A Limp in the Woods (Day 65)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 65: Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
Bearfence Hut to Byrds Nest #3 Hut = 22 miles
Miles to date: 934

Das Boot: Life is Best Experienced on Foot...
Or Is It?

When the AT trail-bed isn’t so rugged (more walk, less rock) and it at long last allows you to see more than just your feet, you stop, look around and see trees. A sea of trees. Dark, domineering, determined trees. When an expansive view finally enables you to see more than just these utility poles, you stop and take it in. Sometimes for just a cursory glance, but quite often for a long while. Sometimes you stop when there is no expansive view, because expansive views are exceptional, even when they’re not.

We’d enjoy a few views today, both the expansive and those hemmed-in. To our left, the south fork of the Shenandoah River. It meanders northward toward its last stop at the Potomac River, where really it doesn’t stop, but instead flows home to the ocean, where all water eventually ends up (and where all water eventually starts up). In technical talk, that just means the Shenandoah is a tributary. And so it is that a small cast of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers pay tribute to it by rafting it, downstream, thus adopting such a pleasing passage in place of plodding peregrination. They call it aqua-blazing. I call it marvelous. You can bring more, work less, and as a result, enjoy more.

The times I’ve rafted I’ve had a riot. Except that one time on a spork of the American River when my childhood chum Todd Dangerfield and his friend (me) showcased our paddling prowess by capsizing on the first stretch of white water we encountered, a six-inch veritable wall of foam. All was lost. Irretrievably. This included, but was not limited to, our cameras, which promptly sunk, and our plastic paddles, which promptly floated downstream, eventually into that dirty bathtub called Folsom Lake, some thirty river miles away.

Two dinguses on a dinghy.

Our craft, a carrot-colored floaty manufactured in some far-off land, also took off for lower domain and was never seen again, presumably landing in some far-off land. Served us right; we’d ripped off the raft from a local hardware merchant. As we merchant marines were going overboard in a malaise of glory Todd noted poignantly, “Floaties float fast on fast-flowing foam!”

Unlike the raft or the paddles, we ourselves did not float. In spite of this, we never did salvage our cameras or the pictures on them, including the last one we took: of our pompous push-off into the shin-deep current. We were--or weren’t--barely teens at the time and each possessed IQs commensurate with our age. Frothing white water, we decided, was even more frightening than frothing white people.

     But never mind all that.

Of the hikers I’d met, Daypack and the two German youngsters, Agent Orange and Engineer, were doing just that, having elected to abstain from the trials of the trail in favor of floating much of the way to Harpers Ferry, Left Virginia. Daypack’s already AT alumni. He desired a different adventure this time around. Agent Orange and Engineer were likely never going to reach Katahdin; their visitor’s visas require them to depart the US within the imposed ninety-day limit, else they might risk being jailed or killed or waterboarded by its tyrannical government. We thought about the three-man navy from our superior vantage and wondered how they were faring. With all the rain this spring, we figured they were having a grand old time. Or hanging on for dear life. Maybe a good waterboarding would be a comparative pleasure cruise.

There are a number of businesses(1) catering to aqua-blazing ATers, shuttling them wherever they’d like to meet the trail after their excursion, if even the spot they’d left the path. Anyone in his or her right mind would prefer aqua-blazing to white-blazing, but the cost of the raft and transport is excessive, and walking, though tougher, is far simpler. Simplicity is a virtue, be it chosen or inescapable. Though I’m guilty of reciting the phrase, as I am now, less is more, more or less. Abundance is a hindrance. Excess a distress.

Noon crept up on our quadrumvirate when we weren’t looking. Actually we were, for it would be tremendously difficult to hike the AT without looking, although, incredibly, as mentioned before, more than one blind individual has hiked the AT’s every blind corner. (I must also be blind, for I cannot see how they could even begin to attempt to.) When we’d reached Big Meadows, named after a guy dubbed Meadows and not after picturesque, expansive grasslands, it was time for our first lunch.

Or it was for me, anyhow. My stomach had been filing an official complaint for an hour, moaning about the lack of attention. It was time to appease it; it habitually is when exercising all day. Unfortunately, no one else was peckish and we’d cast off and walk on toward Franklin Cliffs, almost four miles into the future.

