An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 101: Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013
RPH Shelter to NY State Highway 55 (then off-trail to 4th of July Bash)= 12 miles
Miles to date: 1,437
Day 101: Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013
RPH Shelter to NY State Highway 55 (then off-trail to 4th of July Bash)= 12 miles
Miles to date: 1,437
Red, White, and Mostly Blue
Because the Real Pizza Hut was cramped, with or without occupants, I’d elected to suspend consciousness on the neighboring lawn. It was freshly mowed, damn near Brazilian-bikini-style, and was about as perfectly flat as a sleep surface could be, as it should be. Even the coziest of beds would not have been as pleasurable, for beds are usually stuck inside, surrounded by walls and stale, smelly air. Outside’s a bed’s best side.
Unfortunately, walls were required to keep the hectoring mosquitoes from wreaking hemoglobinous havoc. They laid in waiting, droning incessantly, pleading their case. The crescendo cheese-grated the nerves, so I jammed my rubbery earbuds in, then jammed to some Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon.
Fact: you cannot overplay the Pink.
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| Gay Pride! |
That’s when the fireflies showed. For the next hour, during that weird and wonderful interlude between consciousness and drooling, I was treated to the most astonishing, eldritch experience of my life. To call it surreal is to weaken it with poverty-stricken language. It was beyond the reach of reasonable words, for they could offer no apposite description, and certainly no explanation.
At first, the flies flew around in an disorganized, indiscriminate chaos, as they do. Probing for partners, possibly prey. But then, after a few minutes, just as The Great Gig in the Sky (inexplicably enough) began to seep into my hairy ear canals, their bioluminescence slipped into a strange synchronicity. First with one another and then, for a spell, with the music.
What the--? I let out a gasp and sat bolt upright, gazing around to be sure I wasn’t being hoodwinked. No one was astir. I wanted to rouse Tugboat, Chickadee, Misery, et al, but figured it best to relish the moment. Bottle it up. Keep it all to myself. Besides, given their mental illness that is youth, they probably couldn’t yet appreciate Pink Floyd.
I joked to myself maybe the lunatic IS in my head. But I don’t think I’m loony. (Does anyone? If so, how would we know? This has got to be a corollary of Dunning-Kruger.)
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
~Ambrose Bierce
I hadn’t smoked or drank (or injected) (or dropped) a thing. No weed. No booze. No hallucinogenic ‘shrooms (unless last night’s pizzas were tainted). No acid. (And no acid house.) No doubt though, I. WAS. HIGH. Tears began funneling down my cheeks, into my smiling, gaping mouth. I tried to remain silent, but was powerless. My breathing deepened, quickened. What in the world?
Biology books attempt to teach us that groups of flies sometimes synchronize their neon luminescence. But music is never mentioned, let alone the gods of it. This was not the study of life; this was transcendence of some sort. If only I knew what, from what. It was as close to a religious experience as I have ever experienced. A man can spend his life in search of the miraculous; on the AT it came to me.
Biology books attempt to teach us that groups of flies sometimes synchronize their neon luminescence. But music is never mentioned, let alone the gods of it. This was not the study of life; this was transcendence of some sort. If only I knew what, from what. It was as close to a religious experience as I have ever experienced. A man can spend his life in search of the miraculous; on the AT it came to me.
As the eerily sensational Brain Damage began to play (“the lunatic is on the grass”), a wind gathered, sweeping the fireflies (and mosquitoes) elsewhere. I remained alert, in hopes they’d return, but fatigue overran my system and I slipped away. On a thru-hike the fatigue meter’s always running.
An hour later I stirred again. My little writing device thingy was still squirting music (a somewhat less profound Hung Up by Madonna…“time goes by, so slowly…”). The flashing flies had returned, but try as I might, I couldn’t keep an eye open to soak up the show. I’d awake again only after the sun had.
Any such electrifying exhibition would now be concealed by daylight. Do fireflies fire by day? I packed up and left, grinning like I was in on a secret, even though I didn’t know what it was. “I hope life isn’t one big joke, wrote Jack Handy, “‘cause I certainly don’t get it.”
