An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 107: Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
Brassie Brook Shelter to US Hwy 7 (Massachusetts) = 17-ish miles
Miles to date: 1,518
Day 107: Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
Brassie Brook Shelter to US Hwy 7 (Massachusetts) = 17-ish miles
Miles to date: 1,518
Rain, then Rainbows
Soon after starting this morning, Bearbell(1) and I scaled Bear Peak, Connecticut’s high point. Or its highest peak, anyway. It was the first time in more than four hundred miles we gypsies have exceeded two thousand feet elevation. The last time we had we were near the AT’s midsection, where Bearbell began his hike, and when conditions weren’t quite so inhumane. Today’s extra altitude did little to refrigerate us. But there was no rain or lightning and for that we were delighted. A fine day for a field-trip.
“Ya know it’s called Bear Peak for a reason,” I told my latest trail mate, as we skirted a tree obliterated by lightning. The fire-bolt had peeled the tree’s ligneous hide clean off. The damage looked, ahem, current. We could safely assume it happened during yestreen’s electrical firestorm. Safely, because there was no threat of getting zapped today. I went on: “The beasts clog this part of the trail, like backed-up sewage. Hikers have been MAULED TO DEATH near here, in a series of gruesome attacks. So they renamed the mountain. It had been called ‘Peaceful Peak’ up to that point--”
“You are real funny, Funny-bonerz,” Bearbell interrupted, filing closely behind. He kept clipping my heels and I could feel his breath.
To counter the encroachment I alternated between speeding up or stopping. He’d respond by speeding up or by passing up passing. (Some people walk best under threat; some walk only under threat. Bearbell believes bears are a threat.) I hold a special sort of hate for tailgaters, so I resorted to a few inadvertent-looking, backward-facing flicks of my poles. This pushed him back some. The poor guy is truly terrified of Ursa and Ursula, but my user manual clearly states that I require room when rambling. We’d known each other twenty-four hours and were already on one another’s nerves. I began hoping a bear would intercede.
We spoke of the female creatures at length, and of our troubled pasts. We even listened a little. I assured him at his age, if he could just keep working to get his act together, and then do so, he’d meet someone he loved, and maybe even someone who loved him. “Life ain’t about discovering who you are, homey. It’s about creating who you are…you’ve got to create the Bearbell you want to be,” I sermonized, in the midst of spewing a ton more tripe. (Hikers have the time to ramble.) “Start loving yourself, so someone else can.”
“At my age there’s not much point. Most the remnants have been discarded for a reason. Not so much spoiled as overripe.”
“You haz tu hold out hope,” he said, in that smoothly thick accent of his. “Otherwize, what iz za point of zis life?”
“Hope’s a heinous strategy,” I responded.
“Anus strategy?” Bearbell joked.
“Yes, asinine. For years I’d been over-reliant on hope, but it always let me down. I no longer trust the stuff. I hold some hope, just not closely. I don’t see me meeting a forty-something year-old wander-woman who enjoys the low-budget travel I enjoy so much.”
“Anus strategy?” Bearbell joked.
“Yes, asinine. For years I’d been over-reliant on hope, but it always let me down. I no longer trust the stuff. I hold some hope, just not closely. I don’t see me meeting a forty-something year-old wander-woman who enjoys the low-budget travel I enjoy so much.”
“Zen you should shoot for a younger one. Funny-bonez, I zought you were closer tu my age. Maybe wander-woman will tu. But it iz hard tu tell with that fur covering your face. You sure act young, anywayz.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“The thing is I could never figure out what love meant, or what it is, exactly. I always thought I’d know it when I felt it--that it would knock me conscious. But so far, no. Maybe always no; I worry that I’d grow tired of the same woman, no matter who she is or how great she is, that is if she didn’t grow tired of me first.”
“The thing is I could never figure out what love meant, or what it is, exactly. I always thought I’d know it when I felt it--that it would knock me conscious. But so far, no. Maybe always no; I worry that I’d grow tired of the same woman, no matter who she is or how great she is, that is if she didn’t grow tired of me first.”
