A Limp in the Woods (Day 158)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 158: Thursday, August 29th, 2013
Cooper Brook Falls Lean-to to Potaywadjo Spring Lean-to = 12 miles
Miles to date: 2,138

SPF 95

I hadn’t been asked the entire trip. I suppose it was time.

Don’t you ever get bored?

“No,” I replied flatly, earnestly.

The dictionary characterizes boredom as the state of being bored. But that boring definition hardly tells its meaning. Psychologists more accurately define it as “the aversive experience of wanting, yet being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.”

The simple act of walking, peculiarly enough, is anything but boring. Especially in untamed Maine, where Nature should always be spelled with a capital N, as Waldo would have it. The N word, as we outer-city types say. Do I ever get bored? Sure I do. With that question, even when it’s asked once. In Nature, that which does not thrill us only makes us stranger.

And it’ll assure me that you and I remain strangers.

It was a huge white logger sitting in a huge white truck who stopped me, at Jo-Mary Road. A sticker on the truck’s rear window told me it was a Dodge Ram, or so I deduced. (It read: ‘Dodge the dad; Ram the daughter.’ Mature.) Anyway, the driver asked about trail tediousness, along with scads of other questions, including the usual battery…

     Where’d ya start?

     Where are ya from?

     How do ya afford it?

     How’d ya afford the time off work? (“This is work.”)

     Do ya carry a piece? (“Nah, I carry the whole thing.”)

     Seen any bears? (“Does a bear shit in the woods?”)

     Many women do the trail? (“Not enough.”)

And so on…

“Has it been challenging?” he asked.

“Not in the least bit,” I responded. “Only in the most bit.”

He didn’t laugh.

My new favorite, though…

“What’s been the hardest part?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I replied, “the part between Georgia and Maine, including Georgia and Maine.”

I was taken aback when the forty-ish year-old guy ultimately asked, “has the experience been what you expected?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said it was beyond any expectations I’d harbored. I wasn’t lying; I didn’t have any expectations going in. Expectations have destroyed many an AT dream; it is good not to pack any.

He then asked a couple more thought-provokers...

Did the trip change me? If so, how? Am I a different man?

I couldn’t think if it had, at least not if it had within the skin.

“I don’t know yet...” I replied. I really didn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t ever know. Or maybe the change is beyond recognition. Too subtle to tell.

“...but I don’t think I hike in hopes of changing. I hike because it’s who I am.”

     He seemed to understand.

I’d like to think these long walks have made me a better individual--more understanding, patient, accepting, respectful, mindful--but I’m not sure that that’s the case. They’ve destroyed my already-low tolerance for crowds and industry and noise and sprawl and humanity in general. These walks, these escapes, have ruined my patience for automobile gridlock, and for the predictable, inevitable lines at the post office and at the supermarket. And there’s little good about that. 

I worry I might snap one day, or revert to being a full-time night owl. (Incidentally, aren’t owls nocturnal, making the term night owl redundant?) Sadly, anymore, I can scarcely survive in a town bigger than those lining this trail. And Small-Town America (RIP) isn’t exactly my cup of tea. (Never mind that tea has always been hard to find in Small-Town America.) Rural folk in the US, though largely kind and sincere and giving, aren’t typically open-minded or intelligent or eager for adventure. See how kind I am? No, these long walks don’t always improve us.   

Jo-Mary Road sat a few miles into my daily exercise, so I sat down on it and inhaled a late breakfast. The clouds and rain had moved on, as had those I slept with beside last night. It’s partly the shelter mice that have me eating elsewhere lately, ‘cause there’s little doubt that I’d rather sit my skinny ass down on a muddy, pockmarked road, than share with them. Or fend them off. You see, despite a similar outward appearance, shelter mice aren’t like normal mice. They may be of a similar size, but these are professional mice. A force to be reckoned with. They’re vicious, with retractable three-inch fangs and razor-sharp tails, tails with stingers at their end. And these professional mice are quick for confrontation. They have even been known to hold hikers hostage, at gunpoint, until their stomachs are satisfied. When hikers resist or attempt to mediate, as they sometimes do, you can imagine the resultant bloodshed. Bloodshed, blood shelter. Again, it is best to eat elsewhere, in peace.

