A Limp in the Woods (Day 63)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 63: Sunday, May 26th, 2013
Near Doyle’s River Cabin to Hightop Hut = 16 miles
Miles to date: 899

Scent Here from Elsewhere

Gone are the gray, grim environs. The trail is now swathed in all things green. All things being plants. Blankets of delicate flowers add other, more alluring, coloration to the mix. In some clearings there are more colors than one can count and it hurts to try, a deadly medley. I’ve fallen for Virginia and its many meadows--Nature’s flowerpot--but I suppose if I were back in Georgia or North Carolina right now, I’d feel the same way about them. Timing’s got a lot to do with experience.

This morning, after I freed the gummy zipper on my sleeping bag--the same one I’ve had for a decade; the same one I’ve turned a thousand nights; the same one that’s lost all loft--the funk that came wafting out was almost unreal. It was not lacking for nuance. If you were to concentrate hard enough you could see the mephitic rays leaking out, like they do in comic strips. But it goes beyond smelling bad. I am decomposing, my skin is about to delaminate, and the vinegary putrescence is intolerable. It looks as though I’ll be rinsing at every possible water source for the next three months, in hopes…aroma don’t inflict coma.

Humans tend to appreciate and even enjoy their individual potency--farts, fecal matter, and all. But thru-hikers surpass that point. We become more primordial than human. I’ve become an animal again, and I couldn’t be happier.

Like the whole of the human form, the nose adapts to what it incurs. Visit an Asian bazaar and you’re assaulted with an array of vaporous olfactory intruders. Tang Dynasty all right; the odors are rancid and retch-rousing. But the Asians don’t bat an eye, or a nostril. They even eat the substances creating the redolence! Why? Because they’ve grown accustomed, just like thru-hikers grow used to the fungus and the smegma growing on themselves. Who says thru-hikers can’t cultivate cultures of our own? We live counter to culture, but we are not uncultured. Although I hate the terms, dirtbag and hiker trash are apt.

It must be mentioned, no matter your mental habitat, you NEVER, EVER, grow used to someone else’s malodorous moods. Goat and TK evince evidence of this nightly, when he expels exhaust, as he habitually does. Even if they’re confined to their tent, Backstreet and I always know when Mountain Goat has done so, because TK cannot but giggle (first), then lay into her man (next). And they’ve been together for years.

TK keeps with the upkeep, but I’ve hiked with--behind--some women who simply aren’t cognizant of the pungent billow pursuing them. (I don’t mean me.) Personal purity is critical for the female, for she is an inny. She must cleanse or go it alone. To summarize: no sanitize, no socialize. Hairy armpits and legs matter not, but in the wise words of Mr. Gigglesfit, when it comes to the honey pot, one should not neglect to disinfect. “Some smells cannot be unsmelled.”

Anyway, I opt to hike unaccompanied when Nature’s fragrances are subdued by a human’s, as any partly sane hiker would. Even the giddiest of the amative types rarely walk together perpetually, and odious odorous overtone is perhaps reason number one.

A half-hour into our stroll, we reached the Loft Mountain Store on Skyline Drive. We didn’t need anything, but that didn’t stop us from grabbing sandwiches, candy and milkshakes, which we made short shrift of. Only a fool doesn’t take advantage of provisions he need not gather, farm, hunt, cook or carry. As we sat around we came to learn a little about Dino DNA, the cultured kid from near these parts. Cultured as in sagacious, sapient, not purely noisome, though he had that going too.

Dino (rhymes with rhino) was big into paragliding. He loved to fly without motor, without noise. The soaring dinosaur is a risk-taker, despite the low-key demeanor. Once we got him going about paragliding--“a lifestyle, not just something to do”--we couldn’t pipe him down. The kid doesn’t vocalize much, until you find his soft spot. A loud shade of shy. We loaded up and moved on, looking to the skies, wondering what it’d be like to look down on the terrain we were crossing.

“I think I could go up in a balloon,” I told Dino. “But I’m not sure I could run down a slope and launch. Homey don’t play that game.”

