us that each year holds greater meaning. 

And maybe, just maybe, further aging will help me become domesticated.

Like most people my age, I’m thirty. Again. A fib (I haven’t had my morning truth serum); I am officially well into my forties--and will be for another decade--though I quit counting after that grand apex of twenty-seven anos, when I could rightfully badger younger and older women. (I’ve never been on a young woman’s radar, be it back when I held doors open for them, or now that they hold them open for me.) I mean, what’s the point of adding the years up? I’m too young to be this old. A forty-something year-old teenager. Two-thirds dead. I’m older than a lot of people who’ve died, like Mozart, another good musician.

I like to think of myself as middle-aged, but if I die tomorrow I’m old-aged today. This is the longest I’ve been alive. Ruth says I have the body of a thirty year-old (…it’s buried in her backyard).

“You’re not really thirty,” my latest wife once offered on my (first) thirtieth birthday. “More like ten years old, three times.”

A compliment, I think.

“In dog years you’re only about six years old,” an old buddy once reminded me. “Maybe a year older in centigrade.”

A compliment, I think. 

It’s odd being the same age as AARP members. (Forget that the AT makes you feel old.) I expect to hang up my hiking boots before long, then--egads--start playing pickleball. Anyway, I commemorated the day by changing my Depends and boldly doing nothing, which is my preferred way of celebrating something. No writing, no walking, no clock-grip, no nothing. Just southern comfort. Fortune may favor the bold, but mortuaries favor the old. The quest was rest; I could forget the rest. (Idleness, to me, is synonymous with freedom. The poet was right: what is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? Though I’d rather sit.)

Today (4-20, hee-hee), the day after my natal day, I did something else. I quit worrying about heading to the (Krazy) glue factory and returned to the mountainous mayhem, to continue my misguided migration. I could have remained glued to Miss Janet’s couch, a loner thrumming the loaner guitar in the rumpus room that is her house, but couches kill. And the exhausting, sensationalistic news her TV kept recycling was driving me krazy.

On Monday, a full workweek prior, there’d been a terrorist attack near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Two bombs exploded, ending the lives of three humans, one a child. Two hundred and sixty persons were injured. Limbs, eyesight, and faith in humanity were all lost. Some victims were running a marathon one minute and paralyzed the next. Now dependent on others, they’d never spend another day on their feet, and never another alone. Africans won both the women’s and men’s races, finishing hours before the bombs blew.

Although it was huge news and so sad to see, you’d’ve thunk nothing else had happened in the world since. The networks covered it ad nauseam. Crocodilian reporters boasted, “You heard it here on (Such & Such Omniplex) first,” while spewing out the same “special report” or “latest details” every few minutes. They use the same old tools--conflict, death, drama, suspense, and so forth. The network doesn’t matter--same shit, different shovel. Ratcheting up the fear and dragging it out for as long as they could, hoping it retains its commercial value (appeasing their corporate masters) till the next big thing occurs, till the world resumes itself.

“A BREAKING STORY WE’LL BREAK DOWN AFTER THIS BREAK.”

     Yawn.

I decided rather than watch more coverage, I’d take cover in the hills. Perhaps cover some miles. Back to a no-news approach, back to backpacking.

Nowadays everyday is doomsday. If you want evidence the world’s a terrible place, surf web forums and watch the news; if you want evidence the world is a beautiful place, step into and in Nature. If one wanted, she could wake to bad news every day, and be programmed by programming. (“Relax,” said the nightman, “we are programmed to receive.”) As long as humans inhabit the planet, the news and the ceaseless chyron will keep coming. A treadmill of overkill, it is unrelenting. And much of it--nearly all of it--is of the negative ilk. It is demoralizing. Or desensitizing. It saps the spirit.

“TV news shows what it’s like out there; it’s a scare!” ~Black Flag

Yet there are some who feel it’s their duty to watch the calamity of the day, as if it’s educational TV. Do they do anything with it? Do they try to improve the world? 

What good is bad news? During a trip even good news from elsewhere is intrusive, wrote Matthiessen.

What do I need to know? I pondered. “What is the news?” posited Thoreau, motivational speaker.

