A Limp in the Woods (Day 40)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 40: Friday, May 3rd, 2013
A half-mile past Davis Cemetery to Lick Creek = 16 miles
Miles to date: 561

Real Life

“This is the real world, muchachos, and you are in it.”

~B. Traven

Today’s write-up: an eight-minute wade, contingent upon comprehension. If you read, you’re above average intelligence.

Last night’s journal was a step too far. (I am a man of my word, my many words.) I have to be careful; I write more when I walk less, even though I think less when I walk less. But then I indite for an audience of one--or none--so it doesn’t matter how much verbal diarrhea I spew.

I maintain this deadwood digitalia to maintain the pabulum it provides. Noetic nourishment. Mental masturbation. Sure, I wish to document my journey for organic, nostalgic reasons, and for future reference--as a manifesto to slip from society’s ever-expanding choke-hold--but what I need is to train my brain before it stalls or stultifies or is altogether lost. This here is a place to put my marbles before they’re lost.

There’s no shortage of physical or emotional or spiritual stimulation when backpacking, but there is a deadening dearth of intellectual input. Meditative though it can be, walking can also stifle the mind. (Sometimes walking is the mind’s accomplice; other times it is its greatest antagonist.) Save for some sporadic interaction with the seers, sages and scholars, my intellect is atrophying. Whittling away again in MountainVistaville. I never possessed much mental prowess to begin, so it’s imperative to amass all the input I can put in.

It’s clear others also concern themselves with this. Backpackers bring books, magazines, crossword puzzles, sudoku, and anything else they can so as not to rot their brains. It’s nice to see. But more than any other mind-moving apparatus, they transport their “smart”phones, seemingly in attempt to transport themselves elsewhere. Sociologists say smartphones make us dumb, but I’m too feeble-minded to know about that--and I’ve never owned one. I do know that a great deal of these hikers are socially disconnected and lack any kind of connection to their surroundings.

Two or three days ago I was sitting back against a tree near Dickie Gap (aka urinary meatus), relaxing and enjoying the milieu. I couldn’t have been more than five feet from the trail, and perhaps five feet above it. But, one-by-one, hikers passed en bloc, oblivious to my presence. (You’d surmise smell alone would’ve warned them, but no.) I shouldn’t complain--I often only notice what I expect to see in a given place--but I can’t help it.

Every one of them had white lima beans jammed into his or her ears. Cranking the tunes, cranking out the miles. It troubled this dour troubadour. I ramble to a different rhythm--I hit these trails to escape that other world--but then I had to accept they’re here for their reasons and me mine, no matter how flawed theirs may be! I realized most ATers are here to realize a goal, and our goals don’t coincide. I just couldn’t determine why it bothered me. Feeble-minded though I am, I’d like to think it is an open mind.

“Many eyes go through the meadow,

but few see the flowers in it.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was ultimately provided some succor when a young bearded hiker with a face like Frankenstein’s--I realize that fits the description of almost every hiker out here--strode along, stopped, removed his ear-pieces, looked up at me, and said, “Dude, you really reek.”