“Believe me,” he replied. “I never thought I could. Then I tried it and was obsessed. It only took once.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “I’m not sure thru-hiking will have that kind of power over me. Homey don’t play this game.”

I could only nod in accord, in spite of my track record.

Dino and I walked together for a few hours. We caught the others at the Pinefield Hut, a name I much enjoyed--it evoked fields of pines. The structure, although made mostly of stone, didn’t quite spawn the same effect. It was beat-up, rundown, and downtrodden all at once. And there were no pines or fields surrounding it. Nevertheless, it was equipped with somewhere to sit, some place besides the ground. On the AT one must always be grateful for life’s simple luxuries. A picnic table just about tops the list.

Hikers gather at benches like family, whether they know one another, no matter the table’s state. Along with campfires, picnic tables are the social centerpiece of the trail, commensal magnets for the mangy. As it is on every other trailside table, vandals had left their mark. NOMAD proudly embellished the bench with his nom de plume. He was growing lazier by the mile, now using a felt-tip marker, instead of an engraving tool. The AT leaves little gas for deviancy.

Many a gaseous butt has been on the bench we sat on, perhaps even a famous one (Earl Shaffer’s? Bill Bryson’s? Grandma Gatewood’s? Justice William O. Douglas’s?). We were appreciative to no end. Of course you needn’t hike the AT end-to-end to enjoy your own end.

When it fell time to comply with our marching orders, our walking papers, we repudiated the idea. Not a word was spilt concerning it, but no one was inclined to budge. Of us, TK tends to have the highest quantity of ants in her pants, but even she didn’t push off. The holiday weekend and the superb weather had brought a considerable number of day hikers out--when the woods grow to be parks the visitors flock--and we were in no mood to compete. They were as entitled to the forest as us, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with speeding to--and through--it, before racing home.

Most day hikers, of course, were pleasant. Many treated us like gods, asking the usual questions. At one point, after I’d fallen behind the others, I took a side trip to the Simmons Gap Ranger Station, to question my life for a stint. I was videoing a cicada as it crawled from its shell, beside the bench I’d a-butted. As I waited on the bug, who seemed in no hurry to face life--and who could blame it?--I scribbled some notes. I was in the midst of this all-important diary when a red-headed, freckly guy about my age approached. He made some small talk before asking if I was thru-hiking. “Not yet,” I joked. “But I could be at any point.”

A plumber from DC, Jack wanted to know more about thru-hiking, and how I “afford it.” This is Question #2 on the unofficial thru-hiker FAQ list, after the, “are you thru-hiking?” opener and just before, “are you here for business or pleasure?” and “where does the trail start?” (A: “In my dreams.”) It’d be one of untold questions. Just the FAQs, Jack. (“Do you have kids? Then why the baby wipes?”) I was good with it; he offered a bag of the tastiest homemade jerky I’ve had. Mystery meat, but tasty. Next question, please.

“I afford it ‘cause it’s cheap,” I replied, gnawing away. “With some scrimping and speeding an AT thru-hike can run as low as a grand. Good bang for your buck teeth. I can’t go anywhere for a comparable length of time for that. But out here, away from the usual money holes, it doesn’t take much by way of riches.” This got him thinking, I think. Because the questioning hit high gear.

“What about income? How do you afford the time off? How do you pay your bills back home?”

“Time off?” I asked, feigning. I didn’t want to tell him I’ve made a career out of not working. Work goes a lot better when you don’t go.

“Time off work.”

“Work?”

“Yeah, work. You know, job. Employment. Earnings. Survival.”

He didn’t enjoy my shot at humor, but neither did I. I refrained from telling him of my ergophobia--that I prefer cultivating leisure and memories over income or security.

“I’m without home, so there’re no bills. My only bill is for this phone, and it’s a no-contract dealeo. I abhor it, and’ll toss it after the hike, but it simplifies matters, which is the main aim of my life. Basically, I got no strings attached and can survive on a shoestring budget.”

Jack nodded. I blathered on. You never know where a conversation will go.

