A Limp in the Woods (Day 52)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 52: Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Troutville to Wilson Creek Shelter = 10 miles
Miles to date: 735

Operation AT / Withering Heights

At this inexact moment--as I write and as you read--someone somewhere is having his or her heart broken. On the wrong side of goodbye. Wilde wrote that hearts were made for breaking; it breaks mine thinking about it. Stegner said most things break, including hearts; the lessons of life amount not to nutritious wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus. These thoughts have nothing to do with this journey or this journal entry, so I’ll leave it at that. Time for a happier tone on this International Conscientious Objectors Day...

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Of the tasty pie chart that is my life, a good few years--about eight percent--have been spent beneath a blanket of stars. Sometime last night, I got up to gaze into the scintillating wonderment from a planet in outer space and surmised it hasn’t been enough. It may never be, it may never be. I vowed to carry out more of it, arthropods and atmosphere complying. Shamefully, I had been camped atop a picnic bench under the park’s protective pavilion. Roofed in. In...carcerated.

The main fuss, besides the unyielding wooden bed and Backstreet’s whistling nasal passage, was the fifing of freight trains, meters away. A ten-meter-thick wall would not have made a difference; the foam earplugs augured halfway into my brain didn’t. The rumbling was insufferable enough, but each engineer’s air-horn infatuation brought it to another level. By sunup, seventeen slow-rolling trains had come and gone. Just as the potential for sleep had.

“At least it drowned out Backstreet,” Mountain Goat joked, “which allowed me to get some sleep.”

Akin to thru-hiking, the hobo way of life would not be an effortless one. And it’s tough to compare the rewards. I had once, long ago, jumped a train, with no idea of where it, or I, would end up. I didn’t even know the direction it was heading for most the trip, since the compass I carried found itself flummoxed in those huge magnetic metal boxes. The noise was unbearable and the excitement faded soon after hopping aboard. The bulk of the journey was spent masturbating and planning my dismount, so that I wouldn’t get hurt (by the jump or its crash-landing; or by the bulls, those nasty-spirited train-yard cops).

Because of the limitless dangers, I learned quickly that if I were ever going to make it as a professional vagabond, I’d have to do so some other way. I hitchhiked home, with, of all people, a retired train engineer. I did not share my outbound follies with him.

After dropping by the fire station, where showers were going for a song--free--we’d try our hand(s) at hitching from Troutville. We hoped to spare ourselves the shoulderless highway, pithy though the walk had been. Luck was on our side when Cecil, the town groundskeeper, offered a lift in his aging truck. There wasn’t enough room for all of us, so Goat sat atop a lawn mower on the trailer Cecil was pulling. We laughed at the spectacle the entire way, pondering what John Law might think.

Cecil and pregnancy

There was an opportunity earlier for a more civilized ride, had we taken up Dino DNA and his father’s generous offer. They were returning to Damascus for Trail Days, the hiker festival taking place in a few days, for a few days. But there wasn’t room enough for all of us and our gear. Dino’s ratchet-jaw dad suggested he could take the packs back to the trail and leave them there until we arrived, but that’s an unnerving proposition, parting with your everything. Plus, at the time, it was too early to face the unrelenting reality of the trail. The AT is a bully. A brawl hall. A collision course. Our only recourse is to retreat from time to time, and to enjoy that time. A retreat is a good treat.

But treats cause cavities and once we’d moved back into the trees after Cecil’s gesture, Operation AT resumed. Action figures, we.

It was still early on this Ides of May, but it was balmy and gathering steam, heading toward hellaciously hot. Green heat, jalapeño hot. My newly un-laden rucksack was royally welcomed. I’d timed it to perfection. Summer had arrived. Winter wear would’ve been worthless at best, detrimental and damaging at worst. 

I could not believe the difference I felt, or, in the case of the weight no longer there, the difference I didn’t feel. No more remora! My pack was under twenty pounds, with everything--gear, food, water, inflatable sex dolls. By hiking metrics, a featherweight. It was going to be a fun hike until fall fell.

But by God, the heat. Within an hour the mercury was bubbling toward an inexcusable ninety degrees. This might’ve teetered on tolerable had it not been for the aquatic conditions closing in from all sides. Such mugginess was a new concept for a muggle like me. I quickly gathered: aquatic conditions in the east aren’t kind to those in my boat.

I’d never experienced steamy heat outside of a bathroom I’d just shat or showered in, just that dry western warmth that can be alleviated with a cold drink or ducking from direct sunlight. Here now, nothing but ice-water submersion would do the trick. Even then, only ephemerally. I feel like Satan’s sex toy.

We sought to free ourselves from the onslaught of the solar system. It only confirmed what we already knew: umbrage in the east is moot. In the western US, where air temperatures typically outperform those here, shade is a blessing. It is a necessity anywhere desert climes rule, especially at altitude. And what a difference it makes.

Here, not so much. The heaviness of the air nullifies shade’s effect. Sure, direct sunlight is bad in these parts, but all shade does is mete out a multiplication of mosquitoes! The onus of the oven gets worse. These mosquitoes plot. And they’re huge. Part pterodactyl, part aircraft carrier. “Please, I beg of you! Put me down!” Backstreet screamed. “Or fly toward the sun!”

I wasn’t the only one withering. Backstreet the Orlandoan felt right at home, but the rest of us drooped. Even the trees drooped. Drooped, draped and dripped, while we stooped, scraped and slipped. I felt stupid--ain’t no id in this idiot. I’d previously boasted to Backstreet (the tropical comical popsicle) that heat has no effect on me. “Never has.”

“It’s a bit different out here,” he replied at the time. He was being kind. Kind types are my kind, but I prefer truth over tact.

A bit different. This was hell with the roof retracted. Sweat was flowing. Sunscreen was dripping. A sense of foreboding spilled over me. I was overwrought with thought: was this going to be the coup de grâce? The death knell? The straw that cracked this camel’s back? “If we’re to head to hell from here,” TK joked, “let’s be sure to bring blankets.”

Spring’s arrival was now arrivederci. We were on the wrong side of goodbye.

Backstreet said, “the same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. Be tough.” Easy for an Orlandoan to say.

A cistern-fed spigot behind the Fullhardt Knob Shelter allowed us each a rinse, but it was unavailing. The contortion required to reap the rewards was too strenuous. Why aren’t the spouts five feet off the ground? Backstreet, ever the odometer, mentioned the shelter marked the one-third-of-the-way point. “Look at the mileage we’ve gotten out of this little patch of earth!” His zeal is real. Commendable, but not contagious. We carried on, into the remaining thirds, flagging through fields and forests. Flowers were abloom, bees were a-buzzing. Some life forms love heat.

Despite a smooth trail-bed for much of the day, we’d total just ten miles, collapsing at the Wilson Creek Shelter, but not before collapsing in the creek itself, a half-mile prior. The rivulet could now be mistaken as Shit Creek, as brown as we’d left it. It was shallow, so no paddle was needed.

My core temperature was bubbling near feverish. It took minutes in the algid, algaed creek for my cajones to return to the rest of me. (The lacquer of oily grime remained, for I do not use soap, biodegradable or otherwise; and no, we didn’t shit in the rill.) For fifty days I’ve been pining for warmer weather. Now that it’s here, I plead to be elsewhere. One must beware and be wary for what he wishes.