A Limp in the Woods (Day 140)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 140: Sunday, August 11th, 2013
Gentian Pond Shelter area to the Full Goose Shelter platforms = 10 miles
Miles to date: 1,909

The Maine Event 
(or To Go Out in Style)

My body is rundown; here’s a bodily rundown:

     The toenails: missing in action
The teeth: rotting, as per usual
     The knees: bony as ever
The wrinkles: forming faster than ever
     The back: curved as ever
The beard: pronounced, at last
     The Shins: a decent band(1)
The penis: socially inactive, as ever
     The ear canals: hairier by the day
Arms: I have the right to bear arms, but why lug a pair?
     The eyes: delighted more each day
The feet: swell. Not swell as in well; swell as in swelling. A full size larger. AT hikers don’t talk of Bigfoot much, but they do speak of big feet.

Parenthetically, my buddy Iron Chef--Matt Geis to the rest of the world, if only the rest of the world were fortunate enough to know him--once posited that this increase in foot size begs a question. If large feet suggest other anatomical largeness, does foot-swell imply swelling elsewhere? Does a man’s purple rhino grow proportionately? The answer, at least in my case, is no...

The purple rhino

I know

Is deemed no threat

The purple rhino 

I know 

Is my personal pet

Moving on.

Of this partial inventory, I’m most tickled by the beard. Figuratively and literally. A man should assemble a beard. And he should own it, ala Abbey or al-Qaeda! Down the neck, creeping toward the eyes, wider than the rest of his skull, uncombed and owned. None of this tailored twaddle! Think Whitman...

I’m least satisfied, as revealed, with my penis. But that’s an old story that goes deep. Except that it doesn’t go so deep. Oh, well, never mind. In life we must deal with the hand we are dealt. I do so with my right. One hand working does more than a million hands in prayer.

As it was yesterday and all but for a handful or two before it, today embarked with a walk. I was miles from tomorrow. There was no aim to get anywhere in specific, just away from where I was and, if possible, somewhere new. Ideally somewhere new and improved, but new would do too; rarely do I fall for that new and improved BS. I knew I would accomplish the latter goal within a few long steps, but I decided to keep going, to see--if I dare rephrase that famed Waldenian transcendental hygienist--what I might see.

What I might see was not readily apparent, at least initially. Another carpet fog smothered them thar hills, but it’d fizzle out and burn off, right about the time I began to fizzle off and burn out. No matter, it was becoming a Kodachrome day, if for viewing pleasure only, and no amount of fatigue could stop it.

I, of course, did not possess NO amount of fatigue. No, I contained a mounting amount of the stuff. And although it still didn’t stop the day, it did stop me. A longer-than-normal lunch break--longer than my normally long one--did little to alleviate. (Aging knows no assuaging; fatigue never sleeps.) I was atop a windy peak called Mount Success, a toponym I found fond, and I debated whether to take up permanent residence there...maybe fool a few folk that indeed I have it made, for I have made it. A stretched-out horizon, a nearby supply of firewood, a flat spot for my tent, frequent company, and I’d have my own modern day Walden going. Not a bad way to live, then or now. True success.

But my feet would wind up winding up and before long I was elsewhere, walking through a gully of sludge (there is no thirsty dirt on the AT) and atop spongy moss and slippery roots and rocks. The scenery stretched in front of me like a relief map, and I figured it might offer some relief to see it while I could. One never knows when our forests and prairies and deserts and muddy mountains are going to disappear before our eyes. With a government like the US’s--that fiendish, self-serving, criminal kakistocracy--I figure it’ll occur sooner rather than later, so it’s important to get out while you can. Not necessarily out of the US--though I’m not opposed to that idea: you leaving--but out among the trees, the dirt, the sand, the canyons, the hills, before they become stumps and pavement and fracked tar sands and dammed (damned) reservoirs and mines. “Now or never,” said that same transcendental hygienist. And since never can never exist, now’s the time.

     It always is.

Time, like the wildlife and the lands and bodies of water they inhabit, is irreplaceable. There is no second Nature; there is no second time.

After a second lunch I caught and leap-frogged Easy E. It was weird to think I first met him back in Headlock, TN or some such; here we were again so may miles farther on. A thru-hiker might start the same damn day as another, only to hike the whole trail without crossing paths but once or twice, before reaching trail’s terminus on the same damn day. I did this with a young homeschooled kid named Brent Lennox during my first long thru-hike back in 2002, along the wonderfully wondrous Pacific Crest Trail (read: trial by flame-thrower, though much easier than the AT). He and I only saw each other one other time, outside of those first and final days.

I wouldn’t see Easy E again until late day; by then I’d caught Captain Planet and a smiling Hangman. I’d say Hangman had a shit-eating grin, but no one in his or her right mind eats shit and grins. Anyway, I hadn’t been traveling swiftly; the two were moving slower than my slow. The scene was reminiscent of a turtle catching a pair of snails. We were negotiating a series of vertical metal ladders bolted into various rocks, stepping down them with all the focus of brain surgeons.

We were also encroaching upon our fourteenth and final state, that single-syllabled one rhyming with PAIN, the only single-syllable state not just along the Appalachian Trail, but in the entire union--apart from ‘North-Car-o-li-na’ of course. Reason to celebrate, no doubt. Thirteen states in the rear-view mirror, one to go--albeit a protracted one. The final frontier. The bell lap. The Maine event. Two hundred and eighty-one miles, according to the sign, making it the trail’s third longest state, after Virginia and the ever-present State of Fatigue. (Maine may be the journey’s last leg, but I am on my last legs!) 

All I knew about Maine prior to this trip is about all I know now: Stephen King. L.L. Bean. Lobster (I’ve not seen any yet). Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine (the name gives it away). Hermits. Acadia National Park. Portland. Bangor (because the unique name). The official state “flower” (the pine cone, I kid not). The Maine Woods by Thoreau. Ktaadn.

It’s a given I was hoping to learn more.

We stopped to take the usual pictures, and to try to picture all that we’d seen to this point. A little of everything, and then some. Or it seemed that way anyway. Nineteen hundred miles on foot and you don’t miss much. Nor do you miss much of what the trail doesn’t provide.

“Welcome to Maine!” said Hangman, as he used the state sign to stretch his hairy, log-like legs--legs like kegs.

And what a welcome! There were sturdy wooden planks placed atop the boggy mess and a threat-free, fret-free sky overhead. The vermilion carpet rolls on.

Late afternoon knocked, earlier than usual it seemed. It knocked only once, not unlike opportunity. In response, we took the opportunity to establish residency on top of some wooden tent platforms near the Full Goose Shelter. Cowboy camping, once more. A stelliferous sky and slow-dancing treetops for a ceiling. After a mostly quiet loner type of day I was surprised to find ten others here, a fifty percent mix of SOBOs and NOBOs. The SOBOs were excited for “flatter terrain ahead,” while we were pleased to have reached the homestretch. We were warned what lay ahead. “Hardship, much hardship,” one withdrawn guy sighed. He looked to be suffering from PTSD.

It would appear that none of us were satisfied. But we were. Oh, how we were. I mean, where else would we want to be? Where else would you want to be?

"Foot"note 1: But I like THIS ONE better...