By mid-morning, after a jolting sunrise and the preliminary rude clamber away from the RPH Shelter, and after the endorphins (aka ‘outdoorphins’) wore off, I was on autopilot. My thoughts were adrift in a sort-of no man’s land. The air was scorching, sodden, and sickening. For a while I’d wavered between attending a 4th of July get-together hosted by a local couple, Bill and Amy, or to keep on keeping on. Festivities were to commence this afternoon, a day early, as is expected of hikers. Hand-written signs heralding the event had been draped on trailside trees, but I opted out and continued northward. I figured a true outdoorsman ought opt out. A true Independence Day.
Then, at the Morgan Stewart Shelter, I ran into Team Tugboat--Chickadee and the man himself. Something was amiss; something was missing. Their packs. And they were heading south. They’d been driven north and were careering back to the popular birthday bash. Both encouraged my presence. I told them I’d mull it over, knowing damn well I wouldn’t. “Will there be piñatas?”
Ten minutes later Bulldog appeared. He too was southbound and slackpacking. He told me I had no choice: I was to come. “I ain’t no flag-wavin’ fag, I think all flags are rags, but it’s gonna be kick-ass!” He said he’d come pick my (and I quote) “ugly ass up” at the next big road crossing, Highway 55. “Wait there. I won’t forget’n come, I promise. Scout’s honor.”
Once there, my ugly ass would tarry in a stupor for an hour. I was fending off squadrons of mosquitoes when, sure enough, the Georgian pulled up. He was driving one of Bill (a former thru-hiker) and Amy’s friends’ cars. He had with him a passenger who called herself Tumbleweed. Eyes of porcelain and of blue. I was wholly mesmerized and tried to play it cool, all the meanwhile gathering intel--where she was from, whether she was single, whether she desired men without any redeeming qualities, and her interests (and whether those interests included men without any redeeming qualities).
She enjoyed hiking, so I felt we might share a connection. The risk was in saying something stupid, as I’m apt to do, but only when my mouth opens. I thought of Promise by the Violent Femmes (“Well you know that I want your loving…But my logic tells me it ain’t never gonna happen…And then my defenses say I didn’t want it anyway…But you know sometimes I’m a liar…”) and made sure not to utter more than a few words. Even then, after inquiring where she was from (“Alabama,” she replied, in a voice so soothingly lovely I felt my heart start to sweat), I managed some lame comment about Forrest Gump. Shut up! Act cool you dunce!
She enjoyed hiking, so I felt we might share a connection. The risk was in saying something stupid, as I’m apt to do, but only when my mouth opens. I thought of Promise by the Violent Femmes (“Well you know that I want your loving…But my logic tells me it ain’t never gonna happen…And then my defenses say I didn’t want it anyway…But you know sometimes I’m a liar…”) and made sure not to utter more than a few words. Even then, after inquiring where she was from (“Alabama,” she replied, in a voice so soothingly lovely I felt my heart start to sweat), I managed some lame comment about Forrest Gump. Shut up! Act cool you dunce!
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
~Abraham Lincoln
As we arrived at the jamboree, I got (read: took) a better look (read: stare) at Tumbleweed and saw, among other things, a rather huge, daunting rock on her left ring finger. (Read: le sigh.) I decided to put a dagger through my jugular right there, in front of the thirty hikers present. Flattened like roadkill, I wondered why I strayed from the woods. The trail beats you down, but not quite like dashed hope. Another D minor day.
But after I met her man, a raggedy guy named Porch--short for a less politically correct Porch Monkey--I was happy for her. Genuinely. She’d found someone affable and dependable, someone who wasn’t afraid of eye contact or a firm handshake. I am none of those things, nor that guy, but could only ever want what’s best for others. It’s just that it never seems best for me. C’est la vie.
The party accumulated participants and steaminess. To hikers party means staying off the feet, save for the sporadic excursion to pee or fetch more food or beer. They are low-key affairs, but loud and lively.
The real barn burner would be tomorrow, Independence Day. A “knees-up,” a Brit might say, and Brits are why the day. I thought I might pick my knees up, sidle away and sulk north, limping lugubriously after staging my suicide. But no, I held out hope that TK, Backstreet, Goat and Gator would show. A foolish wishbone, that Funnybone. Independence day, all right. Just like every other one.
