A Limp in the Woods (Day 111)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 111: Saturday, July 13th, 2013

Upper Goose Pond to Kay Wood Shelter = 18 miles
Miles to date: 1,563

Free Food!

Today’s press report is sponsored by the color green. Green, you know what I mean.

Guilt and a certain French-talking trailmate spurred me on to a larger-than-average day, at least concerning distance done. I fear all else was average, for I kept seeing green. A déjà view. Land colored by the surplus of water. This wretched tunnel, dark as a tomb! 

On the Appalachian Trail nightmares come in color, but only in green! Fifty shades of green! The grass is always greener, but only on this side of the fence. Green skies at night! Green Bay! Green Day! Song sung green! Mean Joe Green. Green without envy! Eat your greens! Green eggs and ham! Soylent green! Fried green tomatoes! Or, if I might pilfer a pithy phrase from Henry Ford, the original environmental exterminator: “On the AT you can have any color you want, so long as it’s green!”

 Of all that I glean
...most has been green
Of all that I’ve seen
...most has been green
Of the places I’ve been
...most have been green
Oh the entire scene
...has been green

Just as trees despise dogs, we’re beginning to predicate malice toward trees. They remind us of the sea: the view under the surface might be fantastic, but to live we need to come up for air. 

We’re also beginning to think that maybe deforestation ain’t such a bad thing. Trail maintainers should start xeriscaping this loden landscape! Oops, I mean zero-scaping.

A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?
~Ronald Reagan

“On the AT every day is Arbor Day.”
~Funnybone

Screw it. Green implies growth (gangrene notwithstanding). My average daily mileage to this point has been a satisfactory fourteen miles (almost a hundred miles a week), but today I hopscotched eighteen miles, or nearly thirty percent farther. Growth!

I know this complex equation thanks to my little tablet device and its built-in calculator. The high-tech unit has bling aplenty: a camera; a video camera; videos (no comment); “e”books(1); a dictionary (the nerd’s bible); a thesaurus (so I can utilize unnecessarily sophisticated words and sound perspicacious); a transistor radio; a flashlight; a cuckoo clock; a DAW; a belt sander; a vibrator; a walk-in freezer; and gaggles of games and maps and apps. It’s not a phone, but it is amazing. To think I was once agog about Pong!


Nowadays I don’t get excited about much, outside of what’s outside. Outside of cities and towns. Outside of those unsettling places where humanoids settle. Those sprawling, staid, vapid, mannered, artificial death traps filled with imaginary necessities. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll settle for something--somewhere--else. Or else quiet desperation will turn loud.

Living the Dream
Anyway. The compunction of course was brought on by the anticipated hangover, which was brought on by last night’s horseplay, which was brought on unexpectedly. I am weak. Too weak to say nay/neigh to horseplay; too weak to handle having said yes. A small vomit--green, naturally--doesn’t do a thing to allay. My headache pounds harder than Bearbell’s chafing stumps. Aside from these earthquakes, he and I walked mostly in silence, since he too was enduring his own brown bottle flu. Or maybe he wasn’t. He may have been laboring because of his huge pack, big as the mountains themselves.

I’m perennially stupefied at the weight of so many hikers’ packs. This far in and I still see fifty-pound payloads on those who should know better, those one-time greenies who’ve been out for months. (Key takeaway: they’re still out here.) Fifty pounds of lightweight gear is not light! They say you can’t take it with you, but on the AT, many do. These four-year froshes lug their many wants, maybe their many fears. Precisely what, I can’t fathom. Anvils, belt sanders, bowling balls? Pickled watermelons? Who knows? Who cares! Bearbell’ll learn. Or he won’t. It’s none of my beeswax, which is why I buzz ‘bout it. 

I’ll bet these load movers would be motivated to ditch the pack weight if that weight were to go directly to somebody else’s backpack, someone they hate. Weigh your options, Bearbell. Weigh ‘em carefully.

Midway into the later part of the day, long after we’d dropped trouser and mooned the never-ending automobile traffic from I-90’s overpass, we caught Coolie McJetPack. He’d had an earlier start from Goose Poop Pond. (We had to do domestic tasks to earn the breakfast the cabin’s caretaker doles out. The coffee alone was worth our dish-washing efforts; given enough of the stuff I could rule the world.) The three of us walked an hour when we reached the legendary Cookie Lady’s place. We were presented with a Jenga stack of freshly-baked cookies and a dozen boiled eggs. It may not sound like much, but to the hiker it’s a five-star restaurant. Sugar, salt, protein, and a place to sit. 

