A Limp in the Woods (Day 125)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 125: Saturday, July 27th, 2013
The Lookout Cabin & Tower to Highway 12 = 6 miles
Miles to date: 1,721

Partial Zero

In yesterday’s blurb, that anemic excuse of a day’s distillation, I made mention of Leave No Trace (LNT), Inc®. After scribbling that pithy mess, I ruminated on the non-profit (non-prophet) organization. Based in my former crib of Boulder, where afternoon shadows arrive early, its employees drive automobiles that spew noxious exhaust, indeed leaving a trace, if not more than a trace. They’re even sponsored by Subaru, who advertises the supplied Crosstrek SUV as an “Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle.”

Partial Zero? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What the---?! Yeah, and before I was born my mom was partially pregnant…

“Up to 26 MPG in the city!” Spewbaru boasts, as if that’s exceptional.

One is forced to wonder: if the Crosstrek emits only partially, why then does it have TWO exhaust pipes?

I’m forced to wonder: how’d a species which prides itself for being an apex creature get to be so stupid?

Money and politics, of course. The “Partial Zero” category was created as part of a bargaining agreement so that the auto manufacturers could postpone production of mandated zero emission vehicles sine die, which will require the production of electric vehicles or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, requiring big bucks and big change.

Bad alignment, LNT.

A bike or pogo-stick sponsorship would make more sense, you unhip hypocrites. Worse still, the dual-exhaust-pipe gas-guzzlers are painted from bumper to bumper. The last time I painted something I kept thinking how unwise I was for not wearing a respiratory mask and skin and eye protection; those fumes are nasty! And that was just to spray-paint RESISTANCE next to a clump of weeds (as humans call ‘em) coming up through a sidewalk crack. It’s easy to deduce that the paint LNT uses has also left more than a trace and is no better on the environment. You’d have to ask the underpaid laborers doing the painting.

Moreover, LNT’s communique is failing, if it ain’t already partially dead. It’s evident to anyone who’s been hiking a while--there’s a bigger trace of others than ever. Doggy bags line trails, as does toilet paper, candy and gum wrappers, bottle caps, cigarette butts, aluminum cans, tin foil, discarded batteries, and so forth. Where trail access is made easy, litter abounds. This, despite the elaborate signs (themselves a trace) LNT posts at so many burgeoning trailheads.

That’s just the visible material waste. Just as observable, though perhaps not as unnatural, cow and horses and other non-native North American species leave their spoor of residue. Malodorous, palpable trace. Countless rocks have been rearranged to form cairns and fire rings--aka miniature trash receptacles--while sticks (“bio-mass!”) are well-nigh impossible to find anywhere near a fire ring. Trees show evidence of broken branches where ground-bound sticks cannot be found. Initials are carved into trees (‘NOMAD WAS HERE 2!’) and benches and bridges and fences and shelters and signs have been placed wherever humans see fit or seem to require them.

Less visible vestiges also exist. Some, the most damaging. Generator (and automobile) exhaust. Soap remnants. Plasticides. Heck, who knows how many hikers hop in creeks, ponds or lakes whilst coated in DEET or sunscreen or deodorant! Or how many wash their pots and pans with ‘biodegradable’ soap (warning: do not get in eyes!). I feel for fishies. And what about dogs left off-leash, who chase down every creature foreign to their housebroken blood? Is this leaving a trace? We’d have to ask the wildlife, I reckon.

Here’s an idea, LNT, Inc: How about a faction of your company dedicate itself to erasing a trace? Call it Erase a Trace® or EaT®. The acronym alone would arouse hikers’ attention. Rather than fret over securing more sponsors, find volunteers to go clean the messes we create. “But!” you say, “it’s not our mess!” And so we walk by litter and pretend to be disgusted, yet do nothing to clean (or organize!) it.

That’s no better than littering. Worse, because we know littering to be wrong. The litterbug may not know, or he or she may have dropped the trash unintentionally. “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul,” said the man soon mentioned. It seems everyone is only angry enough to complain.

But I don’t give a rat’s anus. As per one of my teachers, the iconic iconoclast E.P.A. (Edward Paul Abbey), I willfully and subversively toss garbage anywhere man has altered or destroyed the original human-free environment: city streets, highways, schools, reservoirs, canals, courthouses, churches, neighborhoods, shelter fire rings…themselves all litter and, well, the real desecration. The candy wrapper on the city street isn’t litter; the street is, and the city is. Organized litter, but litter just the same.

I am filled with laughter and loathing with the term landfill. It shows our choice to turn a blind eye, as if the land needs filling. The façade of order and cleanliness only masks the real mess, and the real impact. It isn’t a landfill; it’s a dump. 

Throwing a wrapper on the ground, be it in the natural environment or the city or in a sanitary landfill, is nowhere near as dirty and trace-leaving as manufacturing and transporting that wrapper. If you drive, you litter. And if you haven’t heard, exhaust--lethal fumes--is leaving a big trace(1). If you’re alive, you litter. We all Pitch In! We’re not part of the problem; we’re the whole problem. A wrecking crew. A collective reckless wreck.

Leave No Trace®, my ass(2). Nice theory, but it’s what contemporary humans do, along with the generations before us. The planet’s most superior life-form!

