A Limp in the Woods (Day 89)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 89: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Kirkridge Shelter (PA) to (NJ) Backpacker Campsite = 11 miles
Miles to date: 1,294

One Man’s Rash

They say on the AT, “it’s always something.” They’re wrong. It’s always everything. You don’t get to choose your battles in the midst of a war.

Yesterday it was rain. (And rocks.) Today, a thermostat malfunction. (And rocks.) The switch was flipped fully back on, and there it stayed stuck.

(Disclaimer: Don’t try thru-hiking at home, kids! We thru-hikers are pros. Some of us are cons, too.) 

The humidity feels less like airborne moisture than it does a hot bath. How anyone can breathe in this stuff, I don’t know. I need a snorkel. A snorkel that reaches higher, drier (and maybe cleaner) air, where cooler climes linger.

Each time we stopped to soothe our smarting hooves, we had to peel our packs from our backs. Had they been glued they’d’ve been easier to remove. And oh the smell that wafted out each time we did so! Delicioso! In the west a long-distance hiker must rinse about every two weeks before one’s scent becomes lethal. Here that rinse is necessary about every two minutes. My scrub-down in Palmerton might as well have been months ago.

Because of yesterday’s rain I was now contending with something new. Blisters and chafing. A rash had developed at the confluence of my lower limbs, encroaching the gross anatomy. This was the first chafing I’ve had since competing in those overpriced Ironman triathlons a decade ago. Ticks wouldn’t need to bore for blood now; they could just socialize inside my thighs and gleefully guzzle. Or they could enter my socks and drown in the stuff, if they could handle the competing fungus.

The rocks were as nasty again today as they were yesterday, a trail of tricky talus and large, stony artillery. We’d often need the use of our hands to scramble up something short but steep. It was necessary to hold the pairs of poles in our free hands, or collapse them altogether and strap them to our packs.

Poles behave poorly in one paw, continually criss-crossing one another like a pair of wide-open scissors. They become more trouble than they’re worth. And there are no free hands when scaling such insidious terrain. A pair of forepaws are obligatory, especially now that we were on the lookout for any tusky snakes lurking in the crevices. Lose your grip or your balance here and the fall might be the least of your concerns. Many a hiker has ended his hike in Pennsylvania, and not by choice. (Many have ended their hikes by choice...those types sharper than the rocks.)

A typical stretch in Northern Pennsylvania

The poles would be required seconds later when, once more, we strode perpendicularly to the ground, as H. sapiens were designed. Look Ma, no hands! But then, soon again, our staffs would have to be stowed or clasped in one hand. This cycle--the ups and downs of bipedalism--repeated itself over and over. 

A Tale of Two Feet

The Pros and Cons of Bipedalism:

  •Frees the hands for hiking sticks or Cheetos (pro)

  •Improves our capacity to cool-off, assuming the heat and humidity are at livable levels (pro)

  •Allowed our ancestors to see over the huge rocks along the AT (pro)

  •Enables us to walk long distances and ponder our sanity (debatable)

  •Allows us to wear backpacks (con)

Gator, ever the clever leveler, reminded us that this is what hiking in New Hampshire and Maine is like. “It’s not really hiking. The trail turns insane. Rock me Amadeus.”

Progress was steady, but nothing like yesterday’s. Two back-to-back bigger-mileage days would damn near kill me on this diabolical path. Looking back in this here little journal confirms I avoid the deed like the plague. Not that I have much say.

I can see I’d be better served skimming from the bigger days and distributing my effort a little more evenly. But then mileage doesn’t measure effort. As always, I go by rhythm, rhythmic or not.

Tramping with two guys half my age disrupts the rhythms at times, but the pros outweigh the cons. Outweighing anything while backpacking is usually a recipe for ruin, just not in this case. Plus, my camp-panions help hush those demonic inner whispers I’d be forced to face if I were alone. Demons love the lonely.

We make it work, as like-minded people with a common goal do, knowing the best things happen in groups (e.g., sex, except in this case). They enjoy the longer lunch breaks, whilst I’m happy hanging with those who know how to laugh. Gator and Backstreet know how. Better yet, they know how to beget laughter. Deeply, gutturally, honestly. Laughter truly is the best medicine, if not a panacea. When people grow too mature, when boys become men, I usually boycott them. Or they boycott me. Just as well.

Backstreet is the only one here wise beyond his years. Whether it’s natural or requires effort, I can’t say. But I think he’s seen that, no matter a man’s age, he must be true to himself. I’ve always managed this--I know no other way--and I hope he’s picked this up from me, the elder berry. I don’t know. I do know this, though: I’m glad he is who he is, and no one else. I would not want some dithering clown like me aiming to be an air traffic controller. “Roger that,” he says.

