A Limp in the Woods (Day 64)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 64: Monday, May 27th, 2013
Hightop Hut to Bearfence Hut = 12-ish miles
Miles to date: 912

Sundaes on Monday

A devious dream ricocheted ‘round the cranium last night. There was only an inch of the AT remaining. It excited us all. Unfortunately, the map scale was as follows...

I awoke defeated. Same as it ever...is.

A half-mile into today’s trek I reached the nine hundred mile mark. That’s farther than Bryson’s walk in the woods. I’d’ve patted myself on the back, but such self-applause is pointless with the backpack in the way. Despite what backpacks may tell us (“Don’t worry, I’ve got your back!”), they’ve destroyed many a backpacking trip.

Nine hundred miles! I’ve yet to run the numbers, but the fast-track math illustrates this: there’s still a long-ass ways. (2,186 – 900 = ____?) Just the same, Springer Mountain is a long way away; I couldn’t imagine walking back.

It’s crazy to walk nine hundred miles. It’s crazier to think it’s not even halfway to the goal. I reminded myself, one mile at a time, knowing it’s one stride at a time--a walk in the park.

“Walk a mile in another man’s shoes, and you’re still nowhere near the end of the AT.”

~Funnybone, who has a terrible habit of quoting himself

It was unexpectedly nippy, so I was the last to vacate our nightly vacation spot on this forgettable Memorial Day morn. I’d leave only after a cauldron of liquid lightning; it’s also National Coffee Day. But then, for me, National Coffee Day runs from January 1st through December 31st. Without coffee there would be chaos and darkness. Life would be one big shot of depresso. Unfortunately, the java, houseless blend, hasn’t been a regular occurrence out here. Nor will it as the weather warms. But back in Waynesboro I’d cannily grabbed a handful of half & halfs from Mickey D’s. I could now look forward to the insipid brown powder. Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you blow my…bowels! 

Instant coffee is Hipster Level -7. In its unaided form it is foul. Definitely not specialty coffee or craft coffee. Crap coffee, yes. But it serves its function. (A twofold function: energy placement and bowel displacement. Injection and ejection.) Six sachets of sugar, also embezzled from Ronald McDonald and cronies, made it almost desirable. With enough sugar and cream, even urine entices. In any case, coffee always tastes sweeter in the mountains. It’s like a liquid hug. My blood type is espresso.

Thanks to the sludge nudge, the caffeine punch, I was confident I’d catch the others. If not at the next trailside vista, then likely at the next food-stop, where hikers are sure to coalesce. (A predicable breed, thru-hikers.) Shenandoah may cater to munching motorists, but it’s the ravenous ramblers who profit the most. Well, and those selling the food, if food is what you’d care to call it. 

(If it don’t spoil, it ain’t food. This stuff does not spoil. Yet when we eat it we feel spoiled, in more ways than one.)

As it was, my comrades were just a mile up trail, atop Hightop Mountain, sopping up the sublime surrounds before more clouds closed in. They were celebrating the nine hundred mile mark. (Rocky and Crasher had gotten off trail to spend a few days with their friends, while Dino DNA was long gone ahead.) Views had been comparatively copious throughout Shenandoah, in part because of the later-than-usual onset of spring--not all leaves had budded--and because of the numerous Skyline Drive crossings, where officially-designated scenic pullouts had been carved out of the hillsides so that motards would continue to come vi$it the park. AT hikers follow both the foliage and the roads. 

On average the trail meets with the road every four miles in the hundred-mile-long park. The pavement is always within farting distance. But it’s barely noticeable, because of the thickening woods. With every new leaf comes greater quiet. Go greenery, go!

An hour or more passed and the drizzle that had now begun to form also acted as a silencer; Skyline Drive was scarcely alive. Hard to believe, on one of the busiest US holidays.

As it turned out, Goat and TK had a resupply package awaiting them in nearby Elkton(1). They were about to attempt to hitch from the park on US Highway 33, which Skyline Drive passes over. Because they are our friends (we share a true long-distance relationship!), and because it had become malignantly gelid again, Backstreet and I chose to tag along. A reprieve from the conditions would be welcomed. What with the nominal cargo in my pack I was vastly under-equipped for such a wet, bitter battle. Right now, to contend with the cold, I have just two choices: speed up or speed off, as in stop. This time, full stop.

Thanks to Mountain Goat’s dynamic hitchhiking, um, style, entailing a blend of convulsions and seizures and extreme gesticulation, we finagled a ride with Miguel, a US citizen originally from El Salvador. The Savior! The construction supervisor drives his fancy SUV over the pass each week. It is a hulking vehicle, much too extravagant for the likes of us, with windows tinted so dark you could safely watch a solar eclipse through them. Despite the car’s newness, he scoops up hikers every time he sees them; which is to say frequently throughout spring. We were the privileged ones this time around and tried not to smear the seats with our tailings.

In elk-less Elkton, at the lower altitude, life was comfortable again. Especially after we put on our dry clothes. And now that we were warm, we could chill--if that makes sense. Once TK and Goat collected their box at the post office we did just that. We sipped, slurped, swallowed and sat on our ever-bonier backsides, poring through our maps, pondering where we’d end up later in the day, assuming we’d cop another lift back to the park and the carbon sink that is the Appalachians. (Some men do look at maps!) It was pure decadence, but because town duties are no fun to write about (even though towns are often where the fun is fattest), I’ll skip to the good stuff: the trail and the return to it.

While loading up on extra supplies--a case of AA batteries in my case--we met an effusive sixty-year-old woman who offered to take us if we didn’t mind waiting for her to run her own errands. “Mind?!” we laughed. “Of course not! We are mindless.”

Miss Jane was newly divorced and wanted to direct her thoughts toward other matters. (“Love may be blind,” she sighed, “but marriage is a real eye-opener.”) It didn’t appear finances were a concern (we piled into another lavish car, the cost of which could finance a few dozen thru-hikes) and we could see she was happiest helping hikers, so we obliged. She offered to buy us lunch, but our stomachs were already disturbingly distended, so we took her up on sundaes instead(2). Sundaes on Monday.

Miss Jane, TK and Backstreet

By the time we’d arrived back at the park entrance at Swift Run Gap, where we’d previously deserted the trail, and where miss Jane dropped us off and wished us well (as we had to her), it was almost time to clock out. Or punch out. Or punch the clock out (ideally without getting clocked). It hadn’t been much of a walk in the park after all, but the mizzle reminded us we didn’t really want to be hiking and dealing with the ensuing damp-camp. Somehow though we’d manage to stay relatively dry even though we’d walked another nine miles before reaching an unexpectedly empty Bearfence Mountain Hut. Empty but for the mice, naturally.

"Foot"note 1: Until the past year Virginia hadn't played home to a single elk since around the time of the Civil War, when the last native elk was shot and killed. (Men didn't just shoot at one another back then.) The animal is being reintroduced in Buchanan County, a small corner of southwest Virginia.

"Fill"note 2: There is always more room for dessert.