(It’s all part of the entertainment-advertisement industry, I explain, “particularly Fox, ahem, News.” It’s for the easily influenced, the programmable; “I doubt you’d find it entertaining.” I go on to reveal to him that most so-called news is advocacy or propaganda and is watched primarily by the elderly, who won’t live long enough to witness any finality to it. None of us will. “To beat on this dying donkey some more, Henrietta, today’s news is hardly news at all. The media decided some time ago to no longer relay or report the facts. Instead, they’ve made it their moral duty to lecture and sneer. It’s all distracting, depressing, inconsequential and unhelpful.” 

“Sounds like infection subjection,” he replies. “And I thought things were bad in 1845!”)

Those of us out here have chosen to make our own news, in our own newsroom--al fresco--hacking away the inessentials. Reading not the Times, but the eternities. For me, an information detox. I figure if I’m going to continue to be dragged through adulthood against my will--as looks the case--the AT’s as good a place to be kicking and screaming as any.

It was late day on this, Hitler’s birthday, when I started sauntering up and away from the Nolichucky River. My pack was splitting at the seams, so my usual dawdling clip decreased, while the effort increased. High input, low output. The combination is a psychologically tough one and so the hiker must also be tough. I, ahem, ain’t.

But the backdrop was stunning and I almost didn’t notice the weight of my freight. Almost. One only gets used to wearing a backpack when it’s empty, if even then. Thankfully, one never grows habituated to great scenery. It always mesmerizes, enthralls, and stupefies. Or should. Unfortunately, most of humankind has its head up its ass--or staring at screens.

A couple hours in I met a middle-aged guy named Half-Fast. It may have been Half-Assed; it was hard to decipher. A genial sort, Half-Fast/Half-Assed and I locked stride and yammered till we lost track of time and space. He’d lost his wife to ovarian cancer. He’s since sought, and only recently discovered, mountain solace. I hate hurt. Though I’d only ever suffered the loss of a close friend in my youth and a faithful, loving wife--whom I pushed away due to fears of <my> failure and inadequacy--I could empathize. Love lost, such a cost. I was happy he’d discovered that hills help, and when we parted, we didn’t just perform the usual businesslike, homophobic handshake. We embraced.

It is remarkable to me how you can carry on for years and not make that connection or meet a single kindred soul. Then, just like that, your entire universe opens up. I miss those deeper bonds. When I’m blessed enough to arrive at them it restores my faith and understanding in humanity, and in myself. Out here you meet real friends, not Facebook friends. (Facebook is to real friendship as porno is to real sex.)

These connections occur more frequently on long trails than in the hustle and bustle of society. I’m not sure why that is. I’d guess it has something to do with the aforementioned stripping of life to its bare bones. It’s not just material goods and social antisocial media we whittle away; the barriers we’ve built around us also begin to crumble. Our spirit then takes flight. It’s been said that the Appalachian Trail is where soles go to die. Just the same, it is where souls go to fly.

I’d stroll in solitude the rest of the day, connecting white blazes and attempting to unite the links to my spirit. I’d wind up cowboy camping(2) by my lonesome under the mild annoyance of crackling power-lines--long extension cords--a mile beyond Tennessee State Highway 395. 

The firmament is crystal clear. The temperature is crystal clear. An incalculable slew of stars twinkle at me from millions of years ago. I ponder whether they’re still alive, only to surmise that as long as their light shines on, they must be. In this way we all live on.

I labor to build a small fire, to keep me company on this frigorific night. If it weren’t for the wires and airplanes and satellites overhead I’d have an unobstructed view of the universe--the ultimate sky light. But I suppose in the Anthropocene, powerlines and space trash are just a part of it all. The human insignia is everywhere; pristine places are few.

Hank once more: “Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

Poor Hank. Poor us.

"Functional"note 1: Just look at those in Congress. There is progress and there is Congress--pros and cons.

"Foot"note 2: Cowboy camping is camping without roof, under the stars (or trees or clouds or power-lines), perhaps alongside a campfire. Few clearings on this part of the AT are created naturally, so you take what you can get, powerlines and all.