“Why is it, if man has such a remarkable intelligence, he has been unable to avoid an almost continuous acceleration of the process of self-destruction? Why, if he is the most advanced of beings, has he become a threat to the survival of all life on earth?”
~Farley Mowat

Thankfully, once scoured free from we parasitic people-pests, Earth will begin to erase our trace. That’s Her formula. She’ll melt our massive middens, knock down our dams, rip up our roads, crumble our architectural wonders, dissolve our every device, and vaporize the manmade mess and its after-effects. Swallow our fabricated filth whole. And in Her own sweet time She cannot fail in doing so--good news!--as She’s constantly going through Her own growing pains.

Soon after the expunging processes, the planet will begin to restock all its stores, in one wonderful form or another. We can hope that subsequent life forms will be superior to today’s highest, most advanced, intelligent forms. They may look back at we former forms and form their own thoughts on us.

To all you NIMBYs: see Carlin’s ‘Save the Planet’ to widen your myopia. Pledge allegiance to one another, not just to your backyard!

Whew. I best breathe and get on to today’s events. 

There were none. No, really. Our nature walk was a feeble six miles. In other words, a partial zero. A nero. But by afternoon, things began to happen.

Some of our terrain of late; long-legged ladders and all

It was Chickadee’s twenty-first birthday. She was adamant she was to celebrate it “with a pink drink.” (And so she should! We only turn twenty-one once or twice.) She told me she didn’t want a surprise birthday party since her birthday was no surprise to her; she knew it was today. A slapstick chick, her. I assured her we would mark the occasion in some manner, even if it meant her having to have some reeky hirsute middle-aged retread hovering nearby. “I want you there,” she replied. “Oh, I didn’t mean me,” I slapsticked back.

When I first met the chaste (and chased) chick, I figured her a plain brown wrapper, with all the personality of a garden-variety mannequin. But the more we’ve been together, the more I’ve come to appreciate--nay--enjoy her company. She’s just quiet until friendship is established.

She and I ended our short hike at a small trailhead in the vicinity of a parish called Woodstock, on a vacant State Highway 12. A quaint, well-appointed wooden store sat a hundred yards away, the On the Edge Farm-stand, where pie and ice cream and all other desirable caloric forms were served...and deserved. That alone would lay waste to a few hours of our time. Time well spent.

When PaddyCakes, Puddin’ and Spanky arrived, another chunk of the clock was slayed. More time well spent. I hadn’t seen the bunch for months and we laughed like vintage times. I asked about Fatty and Sleeping Beauty. “Fatty is way up trail,” Puddin’ said, “And Sleeping Beauty contracted Lyme Disease, the poor guy.” One of my biggest fears realized. The poor guy indeed.

Once our pies and ice cream were gone, so were we. Chickadee and I made our way down the tranquil road to a nearby house. There we met up with Tugboat once more. The house’s bill-payer offered a work-for-stay: hikers trade labor for a spot in his unkempt barn. Like the barn, his house was huge and roomy, but only a few fortunate hikers were allowed inside, all of whom, we noticed, happened to be female. The lady killer.

I told the homeowner it was Chickadee’s twenty-first, but he seemed indifferent; he never invited her in. Maybe because his twenty-first was no longer a memory. Maybe he didn’t like us. Maybe he didn’t like her tattoos. Maybe he didn’t like me. Maybe we didn’t care.

Eventually, though, the homeowner, whose name I forgot, because I didn’t care enough to hear it--Dan perhaps--carted a whole herd of us in the topless back of his pick-up, into nearby Barnard. Barnard is a petite, wonderfully relaxed town. The bulk of the group was made up of SOBO males, a few of whom buddied up to me to garner the 411 on Chickadee. (I told ‘em she’s my daughter, sending ‘em straight into evacuation.) Since it was toasty, most everyone jumped in the lake lining town, but I sat back at the general store and stored some more ice cream. One can never eat too much ice cream on a thru-hike.

After the excursion Chickadee called Shepherd, a lanky, kilt-wearing twenty year-old who’d been hike-driving/drive-hiking the AT, but was fully immersed in taking photos along the way. Incredible ones at that. The two met earlier on their respective journeys.

I asked him about the skirt, but he skirted the question.

Shepherd shepherded Chickadee, Tugboat and me to the Inn at Long Trail, specifically McGrath’s Irish Pub. The tavern was sandwiched beneath the inn, and there the four of us could properly commemorate her birthday, and life itself. We each made it this far, after all. 

I made sure Chickadee didn’t pull out her Zip-Loc baggie (aka hiker wallet). Luckily, she and I were both cheap drunks. She had her pink drink. I had an amber one, a Long Trail Ale, in honor of the Long Trail itself. We each had enough, and almost too much.

A one-man act took to the stage and entertained the crowd with his guitar and his wit. He had the lot of us, about thirty-five besotted patrons, sing along and attempt to learn some Irish tunes on this nippy Saturday night. When he began to play the Pogues’ Sally Maclennane I could not but sally and sing along, even though the mob tried to disabuse me of the notion...

…I’m sad to say
I must be on me way
So buy me beer and whiskey
‘Cause I’m going far away…

The lyrics were appropriate and poignant, but much to the crowd’s chagrin, I would not adhere to that last line. No, for once, I stayed put.

"Foot"note 1: Fact: A hundred and one years ago a boat named Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk; today the nearest iceberg to that site is more than a thousand miles north. And sadly, the issues we face today are just the tip of the iceberg. Things are heating up!

"Foot"note 2: My ass, like every other human ass, leaves a HUGE trace. More than a trace, more like a trail.