A Limp in the Woods (Day 104)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 104: Saturday, July 6th, 2013
Hwy 22 to Mount Algo Shelter area, Connecticut = 18 miles
Miles to date: 1,463

An AT Thru-Hike: Ages 5 and Up

Lately the trail’s ushered us past a succession of olden-day stone walls. We don’t know the stone type; we’re not geologists or stone-cutters. Nor stoners. The rocks look locally derived, unlike those prefab ones used on those mysterious mounds near Cairo. Many of the walls have toppled. Some have been buried. By muck, moss or man. Some have stood the test of time, even if their purpose, whatever it was, had long passed. Most were crooked. All invite contemplation. Just how old are they? Who placed ‘em? Why? Sheep? Were property lines really that deformed back then? Were property owners?

Most the barriers were waist high. But then, three hundred years ago, that may have meant head-high. (Jesus was a midget, basically. A brown-skinned midget.) The walls have sunk and updated anthropoids are a mutant incarnation compared to our atavistic ancestry. We humans have grown a lot, in height and width, but mostly in g-i-r-t-h. We’ve almost got anorexia beat. But never mind that.

The walls tell us of times past, and what a different world it is today. (“Imagine someone from two hundred years ago suddenly placed in today’s world,” said Porch. “They’d hate it, too.”) The fortifications were built when the US was bucolic; there were no megalopolises, just a growing number of hand-tilled farms and the stones surrounding them. Many miles separated, and isolated, towns. Such space still exists in America, primarily in the west, but man and his obscene religion of growth persists in encroaching. Urban by choice. Or not. Exponential growth within a finite system can only lead to collapse, but we just don’t see it.

“Oh how I wonder, oh how I worry
And I would dearly like to know

I’ve all this wonder, of earthly plunder
Will it leave us anything to show?”

~Led Zeppelin

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell,” said enfant terrible Edward Abbey, who fathered five offspring, thickening the stew.

Mas Edmundo: “Why not consider the possibility that a city, like a man or woman or tree or any other healthy living thing, should grow until it reaches maturity--and then stop? Who wants to live forever under the stress, strain and awkwardness of adolescence? A human who never stopped growing would be a freak, a mutant, a monster, a sideshow geek eating live chickens for supper and toppling dead of diabetes and kidney failure into an early grave.”

No doubt: we passed the optimum point of population decades ago. We now exist in an age of accelerating growth and diminishing returns. “If progress,” Ed wrote, “means change for the better--and I’ll support that--then growth as we have come to know it means change for the worse. Let me try out a newfangled axiom here: Growth is the enemy of progress.” Anyway, even though you realize it’s this blogger’s style, I should apologize for the tangent. What does it have to do with an Appalachian Trail hike?

I ambled along, pulling ahead of Porch and Tumbleweed in the Pawling Nature Reserve. Pawling ain’t sprawling. The reserve is a thousand-acre remnant of Nature, a park contrived. It’s owned by the Nature Conservancy, thus owned by all. My thoughts stayed on the stone walls. They stonewalled me into believing I’d have better off in this area in that era.

(Many people worry about an untimely death; I worry about an untimely life. Death doesn’t worry me; death will end worry.)

But any rumination over my life’s mistiming is just a cop out; I’m here now, in a pint-sized tract set aside for man and animals both, and I had to be content that at least a postage stamp of the landscape had been partially preserved. (For now.)

Wilderness is preservation, for man and all others, and we need to express a great deal of gratitude to the Benton MacKayes, the Hank Thoreaus, the John Muirs, the Rachel Carsons, the Aldo Leopolds, the Edward Abbeys far more often than we do, worshiping not them as we tend to, but rather the object of their affairs. What makes America great isn’t just our economic power or our rights and freedoms, but also our natural landscape. All four are disappearing. Every year there are fewer untouched natural tracts than the year before, and it’s not like Nature grows on trees. (Wait. What?!)

Strange times ahead. Strange times behind. Strange times now.

The thermostat was jacked again today. I’m guessing it will be for another six weeks, until higher elevations farther north. (Farther north is pure conjecture here; I seem to be limping along on a never-ending treadmill with head-high hurdles; who’s to say the contrivance won’t disintegrate?) It is this segment of trail and these conditions that shall determine whether my hike ends up a thru-hike, or whether I’m through hiking. It is the crux--that pivotal moment upon which everything is hinged, that pivotal moment I try to avoid becoming unhinged. Notice: nodus. The crucible. Crunch time.

     Or is it?

There could be nothing more difficult on the prospective thru-hiker than to make it most the way, only to be turned back. To fail. Or to quit. Injury, illness, ennui, trouble back home, mosquitoes, the weather. They’ve all denied many a hiker. But I’m not worried; I won’t be denied. I can’t be. My goal was never to have hiked the whole enchilada, but to have simply enjoyed tasting a little of it each day, for as long as it might last, for as long as I might last, or before conditions grow too wintry. When I cannot achieve such a goal, I will head elsewhere and find something tastier to nibble. But what could be more delicious than a daily stroll?!

No thru-hiker can make it through unscathed, and I knew there’d be scores of days when I didn’t care to be hiking. (I’m reminded through history or others that not every day can be a holiday, no matter the endeavor.) But, as has been said (mostly on bumper stickers), a bad day of hiking beats a good day at the office. 

The trail is the office. Pay may be low at times. But just the same, it is immeasurable. Like the trail.

