An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 143: Wednesday, August 14th, 2013
Andover to Bemis Mountain Lean-to = 19 miles
Miles to date: 1,948
Yesterday’s more complete plod/plot included the hitchhike into Andover. Five of us refugees--Ice T, Crush, Hangman, Captain Planet, myself--made it there in the rear end of a rear-ended pick-up. No other vehicle specimen would pick us up, so we tallied our blessings. The truck was a heap but was topped with a tip-top topper, so we felt especially fortuitous.
In town I raced from roof to roof, first dropping by the Andover General Store. It’s called a general store, because everything in it is overpriced, generally. A convenience store with inconvenient prices. Having learned this, I crossed the street to the Mills Market, which was also a generally overpriced general store. Andover-priced. Bend-over priced. I knew better and spent lightly by way of a byzantine tactic learned long ago--buying lightly.
The hope is that the few things I gathered--including a box of hard candy and a box of even harder raisins--will be ample in getting me to the next dot on the map. It’s seventy miles on. If not, I’ll eat one of my more useless body parts. (No, not the penis--I’d starve.) A spindly arm will have to suffice. But only one! The ATer must have at least one working upper limb.
After the scrimping, I visited the library for a digital binge. Formerly a church, it is the most adorable library on the entire trail. It’s a good thing when libraries replace churches, even if they too offer fiction.
Day 143: Wednesday, August 14th, 2013
Andover to Bemis Mountain Lean-to = 19 miles
Miles to date: 1,948
A Long Song
Yesterday’s more complete plod/plot included the hitchhike into Andover. Five of us refugees--Ice T, Crush, Hangman, Captain Planet, myself--made it there in the rear end of a rear-ended pick-up. No other vehicle specimen would pick us up, so we tallied our blessings. The truck was a heap but was topped with a tip-top topper, so we felt especially fortuitous.
In town I raced from roof to roof, first dropping by the Andover General Store. It’s called a general store, because everything in it is overpriced, generally. A convenience store with inconvenient prices. Having learned this, I crossed the street to the Mills Market, which was also a generally overpriced general store. Andover-priced. Bend-over priced. I knew better and spent lightly by way of a byzantine tactic learned long ago--buying lightly.
The hope is that the few things I gathered--including a box of hard candy and a box of even harder raisins--will be ample in getting me to the next dot on the map. It’s seventy miles on. If not, I’ll eat one of my more useless body parts. (No, not the penis--I’d starve.) A spindly arm will have to suffice. But only one! The ATer must have at least one working upper limb.
After the scrimping, I visited the library for a digital binge. Formerly a church, it is the most adorable library on the entire trail. It’s a good thing when libraries replace churches, even if they too offer fiction.
I’d kill three hours there, according to the computer I used, which I also almost killed. The device ran unbelievably slow, so its clock may also have. Anyway, it only felt like a few minutes and I enjoyed connecting to this strange, distorted, artificial/virtual world we all know and love, where we need not even be ourselves! The rain kept coming, so I did what I always do in bad weather--scroll through the weather in other places. It was ninety-three and cloud-free in Bisbee. I’m always in the wrong spot.
I e-mailed a friend: “On the AT, in 2013, if you’re not willing to hike in the rain, you won’t be hiking much. Reaching Maine wouldn’t’ve been possible. Carpe imbre! Seize the Spray!”
Oh, I should mention an email I received. What an exciting opportunity! And I quote:
“The late benevolent dictator of Nigeria, Major-General Sanni Abachaham, has died. His widow wants your help in getting his $80 million out of the country, of which you shall receive 50%. Simply send us the following information...”
50% of $80 million! Holy avocado mix, that’s like 10 million dollars!
Being a shrewd investor--since I’ve never enjoyed work and would rather waste my days drifting--I sent the requested info: bank account numbers; Social Security info; date of birth; credit card numbers; passport number; driver’s license number; all pertinent passwords; physical address; thumb prints; blood type; and so on. I cannot wait to check my spam folder at the next athenaeum!
Other messages I replied to included ones about debt relief; working from (my nonexistent) home; Canadian pharmaceuticals; Russian brides; and affordable ink toners for my (nonexistent) printer. But those’re comparatively boring opportunities. The one about the #1 Hair Growth System was not at all relevant to an AT hiker! I deleted it after replying and correcting its grammatical blunders. Unsubscribe.
