A Limp in the Woods (Day 38)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 38: Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
Orchard Shelter area to Partnership Shelter area = 24 miles
Miles to date: 531

Getting Gone

“…Adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive,

and certainly not as the same person.”

~Yvon Chouinard

I hate backpacks; I put mine down often. If I were a backpack, life would be pleasant. But I’m not; I’m a backpack’s delivery boy. Its indentured servant. Its beast of burden. Its bitch. This makes walking a bitch, as if the trail doesn’t already leave me bitching.

Me, to backpack: “You’re always on my back!”

Backpack: “Relax! I’ve got your back!”

Daypack, the uptempo trekker I met just before breaching The Old Dominion(1), and who last year galloped the entire AT in three months, assured me Virginia’s trail is less taxing than the preceding states. A level lover, I hope it so. My feet--toenails, toes (and the hair atop them), arches, forefeet, but especially both bruised, battered heels--could use a break.

My poor achy feet

Oh, how they hurt

I pop their many blisters

And squirm as they squirt

Flat terrain is no gentler on feet, but it makes for greater mileage over a given timeframe. This also theoretically equates to a decreased amount of stride-time over a given distance. If these complex calculations prove true, they ought to allow the heels to heal. One can hold out hope. Maybe my el-cheap-o shoes should be rethunk.

My fossilized foot, post pedicure

Landscape leveling I’ll take, but I’ll level with you: state lines are meaningless. The woods don’t care about some imaginary line slicing through them. Nor does the woodsman. Only linesmen give a hoot.

But borders prove progress. Progress is salient to thru-hikers. If it weren’t, they’d nix the prefix. That misspelled four-letter word--thru--alters everything, and it frequently provokes a flurry of additional four-lettered words.

The accomplished thru-hiker--one who’s thru-hiked--knows boundaries. And progress. But, like a train depends on its rails, she is tethered to the trail, lariat looped about the neck like a noose. Bedridden...trail-bed ridden. We are myrmidons, not Meanderthals. Followers, not flâneurs. Gnomadic? No, mad! Wanderlust is a mere metaphor, a myth, a fantasy.

Thru-hikers speak dreamily of wandering and wanderlust. But they’re incapable of such vagility, so long as they’re leashed to a long trail. Recall the opening quotes from Day 7: “thru-hiking is no walkabout.” No matter how we view it, it is not open-ended travel. It is not an activity for or of the free. Nor are trails necessarily freeing. Purists--those true thru-hikers who cannot stray from the trail until completion--are the least adventurous ilk I know, and the least free. The thru changes everything.

Vagility   
[vuh-jil-i-tee] noun
1. Biology. the ability of an organism to move about freely and migrate.

The lure of elsewhere is confined by a single strip of soil. There is no drifting for these fidgety malcontents, only a monomaniacal lust to attain trail’s terminus, a deep sense of obligation, governed by a Pavlovian-like response to wake and walk and relive an never-ending series of ground-pounding Groundhog Days. Hypnotized by the trail. No: Married to the trail, for better or for worse. Home is the horizon ahead, but only atop the trail. It’s The 2,200-Mile Stare and it is embedded in our DNA. Hardwiring. Hell, I’ve already met others who’ve deliberated hundred-yard side-trips, whether for huge vistas or surefire quieter camp spots. Food may yank us from the trail, but little else does. Up the trail and down to business. Getting gone.

Q: Footloose?
A: Footnoose!

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving...

...but this makes for a lousy (Lao-z) thru-hiker.”

~Lao Tzu

Although I wholeheartedly concur with Budha’s maxim--it is better to travel well than to arrive--I too fall for the pull of the goal. (I am goal-able!) It’s human nature to strive--that somehow, if our goals are realized, life will suddenly be better. I continually tell myself I’m here to be in the wilderness--to BE, not to go from A to B--but there’s no question I am a pathological pedestrian. I am goaded by a sense of duty. Obsessive Compulsive Hiking Disorder. Agenda hiking.

We dromomaniacs lighten our loads to fight the effects of gravity, but we can do nothing about the gravitational pull that Katahdin has on us. When it comes to gear, we want little, but when it comes to the trail, we want it all. We’re irredeemable, and we are stuck in a vacuum tube. The AT has us by the throat.

In the past I’ve justified this allegiance, this Type-A conduct, this all-too-trendy bucket list mentality, by telling myself that the trail, in its entirety, forms the necessary framework for the adventure contained within, like a painting’s frame and canvas. Without the end goal I’d never experience the more precious aims--blazing the trail within. I’d pull the plug during tough times if I knew I wasn’t passing through them. Committing to the whole enables me to experience all the parts that make it so. It sounds sound anyway.

We oughtn’t vilify goals; they evince a life exists, an identity. Goals and plans are as human as human beings, and human beings are humans doing. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield! If you don’t have the desire to finish anything, consider yourself finished.

Maybe we shouldn’t burn those guidebooks.

Fustian essay aside, today proved to be another wonderful day. I’m beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, this AT gig might be conducive to happiness. The underlying negativity I harbored toward it is steadily being erased. I don’t need to compare the trail to past paths; this one’s all right.

Thru-hikers speak of Virginia in one of two ways: with revulsion or with glee. Daypack and other veteran ATers mention the ‘Virginia Blues,’ that alleged tedium one endures when navigating northward through the state, because of its extensive distance: five hundred and fifty miles. “But borders are meaningless,” I apprised Daypack. “If there weren’t signs posted, we wouldn’t know which state is which, would we?”

“I spose yer right,” he answered. “But I still hate it, and I’m allowed that.”

“Yep. But if ya ever find yourself on the PCT, you’ll hate California.”

California’s PCT is as endearing as any trail anywhere. It cannot be measured by miles. Daypack knew this, but it’s easy to fall for and follow trend, despising a place because you’re supposed to, because everyone else does. So far Virginia’s the loveliest locale yet.

As I moseyed on, each hour slipping toward an inaccessible past, I realized one of the big reasons I welcomed Virginia was that spring was finally making a valiant effort on this opening day of May.

“Come out, come out, come out!
Virginia, don’t let me wait!”
 ...So come on Virginia!
Show me a sign-
Send up a signal; I’ll throw you a line.
~Billy Joel

They’d only teased to this point, but vernal flowers were beginning to sprout. Bees buzzed, clouds calmed, and leaves began to leave their winter shells. Life was about to explode. Had I started my thru-hike today, I’m sure I’d have felt the same love toward Georgia. (It also didn’t hurt that there was now another hour of daylight each day, allowing more life.)

The going was good. I stopped and relaxed half a dozen times--it wasn’t all business. I still managed almost a marathon. (Like the businessman, the thru-hiker spends his time trying to get ahead.) There was no particular aim attached to the day, just a bunch of relocating and resting by feel, like that low-IQ Gump character did during his cross-country outings.

But then, around 4pm, I just about wet myself when I learned I could enjoy a warm rinse, if I could reach the Partnership Shelter. The voluminous two-storied skyscraper is the only shelter along the entire AT equipped with a solar-heated shower. There’s even a mirror, for those who care to reflect; when I got to the shelter I stood in front of that mirror, searching for signs of life. 

But the best thing about the edifice? You can ORDER A PIZZA and have it delivered to its doorstep. But who here would order just one? I’d write more, but those of us here are busy roughing it, eating ourselves into a proper insensibility. I’d hate to drop a slice on this plush red carpet.

My new bestie, Mark

"Foot"note 1: "In the beginning, all America was Virginia," wrote William Byrd.