“Work disrupts this. It’s a means for me to afford to survive and to do the things I want to do before the clock runs out. I employ myself just infrequently enough for that to occur, but not so much that I cannot work up the courage to walk away from work. That way I can tend to other, more important matters--”

“Like sleeping on the cold, lumpy ground?”

“Exactly!” I smiled. “You know: experience the finer things in life!”

“So you really don’t have a career?”

“Not in the typical sense, no.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I am, I think. But I find it much easier to balance the work/life equation when I don’t work!”

I didn’t know what he thought of me, nor did I care--I’d be gone soon enough--but as we continued conversing I realized Jack was one of the wholesome apples. Unlike others I’d met, he wasn’t persecuting or judging. He simply wanted to know how he might be able to live in such a manner. 

(One guy I ran into in the Smokies even went so far as to tell me that those of us out here were “really just tryin’ to avoid real life.” I was dumbfounded anyone would say such a thing to a stranger, but managed to respond eloquently for once. I told the him we weren’t escaping real life [whatever that is]...“We’re trying to keep it from escaping us.) Real life is whatever you can get away with!

“Man,” Jack sighed. “I wish I could join you. Maybe do some plumbing in the depths of my being. I sometimes feel empty of my true self.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Can’t. Too riddled with responsibility: ex-wife and the usual catastrophic alimony; old dog; young kid; a business; bills...”

He paused and lost himself in thought for a spell: “Otherwise I would in a New York minute.”

“You can bring the kid and the dog,” I joked, only to turn more serious.

“I gotta say--I admire your ethics. I’ve been too scared to pile on responsibility. But then I wish I had a rock to call home. Sumpthin’ more permanent than a tent. ‘Course, when I do this stuff, I hardly think about a different life. It takes some weeks, but I meld into a mindful, mindless Zen state. The way I figure it is we’ve got about forty years left. The US is projected to grow by another seventy-five million in that time. Things are only gonna get crazier. Now’s time to enjoy the outdoors.”

I was being preachy, and promptly shut my pie-hole.

Jack and I chatted for almost an hour, when it was time for both of us to get going. The Maryland native thanked me for the conversation and we shook hands and then, quite unexpectedly, hugged. As he began to walk on, he turned around.

“You know Chuck, you’ve got me thinking, and I needed that. I’m glad I met you.”

“Likewise,” I replied.

He bent over and grabbed something from the ground, though I couldn’t see what it was since I was stooping to grab my camera.

“Here you go buddy.”

He tossed something.

“There’s your rock to call home.”

Like the ignoramus I am, I’d drained my camera batteries filming the cicada, who was still taking its time squeezing out of its original skin. But I was glad I had; it enabled me to record Jack’s and my conversation in full, so I could scribble it here. I could get new batteries at the next store. In Shenandoah National Park, the next store isn’t far.

As luck would have it, I saw a bear soon after, the second in two days. I’d been bounding along in an unusual state of calm, almost happy with my opportunities--and my choices--in life, when the three hundred-pounder crossed in front of me. Three hundred pounds isn’t big; millions of Wal-Mart shoppers are as big. And I’ve seen much bigger bruins out west, including the majestic GRIZ. But each of those pounds got the heart pounding. So much for calm. I reached for my camera, there on my sternum strap, only to remember its uselessness. Its batteries were dead; I was happy I was not. (I feel for batteries; they’re either working or they’re dead.)

By the time the march madness ended, twilight was pecking at my callused calcanei. Wedged between daylight and moonlight, my hardened heels had reached the Hightop Hut. Others were crashed there, including Crasher (female) and Rocky (her boyfriend) and Crasher’s friend from college, who’s out for the night. Her friend’s boyfriend was also present. Along with Dino DNA and us regulars, it made three-fourths of a dozen. Three-fourths of a dirty dozen.

Someone had started a well-mannered fire, so we gathered ‘round. We’d share food, stories, laughs, farts, booze, and glazed looks. Decorum decayed. Cards Against Humanity guided us into late night, under a 98% satiated moon. I’d never heard of the game, but it was idyllic entertainment for us foul-mouthed folk. I don’t believe I’ve ever said Jew so many times in one night. Things only went uproariously downhill from there.