After the office duties, the rain let up. Or after the rain, the office duties let up.
At the town park Captain Planet and I shot some basketball, with a deflated soccer ball. I warned him I was basically a cross between Pele and Kareem. (“Who are they?” the youngster asked.) But the ball was defective; it wasn’t about to go near the basket! Weird that--a deflated ball, and airball after airball. We’re thru-hikers, all right.
We camped beside the faulty court, on a neglected softball field. I dug in in a dugout, for shield from the skies--and any errant futballs--but the buzz-kill WOULD. NOT. QUIT. Mosquitoes are a big reason I don’t believe in God. I crowded Cap’n Plan-it (his b-ball name) in his sprawling thousand-person tent, The Los Angeles. The crippled zipper on my windowless house, Rancho Costa Plenty, would’ve done nil to protect. An untenable tent. I’m re-dubbing it The Mosquito Magnet.
~~~~~
Today it was back to the emerald plague, the waterlogged conduit of doom, the de facto labor camp...
Slosh, slosh, slosh…
The hiker goes!
Drip, drip, drip…
Goes his nose!
Shit, shit, shit…
His brain repeats!
Drip, drip, drip…
The rain downbeats…
…and he too remains downbeat
Nah, the rain was negligible, even almost theoretical, and it would have been a fairly splendid day for a walk, if only the trail was elsewhere. The beach. The desert. The equator. The gym. The moon.
Foliage sagged, mud menaced, and socks squawked and squished. The wrath of the path. A 2,186-mile Slip-n-Slide. In the Appalachian’s everything seems to drip, drop or drape. Or in my case, drag. But there was no use in bleating; these fuzz-filled ears choose not to hear. And anyway, the trail design was damn near walkable for once, and that’s as good as Maine has been. If I ever return, I’m bringing leather gloves, climbing gear, rainwear, and a cyanide capsule. Just in case.
When we walked together, Hangman, Cap’n P and I did so in uncharacteristic quiet. When we didn’t walk together, it was a little louder, mostly in the form of flailing and falling and profanity. The three F’s, despite the facile, flaccid foot-bed. We’d pass the following in successive order:
- Surplus Pond, with a surplus of water.
- Wyman Mountain. Why man? I asked. Like with so many other mountains, the AT could’ve deserted it, averted it, skirted it or redshirted it.
- Hall Mountain Lean-to, where we partook in our own Hunger Games. We inhaled lunch so quickly the shelter shook. If you see it rockin,’ don’t bother knockin.’
- Sawyer Notch, where I met a flip-flopping female named Karma. In but minutes we’d shared a lung-draining surplus of laughs. Before parting, the counterfeit-redhead said, “check out my blog at thumperwalk.wordpress.com.” (I write it now so as not to forget.) In a rare act of modesty, I neglected to mention mine. Lascivious nervousness, I suppose.
- Moody Mountain, named to suit my conduct. (Only my behavior isn’t entirely up and up like the mountain had been.) Thankfully, well-maintained stairs helped make the steep slope a little more manageable (like a giant StairMaster, really). Rebar did the same on the peak’s backside. (No rebar and I’d’ve ended up on my backside.)
- Then, at mile 1939, we passed a potential bailout point which would’ve led us back to Andover, but we bailed on it. Momentum hadn’t told us to seize the moment; rather we gave up the thumb’s up when hours rolled by, without a car rolling by.
We were rolling quite quickly, to stay warm and to keep breathing, but also because the walking was actually walking--the path a path and not the usual obstacle course. Obstacle coarse. Toward day’s end, along a long ridge and after the day’s (literal) high-point, Old Blue Mountain, we’d reach Bemis Mountain and its shelter, managing close to twenty miles.
As I lie here now, eating rock-hard raisins--the others fast asleep--I’ve begun working on a synthesized pop oddity called Hope 2 C Me Thru, about a bushed man slowly evolving into a bushman, one who wonders whether he’ll realize his goal of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail in one fell-swoop. He holds hope he’ll continue to cope… It’s a long song and I can’t figure out how it will end.
Or whether it will.
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