An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 95: Thursday, June 27th, 2013
Glenwood, NJ to Wawayanda Shelter = 15 kilometers
Kilometers to date: 2,186
Day 95: Thursday, June 27th, 2013
Glenwood, NJ to Wawayanda Shelter = 15 kilometers
Kilometers to date: 2,186
The Trudgin’ Curmudgeon
All backpackers come with baggage. Because of their untried age, the gang I’ve wrapped myself in has little. My baggage is pure bulk. Heavy and hard to shed. My pack and its contents are the lightest of the bunch, but my baggage is heaviest. (This, because of my [tried] age and a succession of awful/doleful/woeful emotional oversights. Oh, heartbreak, a prisoner locked in memory.) I inform the ladies I’m a package deal, what with all the baggage. When asked what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a landlord. To ghosts. But since the ladies themselves are ghosts, we get on fine. That’s all I have to say about that.
Baggage in tow, the day began with a return to the Pochuck Valley, where we thanked Goober for his hospitality and the delectable dinners. Thanks to him and the Pochuck Valley Deli I’m tipping the scales at a hundred and fifty six pounds, down five since March, but holding.
Weight loss on the AT is an uncomplicated matter. Nothing does the job like trekking over tough terrain all day, every day, for months on end. On previous long-distance hikes I’d met large numbers of large people. Some carried just a few pounds too many; others upwards toward a hundred too many. But then, as the months amassed, I’d cross paths with one or more of them again…
“Funnybone! It’s Gelatinous Space Cadet! Whaddup, bruh?!”
“Hey man, how’s it going?” I’ll counter, oblivious who I’m facing. “Did you know there’s another Gelatinous Space Cadet out here? But he’s a lot more gelatinous than you!”
I’ve seen heavyset girls become absolute animals, and in a matter of months. Thin, toned and tanned--though still musky. I’ve met blubbery blokes who transmogrified into whippet-like athletes, covering thirty daily miles without a grimace. Rail thin, trail thin; there’s no better weight loss program than backpacking a long trail. Tired of being fat and ugly? Just be ugly! Walk the AT!
But I must exercise caution. I was thin to begin. Circus act thin. Crazy thin--whacko flacco. POW thin. SKELETOR. (Q: Why didn’t the skeleton hike the AT? A: He had no body to hike with!) And the slimmer I get, the more I suffer from a constitutional frailty. I’ve been skinny (yet full-figured) all my life. My mum didn’t even know she gave birth. I just squirted out and began hiking and eating, a boy no longer trapped in a woman’s body.
Lately I’ve been ravenous--I’d eat a raven--but only in towns, seldom on trail. This isn’t news; hard hiking can suppress the appetite. So can food choice. It’s true food tastes better with mud between your toes, but if I could walk with an intravenous drip, like the one M-80 uses for his diabetes, I would. It’d beat stomaching more Honey Buns or GORP.
It wasn’t long after we’d started that we reached a boardwalk, one of the few handicap-accessible stretches of the trail(1). The boards were three feet wide and sat three feet above some of New Jersey’s finest muck. Pure swampland. A good use of trees, they made for the AT’s most agreeable locomotion. We slid each stride along, feet just millimeters above the uniform platform, without deviation, without difficulty. “If only the entire AT was like this!” Gator pleaded.
“The path of the Trailway should be as ‘pathless’ as possible;
it should be the minimum consistent with practical accessibility.”
~Benton MacKaye, the AT’s founding godfather
But tumult reared its pointy head each time we sought solar relief beneath a tree, in the form of marauding mosquitoes. The aerial assault occurred immediately--it seemed the voracious vampires couldn’t contend with unclogged sunlight--so we’d be forced to carry on, despite our disdain of direct sunshine. UV rays or U B Hazed. The slighter of two evils. Skin cancer rather than skin puncture.
Pests notwithstanding, the scenery was as wonderful as the walking. This was a true wetland area and waterfowl abounded. So did cattails (but no cats), dogwood (but no dogs), toadstools (but no toads), and willows (but no wills, save for mine, which I’d written back on Day 2 of this journey, along with the requisite suicide note). We were even attacked by a few turtles. Had we stuck around, I’m guessing we’d’ve seen some water moccasins, some water buffaloes, and perhaps some alligators--aside from the Gator we’ve been traveling with. This was the northern Everglades.
In addition to wood, the walkway was built with donated funds and volunteer manpower. It’s a permanent reroute of the road walks once required of ATers. Builders had to work via rowboat, after 1999’s Hurricane Floyd flooded the area. A hundred-and-ten-foot-long overpass, the Pochuck Quagmire Suspension Bridge, allowed us to navigate Pochuck Creek and gather a greater gander.