Pilot: “Ground control, we’re over the middle of the ocean.”

Ground controller Funnybone: “Again, bring the landing gear down.”

Something tells me he will succeed in life, the same something that tells me I won’t. I trust this something.

It’s funny though; I once confided to Goat, during one of our more serious talks, that if everyone had been like me throughout humanity’s history, we’d still be sitting around in circles belching and farting, stirring the embers in our camp fires, telling stories, catching fish with our spears, and staring up at the stars each night.

“Not even one of today’s technological amenities or advances would’ve been conceived or invented or accomplished.”

“That would be AWESOME,” he replied.

By midday we’d reached Delaware Water Gap, PA. Its population is 750, according to one of its senior denizens, who’s sure to soon make it 749. It took just minutes to realize there were limited resupply options available. But after lounging around a few hours, during which time TK and Goat caught back up to us, we were providentially offered a ride to nearby East Shroudsburg, where a Wal-Mart Supercenter awaited.

Chickadee, an ostentatiously-tattooed girl, who we’d met in the Palmerton dungeon, said we could cram into the back of her dad’s truck. He and his wife, Chickadee’s step-mom (who my eyes would not veer from) had joined her a few days, after driving up from one of the Carolinas. He’s sectioning the AT; his twenty year-old daughter’s doing it undivided.

I opted out. The pickup’s covered bed was already jammed with junk, and now with hikers, including a towering kid named Bison. As tall as his afternoon shadow, Bison had to wrap his knees around his ears just to squeeze in. 

Backstreet offered to pick up any needs, so I scrawled a near-legible list, forked over funds, and waited in town for their return. (That list: new shoes; PA had obliterated my existing pair in fewer than two hundred miles; they’d be my sixth pair since Springer.) A local house of worship, The Church of the Mountain, welcomed hikers, so I sat back and prayed I wouldn’t be preyed upon by praying types.    

Once the gang returned from Wally World, smiling and laughing as per usual, it was on to Nextville. We paralleled a frenetic Interstate 80 on a low-lying toll bridge(1) over the Delaware River and into New Jersey, our eighth state. Good riddance, you repugnant Pennsylvanian rocks!

It was strange to think I lived beside this strip of pavement when growing up, just three thousand miles away. The bridge rumbled beneath our feet each time a semi-trailer flew past, while hundreds of erratic swallows somehow avoided them--and one another.  Grit and gravel flew by in pursuit of each truck. We were happy for the ten-inch-thick barricade dividing the traffic and us, though at just three feet tall, its dumpy stature was a bit nerve-racking. It wouldn’t take much for a vehicle to fly over it.

Prior to my trip friends had asked if the AT was safe. Here now the answer was pretty clear: not always. Motorists were late, it appeared, as they forever seem to be. Foot to the floor, pedal to the metal. But a few stuck their arms out and waved, and four truckers laid into their air-horns, after we’d impelled them to, what with all our ridiculous arm gestures. I laughed to the point of nearly peeing my pants. No question, we had all missed Mountain Goat’s companionship. He brings out the child buried in each of us.

Myself and Mountain Goat in Delaware Water Gap

The Delaware Water Gap is a National Recreation Area. Opposition and protest put a halt to a proposed dam in the area. A reservoir might’ve been nicer; the whole corridor was as earsplitting as any single stretch of trail. Maybe it was because it was the start of a weekend and the start of summer, but more likely because the river is sandwiched between two echo-emitting mountains. Between them both, we strode toward quieter domain, first atop the freeway, then alongside it on a frontage road, and finally back into the hills, where the AT hiker belongs.

When the live-long day came to a close, or close to a close, we realized we forgot to walk in our birthday suits on this summer solstice, an avowed thru-hiker tradition. Although our clothes stank something fierce, they hid something far funkier, both aromatically and visually. We decided we best keep dressed. As they say: No Nudes is Good Nudes. Plus, in some states along the trail, an indecent exposure conviction mandates that you a register as a sex offender for life(2). Life is a long time.

We’d make it five miles into New Jersey, to a “backpacker campsite,” so the guidebook tags it. We’re away from the ruckus, but not far enough from the rocks. So far, in fact, Jersey’s rocks are as rampant as they’d been in Pennsylvania. Besmirched with a brew of blood and mud and other crud, my new shoes already look tired. Some days the trail wins.

"Fee"note 1: No toll for hikers!

"Flesh"note 2: Those who deem nudism as a sex offense are the real pervs.