A Limp in the Woods (Day 97)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 97: Saturday, June 29th, 2013
Allis Trail junction area to Mile 1386-ish = 14-ish miles
Miles to date: 1,386

Lemon Squeezer

There are two campfire types wherein the ligneous meets the igneous: the White Man and the Indian. Smokey Bear, that fruity-looking fire suppression representative with his own zip code and postage stamp, would throw a hissy around either, especially the former.

The White Man Fire is a needlessly large conflagration that quickly depletes all biomass in the area. It alerts anyone within a wide perimeter that a novice outdoorsman with a bite-sized penis--and a hatchet, a gun, and a truck--is camping too closely. An inferno, fueled by testosterone or the demented desire for it. A fire so big it swallows its fuel without tasting it.

The Indian Fire, sometimes called the Natives Fire--what I call friendly fire--is tiny, unpretentious, controlled and warming. It evokes contemplation and consideration, not power and destruction. It’s worth noting that the smoke from either type of fire ALWAYS BLOWS TOWARD YOU, but The Indian Fire, being tidier, produces less of it.

Last night I stockpiled the necessary kindling and threw together an Indian Fire, to help drive thoughts from my migraine. And to keep the bugs at bay. Except for an endless echelon of kamikaze moths, it worked. (Like Cpl. Tillman, moths know no friendly fire.) If anything, the birch bark burned too keenly; the peelings lit up the night like a flame-thrower. I had to squint, abetting the headache. But when the firestorm chilled, so did my throbbing noggin. Hurting heads are fickle.

“Finger”note(1): “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” Smokey warned us youngins, back when I could build fires using only two sticks. (Okay: two sticks and some crumpled newspapers, and a gallon of gasoline, and a box of strike-anywhere matches, and a blow-torch.) Smokey rudely pointed his furry finger, bestowing too much responsibility on a half-baked twelve year-old. (But I also gave him the finger.) Seems ol’ Smokey had been inhaling too much smoke, omitting that a high percent of fires in the sun-kissed Sierra were an ACT OF GOD caused by lightning. Smokey and God need to settle matters once and for all, leaving you and me out of it.

Speaking of me--and why wouldn’t I? I’m my favorite subject--this morning I awoke with a full tank of gusto, raring to attack the day, or let it assail me. At some point in the night, after the Indian Fire had flown the coop, my migraine had migrated elsewhere. A mug of the last cheap drug doubled as insurance against another, simultaneously holding down its duty as pipe cleaner. Doo-ty. It’s just generic instant coffee--savorless flavorlessness--but I brew it thick and spirited and piping hot. The mug itself, my titanium C-cup, is dinged up, blackened by soot, has baked-on sap, and is altogether unsightly. A true ugly mug. But it is capacious, allowing for enough coff-syrup to ward off all except the ensuing bladder splatter. Migraines don’t stand a chance.

The aim now was to scrape back up to the others (defying Rule #9 from Day 36). I have no idea how much ground they covered yesterday, but I hope it wasn’t much. The trail’s been an outright riot in their company. My cheeks and my abdomen ache as much as my feet, from all the mirth. The abdomen ache is a good ache, not my usual belly-aching.

But it’s just as important to subdue any unbridled brio. To listen to the body in which I’m presently encased. I’ve neglected it, full stop. (Neglecting it without enough full-stops.) The human organism shouldn’t always operate on a schedule set by the mind, or by those around us, particularly when they’re younger and fitter; only by its own weird, wonderful workings. Sure, it can be persuaded to abide, but just the same: we must tune inward and listen in, then rectify or fine-tune those plans. Tune in, fine-tune. (I penned something of a similar ilk on Day 50--that I need a warm-up to keep this stuff up.) If plan A fails, there’s still twenty-five letters left.

No question, I need to better focus on my body’s requirements--including limiting the Honey Buns I’m force-feeding it. Still, I was cognizant that it’d be difficult to do so--the body tends only to whisper, till it’s too late, when it screams--just as it would be difficult to laugh alone. (Only the deranged do that.) As such, I tore down my tent and tore out with intent. I never caught.