Everyone was still putting their matches to the midnight oil when my get-up-and-go got up and collapsed. I was born to be wild, except after 9pm. I unfurled my groundsheet in a secluded corner of Amy and Bill’s big backyard. Then I began to cry myself to sleep beneath the erratic flight of the fireflies, musing why I hold out hope for a shared future, when all I love to do is roam ad infinitum.
What’s the point in hope? Moving targets are tough to capture, particularly those in such a state of perpetual motion. But I don’t want to be alone; I want to find a home. There must be other moving targets out there. And what if they collide? What if we collide?
As I die here, staring at all the orbiting bodies and the endless expanse beyond, thoughts orbit. The long, dark tea time of the soul persists. The others celebrate; I cerebrate. A pity party. Be damned, Mind After Midnight! I live in a tent; why’ve I so much going on upstairs? I need a Novocaine brain.
Looking at the stars is looking back in time. As is customary, I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had. And I think of old loves. (I’ll see you if I fall asleep.) Where they are now, who they’re sleeping beside, why we failed--or, more accurately, why I failed them--and whether they’re happy. Naturally, I hoped they were; I could only ever want each of them to be.
I only wish I was, and that it was all so simple. The stars seem to say otherwise. Or the gaps between them do. I try to joke that I was born broken-hearted, but fail to smile. Such depression--that invisible deformity, that dis-ease of modernity, of excess, of privilege--is no smiling matter. This is not a mood swing; it’s a broken swing-set. Tender isn’t the night. I tell myself, “If you’re sad, just remember: the Earth is over four billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as the Beatles. If that isn’t a dose of great good fortune, I don’t know what is...”
It doesn’t help. My hope is hesitant. I am only happy retrospectively, and that makes me sad. My heart is at half-mast and the sun in my soul is sinking lower. Why is it I must constantly remind myself that “I just have to outlast now”? And why is now endless? I live my life one mile at a time, one step at a time, one instance at a time. “Your prison is walking through this world all alone,” wrote the Eagles. “My existence is an awful burden,” wrote Nietzsche. Could Fried-rich not see that the night is always darker when alone? Never trust the thoughts that come by night, Friedie!
But there’s no use in pretending: I can’t feel this way much longer, expecting to survive. I can’t continue hoping my life away or trying to keep this cracked glass half-full. When you’re alone you have a lot more time to think about how miserable you are.
Ah, what the hell. Enough lament. Why the worry? Is it because I’m worry wart? A worry tumor? No, there’s more to it than that.
It’s because I deem love a need, not unlike water or air or shelter or ice cream. I’m skeptical enough not to believe in that sappy Disney-esque Happily Ever After. I just never expected Sadly Ever After to drag on so long. Just hold on for one more day…
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a lobotomy. Or maybe I’ll backtrack to the backwoods, back to the mountains, to resume my high times to help overcome these mountains of the mind, to purge these psychological poisons. It’s the doing that keeps you sane. As the song goes, tomorrow never knows. There can be no love where there is no path.
But there’s no use in pretending: I can’t feel this way much longer, expecting to survive. I can’t continue hoping my life away or trying to keep this cracked glass half-full. When you’re alone you have a lot more time to think about how miserable you are.
Ah, what the hell. Enough lament. Why the worry? Is it because I’m worry wart? A worry tumor? No, there’s more to it than that.
It’s because I deem love a need, not unlike water or air or shelter or ice cream. I’m skeptical enough not to believe in that sappy Disney-esque Happily Ever After. I just never expected Sadly Ever After to drag on so long. Just hold on for one more day…
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a lobotomy. Or maybe I’ll backtrack to the backwoods, back to the mountains, to resume my high times to help overcome these mountains of the mind, to purge these psychological poisons. It’s the doing that keeps you sane. As the song goes, tomorrow never knows. There can be no love where there is no path.
Somewhat un-originally, I originally planned tomorrow to be a no-hike day, being that the calendar calls it an important American holiday. But Henry said, “There can be no black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature.”
Get out of your head and onto your feet! Don’t forget who you are! All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
Then there’s Count Lev’s law: “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”
Let’s hope these clowns are right. For if so, I’m there. Besides, movement is my love language. Maybe that’s love enough.
Then there’s Count Lev’s law: “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”
Let’s hope these clowns are right. For if so, I’m there. Besides, movement is my love language. Maybe that’s love enough.
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