By noon, I’d covered good ground--it’s all good ground--and found myself at the Wiley Shelter. The lean-to is like any other along the trail, a bit of a dump--The Garbagio--but firmly erect and protectively passable, especially in an emergency. The structure stands unique in that a Little Library has been placed nearby. An officially registered one. Hikers can grab or leave a book as they see fit, if they see fit. If they can read, or even if not; books are good fire-starter.

I left Catcher in the Rye and took nothing in return. The only remotely interesting paperback was by Nicholas Sparks, and I’d just as soon meet my maker than leaf through that dead tree. It’s interesting because I knew Nick when we were kids--he lived next to my dad in one of Sacramento’s stale suburbs. (Suburbs: where developers bulldoze all the trees then name the streets after them.) Those of us who knew Sparks knew he was full of schmaltz. That schmaltz ain’t unwanted however, so more power to him.

Yours truly in the Chucks; Nicholas Sparks in red

Little Libraries might not have the book you want, but at least they’re not homeless shelters, like today’s big libraries.

Without the book, my pack was as light as it’d been, below ten pounds. At this point I could even do away with the sleeping bag and the spare clothing (with the exception of the mosquito-proof garb), but it’d be suicide to hike without the stuff. It goes where I go. Just in case.

JUST IN CASE is a term most backpackers take to heart, opting to carry the whole kit and caboodle, lest anything (or everything) go wrong. Gear you might need one day. The works. Everything and the kitchen sink.

I prefer carrying a lot less, mostly to see what I can do without, but also to avoid more work than is necessary (the guiding principle of my life). I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this in this notebook (note the Sparks reference here). Anyhow, only a git walks into the woods without the desiderata. It’s one thing to go without for a night, or even a week. It’s quite another to attempt a half-year thru-hike without. But a book, even a “classic” like Catcher, is pure dross, pure recrement. Though not nearly as much as Sparks’s stuff.

I carried on. Lightly.

When afternoon reached its destination, I began tracing the Ten Mile River. The well-behaved river is another of the many misnomers lining the AT. Its true length is just over fifteen miles. But calling it the Fifteen Point Four Mile River sounds fussy. And anyway, what are miles? No one walks the Appalachian Trail because of its mileage.

En route I’d breached Connecticut (but what are borders, anyway?). For the NOBO hobo it’s the trail’s ninth state line and its tenth state. I’d been here before, but only to Hartford, which doesn’t count. Cities never count. In the US they’re all so hard to tell apart. And why would we?

Connecticut’s entrance meant I was now officially in New & Improved England. The woods here are sometimes called the willowwacks. Queer English, New Englanders. I soon ran into a bloke named Bob. Or Rob. He had a weed-whacker and was clearing the trail of head-high grass (head-high to those who built the neighboring stone walls way back when; waist-high here now). Connecticutmedown. “Somebody’s gotta keep hell tidy.”

He’d told me he’d seen three snakes since he fired up the noise-maker, one venomous. “Thankfully the earthquake frightens ‘em away, before I get near. I hate to hurt ‘em, just for some stupid trail.”

“Stupid trail?” I replied. “You’ve hiked it before?”

“In ‘05. I don’t envy you,” he said, lifting his face-shield. Bespectacled, shaven, smiling.

“Me neither,” I responded. “What was your trailname?”

“I forgot it.”

(Strange response, I surmised. No one ever forgets his or her trailname. ‘Bob’ or ‘Rob’ had to have been hiding something. Perhaps a sex change, perhaps a crime committed. Perhaps he had been committed. Still, he was doing hell some good, and I was forced to like him. I opted not to pry.)

After rummaging through his rucksack, he handed over a liter-sized Gatorade. It was neon like nothing Nature has known, save for the fireflies and those peculiar oceanic creatures lurking deep down. I downed it in seconds, Napoleon Dynamite style. We spoke a while. I thanked him for the ambrosia and the trail maintenance, and continued on, gut gurgling.

Just as I fell back into rhythm, he sounded a warning: the mosquitoes were only going to get worse. “Connecticut just had its splashiest June ever.” I thanked him for the news, though I’m not sure why.

A climbing rope to help the “hiker” up!

When gloaming got going and nightfall fell, I caught Buddy Backpacker and his mom and her soft-spoken manfriend, whose names I’d forgotten and forget still. To me all parents are forgettable, save for a few milfs. I’d met ‘em at Bill and Amy’s bash, but remember only the Muppet-loving moppet. A child by trade, he’s just FIVE years old--not even one dog year! The free-range tyke is trying to become the youngest thru-hiker ever. (He doesn’t know much of it; one gets the impression it’s mom’s goal, based on how much she can babble about it. But I like her; she’s not handicapping the squirt by making his life easy.) Who says there’s no such thing as Fun For The Whole Family?

Buddy Backpacker, proof some superheroes wear backpacks

We’re camped two-thirds into this AT mess, near the Mount Algo Shelter, along with half a million weekenders. The scent of perfume and deodorant and campfire smoke stifles. Each adult looks dressed by L.L. Bean; each kid by LL Cool J.

Kent, CT, origins of that Family Guy creator, is a mile away. As we sit captive in our bedrooms, evading those winged invertebrates while they search for blood donors, I’ve asked Buddy what he wants to be when he grows up. (I’m still looking for ideas myself.) 

“A banana,” he replied. Good kid; we have goals that align.

I then asked if he ever gets sore.

“What’s sore?” he replied.

Lucky little squirt.