It was a glorious day, breezy enough to brush the airborne bugs away. “Fine,” English meteorologists would say. And in fine company. It’s day-by-day on the trail, and when a bad day strikes, you know its venom will only do lasting harm if you let it. Every sunrise signals a new beginning. Yesterday’s obstacles and complications are behind us, mere memories stored for later use. (Or discarded forever; recycling time does not work. Once it’s tossed, it’s tossed, whether carelessly or carefully.) Bearbell and I remind ourselves that here now, this is what we want to do. And nothing more.
Reminiscing what you’re missing
Wishing your wishbone were a backbone
Walk away from it all. Walk away from it all!
Whether together, or alone
Each new day is the chance to start over--and repeat the same things! I’ve said it before, but time on the trail definitely recycles itself. We walk. We talk. We worry. We hurry. We slow down. We swat mosquitoes. The sun sets. The sun rises. It sets again. Then we die. Forever.
Yet neither of us crave anything except the repetitive nature of Nature. In our daily lives “back home” (we’re both without a home, or at least without a taxable piece of property), any such repetitiveness suggests a slow slaying of the soul. Out here, repetition it’s precisely what’s craved--what we require. Weird, that. We march to the beat of a different humdrum. Slowly, but unsurely.
I once wrote in an old journal that I hike to escape routine--that day-to-day decay of one’s spirit--when in fact trail life is all about routine. Every day. New beginnings or not. The difference, I’ve come to learn, is that although routine is often prompted and measured by our humanistic yearning for comfort and security, along with some good old-fashioned complacency, trail routine is rarely as consistently comfortable or complacent as life away from the trail(2). But ultimately it’s not about daily routine. It’s not even about days.
It’s about moments.
I once wrote in an old journal that I hike to escape routine--that day-to-day decay of one’s spirit--when in fact trail life is all about routine. Every day. New beginnings or not. The difference, I’ve come to learn, is that although routine is often prompted and measured by our humanistic yearning for comfort and security, along with some good old-fashioned complacency, trail routine is rarely as consistently comfortable or complacent as life away from the trail(2). But ultimately it’s not about daily routine. It’s not even about days.
It’s about moments.
...and perhaps not so much about seizing them, as the gung-ho types might proclaim we ought, but about allowing the moments to seize us.
By lunch number one, we’d departed Connecticut and entered Massachusetts. Eleven-fourteenths of the way there, I congratulated myself. I tried to figure out the percentage accomplished, but gave up.
We’d each worn out our vocal cords, but thoughts continued to race as we worked our way up Mount Race. I could tell the former because we were, for once, mute. A rarity! The next hour would pass peacefully, even in the face of an unreasonably steep clamber over Mount Everett (note: not Everest). More hours passed. Clouds too. Rain, then rainbows. Mosquitoes returned and flourished when we dropped into ravines and thicker woodlands--they’d lurk behind a bush, before an ambush--but views and relief abounded each time we climbed. Breaks were timed so that they occurred high, where the sun and wind pushed the pests away. Only the dumbest of hikers can’t figure such a routine out. Not surprisingly, it took me more than a thousand miles.
By tired o’clock Bearbell holed up at a nearby hostel. It was owned by a guy--or gal--named Jess Treat. (We weren’t sure of Jess’s gender, but we assumed Jess knew.) I bedded down beside a noisy frog pond. It was behind another garden center along another highway, this time one built by the feds, US Highway 7. I did this partly to save bucks and partly to see if it might help me get an early start tomorrow. (Early starts from hostels or hotels are hard--I paid for the bed; I’m taking full advantage of it.) Ignoring what I’d said to Bearbell earlier--that hope is a horrible strategy--I’m still hoping I might catch TK and crew.
Harboring
Only
Positive
Expectations
Never mind that in Shakespeare’s day hope was known as esperance, now an obsolete word.
Never mind that in Shakespeare’s day hope was known as esperance, now an obsolete word.
"Foot"note 1: Bearbell's real name, the one he uses in real life (such as we call it), is Nicholas Sirot, which can be rearranged to spell 'Sir Nacho Toils' or 'No Social Shirt' or 'I Nostril Chaos' or 'Chariot in Loss' or 'Historical Son.' But to protect his true identity, albeit a French one, I shouldn't disclose his name. Instead I'll call him Jacques Martineau, which sounds rearranged enough as it is.
"Foot"note 2: Though not for everyone. The trail accepts ALL applicants and some who come do so from situations far worse than what the mountains can bequeath. And that is why they come. Terra-py.
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