There, finally, we stopped and laid waste to our food bags while overlooking the comely valleys below. The trail had done a number on us. A large number. We had the craggy perch to ourselves--unlike it’d been in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, the pipeline was no longer overbooked--and so we reclined for a treasured spell of nothingness. Down in a laze of glory. Lulled by the passage of time, still as the rocks we sprawled on. Breathing in a slice of eternity.

I once wrote that given the correct coordinates, life is best experienced on foot. But so is it best experienced on butt. If the hiker is fit enough, a thru-hike provides the best of both worlds. I think at that moment we all felt the same: with enough food, and enough trail, we could continue this way of life indefinitely. A lifetime or two. In some ways the AT is too short. We sat there motionless and almost emotionless. “It’s moments like these--” Mountain Goat said, stopping at that. We all knew what he meant; the serenity was not about to be enhanced with bloated words. Muir could’ve been seated beside us, extolling, and we’d have beseeched him to pipe down. (Rude dude you’d conclude.(2))

After the breather, we’d carry on over the docile landscape to the Skyland Resort and Restaurant. Resort restaurants generally don’t look favorably upon foul, unkempt hikers; we’re why they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. We decided we’d take the chance. Joining us was Kalamity Jane, a Minnesotan auburn-dyed-hair thirty-year-old looker whom I was enamored by, and a girl named War Cry, who did not mesmerize, though she was noticeably friendlier and more genuine than Kalamity. At one point, Kalamity said something so absolutely insensitive to TK, about her choice of food and her petite build or some such, that I thought I might punch her, but instead I let my hormones get the better of me and sat and stared. There are times I wish logic ruled.

The salad was perhaps the most piquant one I could recall, and had it been bigger than a forkful, I might’ve enjoyed it longer. Somehow I’d forgotten one of the golden thru-hiking rules: Calories, Not Health! My head had clearly not been screwed on right this morning. I left the resort resorting to other measures, by rummaging through the remnants of my trail poisons: generic Pop Tart crumbs, Nutella on old oily cheese, and something I couldn’t quite identify. Calories, all.

As afternoon came and went, I was ahead of the others and ended up in the Byrds Nest #3 Hut. I’m alongside Spacey, a twenty-ish year-old spacey suburbanite mentioned before. The guy is entirely likeable but has a hard time making those around him at ease, although it’s obviously not his responsibility. He looks uncomfortable being him. He’s meek and mousy, doesn’t make eye contact, and speaks with the strangest of pauses and pitch. It could make a man nervous. But the Los Angelino is just a schlimazel like me and not a threat of any sort (except to my chances of connecting with Kalamity, if she were to pull in).

The birds in the area are cheery. They seemed to have frightened away all other animal forms, save for a lone butterfly and the usual mass of mice.

“Did you know butterflies smell with their feet?” Spacey asked, while scrutinizing the large monarch that had landed on my shoes, which had been strategically placed at his end of the shelter. (Strategically placed there by me.)

“Yeah,” I replied, “but so what? My feet also smell.”

The mice hounding us are unreal. They’re having their way with us, galloping across our faces. They’re our enemies; we’re their friends. When we watched one scale the fifteen-foot bear bag pole to get to our food, we knew these were a different strain--an alien clan of sticky-footed rodents sent here to destroy the human race, beginning with a couple of diffident backpackers. It was a long day today; it looks to be a long night tonight.

"Foot"note 1: By "number of businesses" I am referring to one or more businesses, since one is a number, as is anything greater. Mathematics professors will profess that zero is also an integer, but I consider it more of a concept, except when I'm talking about the number of women who find me attractive. Anyway, to aver that "a number of businesses cater to AT aqua-blazers" when in fact no businesses do sounds misguided and misleading, which of course is okay since I've never been a guide or a leader. Or a miss for that matter.

"Foot"note 2: Muir was not perfect, after all. We shan't forget he championed for the removal of natives (those lowly "Indians") and for wide-scale forest fire suppression. Both suggestions were implemented and both suggestions we now know to be erroneous. Poor ol' John was a product of his time and could not see everything in advance, like we informed modernized humans can.