A Limp in the Woods (Day 105)

An Appalachian Trail Tale

Day 105: Sunday, July 7th, 2013
Mount Algo Shelter area to Sharon Mountain Campsite = 20 miles

Miles to date: 1,482

A Sticky Situation / The Heat is On

Day’s end. I’m a worn man, having dragged my body-bag twenty miles. I take pleasure in knowing there are just seven hundred miles remaining. To the north of that, nil. A U-turn perhaps. Or the chance to walk deeper into the wild, never to return. The Canadians have the International Appalachian Trail, but it’s Moose Country up there and I’m not carrying a passport. (I prefer passport stamps to being stamped.)

I’m not positive Mooselandia requires passports, but I know mosquitoes only grow fiercer the farther north one lumbers. With foot-long proboscises they can bore into the thickest of hides. (When no moose or humans or hockey players are around, mossies drill into maple trees, siphoning Auntie Jemima’s syrupy profits.) And why am I even thinking of Canada? (Please note: I love Canada--it’s where I’m from when traveling overseas.) Maine is purported to be so rugged and tangled that a single step off the trail could mean never finding your way back to it. (Admittedly, this has a nice ring to it.)

Enough of then! (Is the future a then at all? Are we guaranteed its arrival? If not, what then?) I must concentrate on today, which is now officially, and rather unfortunately, part of the past. It was a good day in that I appeared to have survived it, but this makes it all the more unfortunate it’s over. Who’s to say I’ll survive days ahead? If not, what then? (There I go again, worrying about something that doesn’t exist!)

We’re told the future awaits. But does it? The future, like the “uni”verse itself, is grandly indifferent. It harbors no animalistic emotions, like awaiting or anticipating. The future doesn’t need our hopes and dreams; it doesn’t need us. We aren’t that important. But here we are; there must be some worth in the fact--if only we make it worthwhile. In any event, the future will soon be a thing of the past.

Today began early. I’d hoped to beat the heat. In the east, however, one can only beat the heat by beating it…absconding the area till autumn’s arrival, with its tangerine trees and marmalade skies. All night it remains toasty, mostly because of the air’s moisture content. When water’s warm, it takes time to cool. Those submerged never really do. I am perishing. Losing in a dead heat.

Long, lean and thin-skinned, I’ve always been a bit of a thermophile. But this feels like the inside of a mouth. The heat would’ve been tolerable had there been no humidity. But there was humidity, and lots of it. Humid heat is the hardest of conditions I’ve ever bumped into, though humid cold--like during March of this multi-month march--isn’t entirely pleasant. Still, I don’t think I fully understood the meaning of humidity before I stepped on the AT. This is not thirsty country.

In those golden brown hills back west, where the faithless pray for rain but never bring portable roofs (aka umbrellas), where the trees act as giant sponges, where the deer and the cantaloupe play, and where I took a halfhearted shot at growing up, humidity was only a word we’d heard, like bluegrass or Connecticut or homework. Duds draped to dry in July dried faster than they would in a dryer. Fresh cow dung hardened into ceramic in minutes. We were familiar with heat all right, but mostly just when the annual forest fires breached the back fence. “Kids, it’s closin’ in. Go gather the pets. And this time don’t ferget the condor eggs.”

Here (out east), both heat and cold are more acute. More intense. Except during times of concentrated intensity, like when pushing a poo out, I am not an intense person. I cannot handle intensity (or any other -sity/city) well. The AT is pure ferocity--a pressure cooker. The PCT was a joke, a charmed chain of events, a joyous journey, a ribbon of silk. Worst of all, the PCT was then; only this can be now. Sometimes you just can’t wait for now to be then.

In this clawing wetness my man-bag hangs lower than ever; my knobbly knees play pickleball with them. A thick, sticky layer of smegma forms between each of my protruding ribs. I have too many rashes to count, in places I never knew existed. A rash of mosquito welts sits atop previously-inflicted mosquito welts. DEET has destroyed my pelt, but only after the unspeakable heat and humidity had gotten a hold.

How mosquitoes find hikers magnetizing, I’ll never know. We are rotting flesh and nothing more. It’s no wonder circling vultures, those unloved dino-soars, outnumbered the mosquitoes today. They will eat us hard-boiled.