Then again, if inquiring minds await at every road crossing, maybe it’s also best to avoid eating near them. We hikers shit in the woods; we ought to eat in them!

SPF 95

Beyond the slender Jo-Mary Road and the lumberjack interview I met up with Sinner yet again. Turns out he hadn’t been speeding forward like I’d thought. He was in the same sort of hurry I was--none whatsoever. More than just a thru-hike, we each desired a thorough hike. A serried thicket of thin lodgepole pines (pinus contorta, not to be confused with penis contortae) enveloped us. Nature’s sunblock, SPF 95. We walked at a snail’s pace, in unison, and I’d asked him if he ever got bored on the trail. He responded with, “fuck yes! But not nearly as bored as I would be off the trail. Or working.”

“The AT doesn’t count as work?” I asked.

“Never.”

“It’s sure as hell fooled me.”

“How about you?” he asked. “Do you ever get bored?”

“I suppose I might if I wasn’t always so tired.”

We walked on, under the canopy and under the sun, and underneath a couple of quarrelsome squirrels. One of the squirrels fell right in front of us. To the ground. From fifty feet above the ground. It lay stunned for a second, presumably surprised and embarrassed by its plunge, before shaking itself off and resuming its squirrelly duties. Sinner and I forgot we were supposed to be bored, and so we set out to enjoy another nice day. What else was there to do?

There were just over fifty miles of trail left--gulp!--and we felt good about our chances of averting any significant interval of wicked weather, as the locals call it. The wicked weather they speak of was still many months off, but last night’s rain was wicked enough for we thin-skinned non-Maine residents. We thought of the hikers yet to reach the state, or those who haven’t even reached New Hampshire or Vermont and were glad we weren’t them. Suckers!

Though it’s not entirely official, the trail’s checkered flag--Baxter State Park--closes on October 15th each year. Sooner, if socked-in with snow, or snowed-in with socks. If a hiker had left Springer Mountain the same day as I had--March 25th, 2013--but could only manage an average of ten miles a day--without any rest days--he’d miss the cut-off by a fortnight, and he’d fail in his quest to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Ten miles a day, by the way, ain’t child’s play.

As a result of this number-crunching, time-crunched candidates--the old or the slow or the feeble or the over-eager--begin their mission earlier, to get a jump on their goal. But then comes the increased likelihood of a serious storm, similar to the one we were subjected to this spring. When it happens, that likelihood is anything but likable(1). The gist is this: hiking the AT is work. I don’t care what that grinner Sinner says.

A fellow backpacker

Working our way along the sandy shore of the sparkling Jo-Mary Lake, we drifted apart. Near the Antlers Campsite and its two-seater shitter, I stopped for a dunk--in the lake--after toe-testing the temperature. Tolerable. A scour would be nice.

Years ago I’d been a strong swimmer; here now I worried I might go the way of the Titanic, so I kept close to the shore, about ankle-deep. Each time I reentered the lake schools of small, uneducated fish fed on the dead skin shedding from my toes. Uneducated? Sure, why not. These are animals that poo and pee in the same public place they swim! Anyway, the water was chilly but soothing, and it helped remove at least the top few layers of grime encasing my being. It would take a flame-thrower or an acid tank to remove the rest, neither of which was on hand.

I thought of camping beside the lake--“location, location, location,” as a city-strapped real estate agent would say--but there was still plenty of daylight and the natation only served to rejuvenate. Besides, it would’ve been a sin to stay just a single night on such lovely littoral landscape. So it was I’d put it in my past and perambulate another hour, ending up at a mid-sized lean-to, with a full-sized name I could never pronounce. It is, all in all, a native name and I am not a native. I’m just passing through.

"Foot"note 1: Except for those of us who love winter hiking, anyway. But then again there's always been a problem with winter hiking, since--follow closely here--it tends to take place in winter.