When the Cookie Lady’s husband told us to help ourselves to their two-acre plot of blueberries, we just about pooped our pants. Or we would later, anyhow. The retired couple lives within a berry’s throw of the trail and have helped hikers for a decade. It’s folks like the ‘Cookies’ who lay testament to the notion that the AT is so much more than a footpath. Benton MacKaye originally foresaw a chain of interconnected trail communities and that’s what he got: one long one. The AT doesn’t just connect two isolated mountains. Throughout its length it connects people--to Nature and to one another.

~~~~~~~~~~

<--Margin to the left. Marginally related insertion to the right.-->

An old letter to or from an old friend...

“First plant a deeply seated motivation into someone’s soul; the call of the wild, the desire to fulfill a lofty, difficult goal that is far from easy or ordinary. Remove them from the work-a-day world, not just for a brief vacation but for a sustained period of time. Remove schedules, appointments, household responsibilities, automobiles, the demands of work, and the ordinary daily stresses we all experience. Remove the cacophony of soundbites we’re bombarded with from countless sources, and the painful witness of the tragedy that exists throughout the world.

Place them in the wonder and awesomeness of nature -- make them see it, smell it, wear it, become it. Make them suffer physical hardships, exalt in overcoming challenges. Humble them with towering mountains and sear their souls with burning deserts. Give them limitless time to think -- alone, deeply, and without distraction. Let them experience the bond of camaraderie with those who have also struggled and persisted. And what you get is the soul of a person, down to its core, without pretenses, accepting and appreciative beyond measure for things that were never even given consideration in the lives they lived before -- clean clear water, a soft flat spot to lay down, the inexplicable spontaneous kindness of strangers. This is clearly an altered state of being that cannot be replicated any other way.

To me the trail is more than just the people to hike it, or a physical structure that crosses the landscape. It is a living miracle -- the concept of freedom of the body and the spirit, the refuge from civilization. The miracle of it is that so many people, in different ways and through different means, have come together to make this concept possible. It isn’t done by government mandate -- it isn’t something that any of us have to do. But we’re drawn to this larger and important concept -- whether it is to swing a Pulaski and toss brush, lobby Congress, give a hiker a spot to rest, or find the time in one’s life to get out there and experience the miracle in their own way -- fast or slow, bohemian or engineered in method or style, and everything that fits in between. That someone dreamed it, others create it, and so many have voluntarily come together to love it, is a miracle...”

~~~~~~~~~~

Coolie, Bearbell and I ingested more berries atop the false crest of Warren Peak and again near the amorphous top of Tully Mountain. Then again beneath a massive set of powerlines (in their natural habitat). Blueberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, Asian wineberries. Foraging like primates. Modernized mandrills, we’d astutely discovered that the clearings below the powerlines always made for the best berry-picking. Only on the odd occasion did we drift by without further investigation. 

“‘Free food’…two-thirds of my favorite four-lettered F words,” I told my fellow hunter-gatherers.
“But do ya think if we were to hang out here too long the powerlines might affect us?” Coolie asked.
“How du you meanz?” Bearbell asked. His face was stained with purple berry juice. It’d take days to wear off.
“Ya know, maybe do some damage to our brains.”
“Brains? Damage?” I repeated, between handfuls.
“Yeah, damage.”
“I thinkz we’re okay,” Bearbell answered. “Who knowz? In Funnyboner’z case it mightz even helpz.”
“And anyway, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff,” I proclaimed. “How the hell, why the hell, hikers ahead have missed this is beyond me. Fools, every one of ‘em! FREE FOOD!”

The day had drained and the three of us wouldn’t make it much farther along, stopping for the night at the spacious Kay Wood Shelter. The shelter had a laddered loft and various elaborate mouse deterrents, the primary ones being hooks hanging on strings, with tuna cans midway down the strings(2). I guess the local mice prefer hiker food over berries.

We enjoyed the amenities and kept busy by shooting the shit, repeatedly stopping to take shits in the shelter’s privy. Some joker had placed a paper SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION banner over the seat. It’d been a relatively easy day: flat and smooth, with few ripples. But here now we had our toughest hardship ahead of us. What to do when you’ve buried too many berries?

“FREE FOOD!--” I yelled on yet another tour of duty to the green latrine, “--ALWAYS comes at a cost.”

PS: A note to future hikers. (I am speaking words of wisdom.) If your headlamp ever springs off your head and into a steamy composting privy, it is best not to agonize over its biodegradability. Simply let it be. Tonight I write by firelight.

"Foot"note 1: Books with the letter 'e' in them.

"Flip"note 2: As I learned when I'd camped with Spacey in the Byrd's Nest #3 Hut in Shenandoah, mice are industrious creatures. Crafty, cunning, cagey. Recall: he and I watched one climb a fifteen-foot METAL pole! So it comes as no surprise mice can make their way down some paracord. But an empty can secured midway down the string acts to flip any would-be thieves into an airborne state, an action even the boldest of rodents aren't fond of. Puncture a hole at the can's bottom; tie a knot halfway down the cord; slide the can down ‘til it sits atop the knot; hang the cord via rafter; hang your food-bag or pack at cord's bottom; voila!


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