We stood for a few minutes, thankful for the volunteers. But we were comparably sad we were nearing New Jersey’s northern limitrophe. If I’d been asked beforehand what I imagined the Garden State’s AT to be like, I’d’ve never guessed it as stunning as it is. Fall here would be orgasmic on the eyes.
At exactly high noon plus three and a half hours, we wound down by sitting down. We’d made our way a tenth of a mile off-trail, to the Heaven Hill Farm Market & Deli. (It seems a NJ trend, these delightsome delis.) The five of us indulged in sodas, ice cream and freshly-picked berries. I also liberated a handful of mayonnaise packets (eighty-six calories in a ten-gram packet) from the deli counter, to squeeze directly into my mouth later; I’m one of those sickos who relishes mayonnaise.
An older hiker named Chin Music sat alone nearby. A force field of crabbiness orbited him, like an electric fence waiting to shock whoever comes near. We invited him to join us, but the trudgin’ curmudgeon demurred. Just as well.
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| Mayo Nutritional Breakdown |
It wasn’t just that he seemed unhappy; he seemed to not want to be happy. Thru-hiking is largely the avoidance of unhappy people. But not always.
It is all the rage to be enraged in one’s crusty age. To be sullen and cantankerous as death draws nearer. And, like so many others filled with bile and toxicity, Chin Music seemed wont to take his unhappiness out on others. Yuckin’ on someone else’s yum. Corrosion personified.
Maybe he just hated us--he will if he ever reads this. Anyway, this time around, we were pleased for the distance dividing us, that he declined our kind. We left him and his perpetual petulance on his own, as the world seems to. Grouchiness. Grou…Chin…ess.
“Best to distance yourself from the downbeat, for they will beat you down,” I said to the others, in a rare moment of eloquence.
“Best to distance yourself from the downbeat, for they will beat you down,” I said to the others, in a rare moment of eloquence.
“Let’s get back to the woods, where the animals do not gripe about their condition.”
“Somebody should sew a BABY ON BOARD patch to his pack,” quipped Gator.
“Does he even have a backpack?” Mountain Goat asked.
“You have to stand in line to hate him,” added Backstreet.
“He’s probably blood type O negative,” joked Klutz, who’s never said anything mean about anyone, not even me.
“Somebody should sew a BABY ON BOARD patch to his pack,” quipped Gator.
“Does he even have a backpack?” Mountain Goat asked.
“You have to stand in line to hate him,” added Backstreet.
“He’s probably blood type O negative,” joked Klutz, who’s never said anything mean about anyone, not even me.
By nightfall, after another bear sighting (big, hairy, toothy, clawed, free from complaint), we’d made our way to the Wawayanda Shelter. We lumped together like knotted leather, soon starting the usual nightly assignments: firing stoves, inflating air mattresses (or, in my case: unrolling my paper-thin foam roll), fluffing our body bags, eating dinner, brushing teeth, and making one another laugh through the use of varying bodily functions. I made dinner for five, and ate all five dinners.
Our trip has taken us 1,358 miles hitherto. That’s 2,186 kilometers with the exchange rate. That’s the exact number, in miles, of the AT as presently constructed. (No one knows the trail’s exact distance--it depends how often you get lost and how given you are to exaggeration--but it is the same distance no matter your direction of travel. Incidentally, the trail is 1,118 miles as the pterodactyl flies.) Kilometers are shorter and though there are more of them, they make it sound as if we’ve traveled farther; I should use them from here forward. One can dream, no?
Our trip has taken us 1,358 miles hitherto. That’s 2,186 kilometers with the exchange rate. That’s the exact number, in miles, of the AT as presently constructed. (No one knows the trail’s exact distance--it depends how often you get lost and how given you are to exaggeration--but it is the same distance no matter your direction of travel. Incidentally, the trail is 1,118 miles as the pterodactyl flies.) Kilometers are shorter and though there are more of them, they make it sound as if we’ve traveled farther; I should use them from here forward. One can dream, no?
“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” ~Ursula Le Guin
Truth told--and why shouldn’t it be?--I’d detest “being done” with this test. Forgettable folks like Chinny Chin Chin remind us to savor the voyage. Its ups, its downs, its highs, its lows; all of it is how the journey goes.
Thru-hikes are protean affairs. You start out thinking the end is the goal, but in the end, the goal is the end, and you’ve no idea how it’ll go. (I’m still unsure I’ll finish this trail, or if it’ll finish me.) The geographic destination you laboriously--or languorously--stride toward is only another exclamation point. Filling the space between the dots paints the picture. Steinbeck wrote, “We don’t take a trip. A trip takes us.” I’ll let it take me wherever it may lead. Carpe Palus. Seize the Swamp!
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| No dumping! You cannot unsee this |
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