“Thank you,” I replied. And I meant it.

~~~~~~~~~~

Minutes into today’s saunter I reached mile 546. Not that I’m counting (I am), but that’s 25% OF THE A.T. COMPLETED!

Unfortunately, the trail totals 237%, not the conventional 100% denoting the entirety of something. Despite feeling finished, I’m nowhere near done. There are four million more footsteps to take, and probably a few face-plants. One thousand, six hundred and forty miles. But that’s okay. Today was a good day at the office. When your office is the Appalachian Trail, they’re all good days.

“It may be a dead-end trail,” many a hiker has affirmed. “But it beats a dead-end job.”

 Steps shy of the 25% mark, as it is in 2013

Talk of offices and jobs and real life (such as it is) abounds out here, among those who’ve cut the cord, if only temporarily. They’ve traded trades. They’re no longer working stiffs, but walking stiffs. It’s a rebirth backward in time, into primeval liberty. Of the most visited topics, job talk--or lack-of-job talk--ranks only behind food and the state of our feet, that filthy foot fetish. I’ve met a dozen youngsters who “did their time” in prison college, then got out, got their first real job (an exciting career opportunity!), realized it wasn’t what they had hoped it’d be, and opted out. Way out.

“I needed a timeout,” said Good Grief, a fleet-footed Marylander I met on week two, whom I haven’t seen since.

“I needed time out. I’d become a robot, in a viewless cubicle, under flickering lights that hummed. Dress code and all. I was saddled with more bosses than coworkers. My parents led me to believe that that sort of life, and the security it offered, would grant me a sense of stability and happiness. Man were they were wrong! I wanted to please ‘em, so I stuck it out. But I felt like a fictionalized version of myself. Then the company I worked for got bought out by a bigger one, and the restructuring began. The assholes restructured, all right. By firing us all! I went backpacking before being sent packing. No love lost.”

I didn’t know what to say; I’m hardly housebroken. An avowed ergophobic, I consider cubicles an alien landscape. Stability carries a large liability; permanence is a giant fence. Lousy parents don’t pressure you into success. But I could empathize. 

I stammered. “Well, you’ve made a good decision. Look where we are.”

We were where we needed to be; the right place at the right time. Footpaths frequently put you in the right place at the right time. For me, they always do.

“The thing is,” he went on, “I HATED the job the second I started. We were treated like cattle. The Benjamins were barely enough to get by on, after taxes and rent and all the other BS. There are parking spots making more money than I was! The coffee even sucked! It wasn’t even hot!”

“Not cool,” I said, though I may have been wrong.

“Coworkers were cool, but the chicks were all chubby and had alabaster skin, and the guys too goddamn dumb to know any better. Soulless corporate stooges, chasing cash to chase chicks. We were stuck in a game that could only end when someone told us it did. I had no control over my life. Who wants to live like that?! Not me. Never again. Never an employee again. It’s exhausting.”

“I want to be retired before I get tired.”

He paused.

“What do you do for work? Or what did you do?” he asked, “run your own business?”

I could see he just wanted to keep the conversation evenhanded, but for once I didn’t care to do the talking, let alone tell him the truth--that I run a nonprofit organization: me.

(More of that truth. I’m no workaholic, but a playaholic…I never developed a work ethic, only a play ethic; that I appreciate freedom appreciably…I will never clock in; that I refuse to sacrifice today for a tomorrow not guaranteed; that I believe a citizen who gives his life and labor for money degrades himself to the rank of slave; that I am a green anarchist; that I don’t care to be part of a larger problem of a failed economic system based entirely on the destruction and extraction of the natural world; that I will only work for untraceable cash so I don’t assist such a system; that I decline to pay taxes when they go to support an increasingly militarized police state; that I’m unable to obey the alarm clock, the time-card, the boss, or a deadline; that I refuse to call in sick when it’s the system that’s sick; that I do not see eye-to-eye with the labor force or forced labor, and that I reject forcing my own labor by populating an already-overpopulated planet or by purchasing goods I could just as well do without; that I know how not to work; that I am a shirker, a slacker, a Chuck of no trades; that I live in a world I do not take seriously; and so on...)

I also didn't want to tell him I’ve been lucky enough to have had a bit of a dream life to this point.

So I answered vaguely: “I’m on a work-release program. I guess you could say I ran my own business, only that business was to steer clear of business!”

“No, I mean really,” he said.
“Well, I always wanted to be a proctologist, but I couldn't find an opening.”
Silence.
“No, I mean really,” he repeated. 

“I was a banker, but I lost interest.”

Silence.

“No, I mean really,” he repeated.
“I’ve just worked a series of odd jobs. Odd man out.”

“Odd man out?”

“Yeah, odd man outta society. I don’t belong in that mess! So I work just enough to continually return to the woods, where I’ve got bigger sense of belonging.”

“HELL YEAH!” he yelled, taking me by surprise.

I offered him some cheddar popcorn and gave it more thought...

“All I really care for is to seek some adventure and immerse myself in experience, not mounds of material crap to clutter my life and force me into labor. So it’s been easy to survive. I don’t need much. A burrito a day when I’m not active, four when I am. ‘Course, I’ve got no woman or place to call home, but I tell myself that that’s okay, and most the time I believe it is. Maybe it’ll change someday, or maybe it won’t, but it’s all right, ‘cause right now, this is all there is.”