For most of the day I loped and languished and laughed alone. Eventually I entered a swarming Harriman State Park--not to be confused with Hairy Man Park. There I took a side-trip to a lake-sized Island Pond. A sloshed fisherman of Irish descent hadn’t caught wind of me (or chose not to) when I stepped by. He kept casting and just about removed the right side of my nose with an airborne fishhook. “First thing I’d’ve caughten all day,” he sighed, gesturing with his hands. I joked to him that no self-respecting fish would be caught with my nose in its jaw. 

“It’d take a mighty big fish,” he said. Lying is fishing’s oldest tradition.

“You an angler?” he asked, filling a noiseless gap. He had a tiny bearbell attached to the end of his fishing rod, in the event he were to snag a bear.

“Nah, more of a straight-liner. Then again, there are no straight lines in Nature; the trail continuously zig-zags.”

Cue blank stare. I chose not to tell him I’m afraid of anything with gills, or with two eyes.

I dished an arrivederci and kept on, wondering why you never see a woman fishing alone. Or why I never. There’s something fishy about that. The only answer I could come up with was the ol’ standby me mate Sadler, a friend collector who likes people much more than I do (“a friend to all is a friend to none,” said a polymath in the BC days), used to use during our sentence at Shawshank High: nobody knows. (In high school it was voguish to call others by their last name.) Here now nobody knows deserved a passing grade.

If only the grades on the AT were as easy to pass.

There was a set of animal tracks up from the shore. What type of animal, well, nobody knows. But they were enormous Bigfoot type of prints, with claws extended and traces of blood embedded in the soil, where each claw had sunken. I knelt and took pictures, but they all came out grainy and blurred, a known effect when photographing what appears to be large hairy man-like primates or their traces. No matter. I know what I saw and I saw it with my own two eyes (and no one else’s, which, let’s face it, would be difficult). I walked on, leery of lurkers.

Animal tracks are like lingerie; the imagination takes hold. I imagined my death and sped up. I love knowing there are animals out here that demote humans a notch on the food chain, but I must confess: I sleep easier knowing most large, toothy animals--grizzly bears, cougars, wolves, saber-tooth tigers--have been wiped out. I hate myself for feeling this way, but I sleep easier.

Not even a minute beyond the mysterious tracks I sashayed up to the Lemon Squeezer, a minuscule slot canyon of sorts, extending mere meters but requiring minutes to shimmy through. A single-file defile. In fact, sideways would be the only way.

As I started into it I realized it was a case of scraping either the kneecaps or the backpack, or both, so I backed out and tried again, this time holding the pack above my head. It would not have proved too complicated had the granitic gap not come with a bend in it, right where the upper body joins the lower half, right where my bite-sized penis is situated.

A ten-foot-high rock barricade needed to be scaled right after the Squeeze. Another AT gimmick. Another unnecessary cruelty. There was more than enough space in the surrounding environs to reroute the path--as previous hikers had--but scheming trail builders clearly wanted to devise a more memorable stretch. Designers recognized that the trees would be easily forgotten and that the views were far (though not far-reaching) and few between. Best to give ‘em hikers sumpin’ ta talk about. Some of us schlemiels fall for it, choosing the path of greater resistance. Fools, we.

Cool for cats; a free-range mini-panther

Late day I was still alone (but not still). The sun goes down, the hike goes on. The sky was a ghoulish blend of black and blue, corresponding with my feet. I’d seen many tourist types--those tireless robotic weekenders--and had run into a few other hikers. There was McJetPack and his college roommate Ben, himself a goofball like Coolie. And there was a thru-chick named Pfeiffer, which could’ve been a trail name. (She wasn’t Michelle Pfeiffer.) But it was largely a lonely turn of the Earth.

I placed my hermitage in a niche in the vicinity of some trees--imagine that!--with nothing notable nearby. No berry patches, no geological landmarks, no hidden treasures (I assume), and no bears (I hope). Mosquitoes are my only mates. They’re doing their darndest to annoy and destroy, for they are hardwired to harass. The safeguard of my fabric fortress, this nylon asylum, holds the tormentors where they belong, bloody well away from my blood cells. Sorry suckers, this is a solitary confinement cell.

"Foot"note 1: There is no footnote today, only a note of the forefoot.