Conceding to the grim truth it was impossible to combat conditions, I crept through the cauldron, full steam(y) ahead. After all, walking is a major component of the thru-hiking lifestyle. It’s a fetish afoot. The general generalizes, the hiker hikes. For my part the hiker crawls. Bawls. Falls. Gets up, goes again. Convinces himself this is fun! Re-convinces as necessary. Lies to his lonesome as necessary. Whatever it takes. And it takes a lot. Too much to measure.

“There’s always something that needs doing during a thru-hike: walking.”

~Funnybone

The challenge of an AT hike isn’t mostly mental, as some foot soldiers would have you believe. It is mostly physical and mental. Physimental. Mentalical. Ninety percent of it may be mental, but the other ninety percent is physical. They are other factors beside the two, too. But the greater part of the challenge is found in these two considerations. Anyone proclaiming that “the AT is physically easy!” is mostly mental; anyone who proclaims that it’s mentally easy is entirely so. You have been briefed.

The AT means business; bring your briefcase. Mettle detecting continues.  

A steep descent led the day, but the pain was short-lived. Whereas the terrain has grown more and more composed and copacetic, the conditions and the footing have not. As it’s been from Limp One back in Georgia (which now seems like an epoch ago), the hiking poles have helped keep me upright, upholding the advance.

By lunchtime, just after breakfast time, I’d reached Skiff Mountain Road. I anchored myself to the pavement. Like all else, it was hot. I was unaccompanied and bored, so I fulfilled my caloric needs. They’d been avoided; it’s hard to eat in heat. Tastebuds were neglected as normal. It was force-feeding, but energy had been infused. From that point forward, thanks to five of the flattest miles surrounding the Stewart Hollow Brook Shelter, the walking was uncomplicated. I’d been crowding the Housatonic along the fittingly named River Road. A protracted plunge offered some reprieve from all the blistering (heat and feet both), and from the bloodsucking barnacles.

The topography eventually toppled onto its side. I had to deal with a taxing set of ups and downs, geographically and emotionally. On the AT hills and hollows always follow. A couple of rhapsodic Sunday hikers offered a Fanta and a smile near the Silver Hill Campsite, where a swinging bench beckons the beaten. I ingested both--the soda and the smile. (Not the Sunday hikers, though I was hungry enough.) On the AT southern hospitality extends the length of the trail.

Thru-hiker adulation is an anomaly for me. Little such conduct exists on our western trails. But it’s altogether ubiquitous on the AT. I think the longest I’ve gone without receiving some sort of trail generosity has been four days, and only then because I’d sidestepped trailside iceboxes without investigating (for fear I might find a human head inside). Here now I was accosted by the two, a married pair my age, though not nearly as stout smelling. An efflux of questions, all banal but proving prior knowledge, was fired my way...

.....Do you have a trailname?

.....Do you keep an online journal?

.....Where’s home?

.....Northbound or southbound? (This one always piques my curiosity, as if the answer wasn’t obvious enough upon crossing paths, the same path, in the opposite direction.)

.....What’s been your favorite stretch? (A reminder to future hikers: it behooves you to answer this with: “Why here of course!” You’ll be pleasantly surprised what such a small fabrication can do for you.)

.....Least favorite?

.....Toughest part?

Etcetera.

Such celebrity can swell the head. I’ve known thru-hikers who strut more than they walk, women and men both. (And others too.) There is a hiking community of sorts. It’s found, oddly enough, sealed indoors, attached to social platforms, within which these types have built their status. They and their enlarged heads feed upon the praise bestowed unto them, basking in whatever fame and glory they can find. (I know these types well, having been a professional athlete most my adult life.) They’re addicted to attention, but somehow manage to survive the solitude a long trail provides, or can provide, perhaps pairing up with other like-minded (big-headed) lionized individuals. (Wait a few years and these egotistical types either disappear from the “hiking world” or incur battles with those like themselves, those they’d once befriended...an ‘I’ for an ‘I’.) 

Whilst I’m atop this slippery soapbox(1), let me mention the moochers, those who doggedly take full advantage of any such trailway donations, often expecting such bigheartedness. If aid is desired (it is), these types aren’t at all hesitant to solicit it. They’re known to demand it. (Their own behavior, of course, is in no way reciprocal: no how, now way, nowhere.) You’ve probably seen the type hitchhiking: you drive by impenitent, then, in your rearview mirror, you see the guy flipping you the bird. It’s almost always a male, though I’ve seen more and more women awaiting--nay, expectant of--no, make that entitled to--handouts. The AT is a wonderful place for beggars and furtive freeloaders (i.e., yogi-ers). Every year more show up, masquerading as thru-hikers.