I lifted both arms, palms up, and spread them wide. “This!”

My new friend smiled. “Ya know, I never understood the purpose of work, of careers. What? To feed and house yourself? Your family? To support those already possessing the most scratch? To support the government? To help sustain the broken system of capitalism a little longer? To stay busy? To remain controlled? To build status? It all seems so convoluted.”

“It’s man’s lifeboat for survival,” I replied. “‘Course, if it’s survival we’re talkin’ about, we ought not neglect our emotional well-being. I think society’s startin’ to see the ramifications of so many people doin’ that: wide-scale depression, mass shootings, road rage, and so on. If only everyone would just subvert the dominant paradigm and go backpacking more often! Overthrow by throwing on a backpack!”

Yep, hikers have these conversations a lot.

Good Grief and I spoke for 1/24th of a day before parting ways that afternoon. It was nice to see he was more self-assured in the decisions that’ve helped him to that point. I was thankful I wasn’t still in my early twenties and loaded with worry and fear. I waited until my forties for that.

Trail life doesn’t expunge these worries--not for me--but it posolutely postpones them. In the meantime the grand hallucination of life happens, and on the most ideal and authentic terms--those governed by the natural world and, to a lesser extent, by ourselves. What could be more real than that?

I’d been the slowest to pack up, but the gang, timeless and free, hung back on my behalf. Without a word on it, we’d already formed a small family, akin to the kin I had with The Fanny Pack. But this tramily (trail+family=) is better suited to my humor and maturity level. Mountain Goat is my childish counterpart and I can only laugh and act asinine around the twenty-six year-old. Sure, we delve into more serious matter from time to time, but most of what we do is laugh. There’s no better way to spend a day.

Why they waited, I don’t know. As soon as we started hiking, detachment theory developed, only not in theory. Goat’s long, loping stride may appear lope-like, but it is in fact a lot like lubricated lightning. It’s relaxed for him, but the ground passes beneath his sinewy limbs like a fast flowing river. Missile toe!

Still, the forestry major misses nothing. Some guys (and gals) can scoot along like this, maintaining four mph over the most terrorizing of terra firma, pointing out a salamander here or the intricate patterns on a tiny mushroom there. Even on my best days, I am not one of them, especially the gal. I only witness salamanders as they sala-meander(1) by me. “On your left, slow poke!”

One of those sala-meandering by

Tiny Klutz and I switched places in the back. We talked of real life and other nothingness. The fair-skin fair lady’s pack weighs a monstrous forty pounds, thirty-nine percent of what she weighs. (Bonus quiz: how much does she weigh?) A PowerFrau. Mad strong. Heavyweight champion of the AT. She’s perfect footing for Mountain Goat: more mature, more practical, and more attractive, although Mountain Goat is rather good-looking--not that I noticed. He’d be a serious bromance of mine if I weren’t already in love with Benjamin Orr, or if only I were gay...and not just halfway gay. I love being around the guy so much it is uncomfortable. Or should be.

As it is with so many others, the two don’t know where they’ll be after the trail. But they have an unassailable fallback in place: Conway, NH. Goat can work construction for his old man there, and TK can find work in any one of the jobs she’s already held. They speak romantically of pulling up stakes and moving west to Bend, Oregon, but will take it one day at a time, as they do on the trail. Two days at a time never works.

Our posse would regroup every half-hour, to take in a view or take in some food. We’d eventually cross a series of stiles and enjoy some tiffin on a grassy hillside above the paved, single-lane Virginia 610. We were enveloped by idyllic scenery and a boundless appreciation for the tepid weather. It was my first true picnic on this sojourn, of what I hope will be too many to count. And if I can count ‘em, I hope to lose count.

Some trail magic met us at Virginia Road 42. Lumberjack and Lab Rat left two dozen caffeinated soft drinks in a cooler full of ice. We agreed: the generosity of complete strangers is astounding. The two also printed an up-to-date forecast, which wasn’t so generous. We’re in for nasty weather, reminding us to value the Here Now even more. We sat back enjoying our good fortune, when a concentration of concentrating hikers appeared from the south and disappeared to the north. We waved to the wave; they wavered to wave back.

Ultimately, we’d pry our bony butts from the ground and prolong the journey, reaching the Star Wars-sounding Knot Maul Branch Shelter two hours later. Like nearly every other AT shelter, it was in horrific trim--sloping, rotting and vandalized--perfectly inhabitable to the thru-hiker. But we shoved on. It was too early to stake a claim in such a ramshackle shack. And it looked as though the mice would put up a good fight for property rights.

By evening we’d emerged at Lick Creek--or Lick Crick, as local inbreds call it--Lick and Crick rhyming. Licked, we inbreds pitched our palaces next to the greenish-brown rivulet and began licking our wounds. 

A sizable share of the stars can be discerned, but we’ll take take cover, lest the forecast get a jump on us and give us another licking.

I’m hurting on the ol’ back front and nodding off to a surfeit of muscle spasms and a pair of palpitating feet. I wonder: do they ever adapt? No doubt, hiking the AT is a process of deconstruction.

"Foot"note 1: A reach, I know.