Old folks tell us it’s all part of a larger trend. They say my generation (Gen X) (or Generation XXL, though this is a misnomer for those on trail) and younger ones don’t know what it means to work, or know but don’t care; that they, we harbor an insensitive, senseless sense of entitlement. The oldies seem to be right. (Evidence is witnessed on the trail, or parallel to it, where so many alleged thru-hikers avoid the exertion of hiking by doing so with their thumbs, rather than with their legs.) But there’s no such thing as a “generation” or “generation gap”--not in such a hugely populated society; births spill on a continuum--just some sketchy, albeit pervasive, evidence. I figure people are entitled to feeling entitled; it’s their life. I’m just here to enjoy the show, and in the wise words of that sage Bulldog: it don’t affect me none.

The infernal heat and humidity sure do. Today’s average speed hovered near two miles per hour. But whenever I encountered another hill (which was half the time, though not half the time, but rather half the distance/half the topography, since I was half as fast going up as I was going down, which meant more than half the time), progress became feeble. Expenditure expanded exponentially, but northward advance took on a closer resemblance to that of a standstill. The mosquitoes mistook me for a statue, but drilled away anyway. They’re dumb, and I hope they read this. We’ve earned our mosquito survival badges this year. So far.

It was a three-pronged airborne assault all afternoon: molesting mossies, fanged flies, gyrating gnats. All vied for prized pelts. I yelled many times over, as if it’d help. (It did not.) Pests are programmed to know what anger is and what panic is; screaming only encourages more of them to join the fun. “I’m coming up, so you better get this party started,” sang Pink and billions of biting insects.

Near an intersection with the Pine Knob Loop Trail, I doffed the head-net and the bug-proof raingear. I decided to run the rest of the day, quickly enough to outmaneuver the enemy. This lasted a quarter mile. The bouncing backpack rubbed my rash-ridden shoulders raw. The trail is so poorly maintained one cannot outrun a slug, let alone the bugs. I redressed. The head-orbit resumed. “SCREW YOU, YOU MINI MONSTERS!”

Despite walking nineteen and three-quarter miles (and running one-quarter-mile) I’d see only two other thru-hikers, Bismarck and Hopper. A graying male/female duo, they’d each already hiked the AT. Many times before in Bismarck’s case (i.e., troubled dude). They met on the trail and looked to be in their element, unfazed by the bugs. “Isn’t it wonderful out here?!” the bespectacled, long-braided Hopper asked (or quizzed).

“Here?” I rejoined, barely somewhat in jest, constantly swiping at the constant barrage. This place was the worst of both worlds, both worlds being hell.

“Yeah,” she replied. “What say you?”

“Depends what you mean by wonderful. If you mean miserable, yes.”

There was no smile. We didn’t talk long.

Good thing: lightning, hail and heavy rain had just entered by force, forcing us each onward. For once I was completely appreciative for the harsh conditions. The bugs buggered off.

The pests returned when it was time to knock off work at the Sharon Mountain Campsite. I dove into my sweat lodge, headlong, longing to be headstrong. No fine dining, no nothing. No one else was in the area--no Bismarck, no Hopper. I wondered about everyone I’d met so far on this hike--where they were; how they were doing; whether the mosquitoes were driving them demented, or if they had their feet up in a ritzy hotel room; how far up or down trail they were; or whether they were still on the trail. I missed them all: Klutz, Goat, Gator, Backstreet, Bulldog, The Emperor, Fatty, Puddin,’ Paddycakes, Spanky, Sleeping Beauty, M-80, Trooper, Don’s Brother, Molar Man, Dino DNA. (I think of Dino DNA and my own DNA--a forensic footpath following me in these humps--hair, nail clippings, skin, sweat, spit, piss, poop, pimple pus, blood. The rain will wash it all away, until little evidence of my AT experience exists. Thus this recording.)

Mostly though, I miss Tumbleweed.

Goddamn groin.

"Foot"note 1: It must be pointed out that there's no soap in this soapbox, for hikers are suspicious of soap.