A Limp in the Woods (Day 68)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 68: Friday, May 31st, 2013
Manassas Gap Shelter to Mile 994-ish = 18-ish miles
Miles to date: 994 (ish)

The Roller Coaster

It had to happen. I’d been feeling far too chipper and have had too many permissive days in a row. I began to wonder what was going on--the AT isn’t becoming a cinch, is it? Am I gettin’ fit? Am I on the wrong track here? Welp. Today put me squarely back in my place. All day I dragged, to the point I wished a widow-maker would end the wretchedness. There’d be no widow, just a pile of decaying flesh for herds of hikers to amble past and kick or pee on. It’d better than having to hike.

Only a fool would not have expected days like this--clunkers. The thru-hiker pushes daily for months on end; it’s not the body’s responsibility to blindly accept such behavior without some degree of dispute; some possibly being a large sum. This is especially the case given how the long-distance hiker refuels and attempts to sleep.

Another given: the body need not forgive. My body owed me nothing. I owe it. Better.

And so it was I scraped my feet--and knuckles--all day, body on strike. The others would glide ahead and enjoy their lengthy lunches when I’d finally lumber in, grumpy and growling. They’d check if I was still alive--it was tough to tell from either vantage, mine or theirs--before rocketing on to the next stop, leaving me with little rest. I wanted nothing more than to be off my feet (and knuckles), reclining beside a nice, bug-free brook, scoffing something that might bequeath a reviving kick. Beside a blue-eyed brunette.

A stash of trail magic embosked in the grass a mile past Blueridge Mountain Road did little to breathe life into me, but I was grateful for Shellie’s charity. We didn’t know Shellie--she was nowhere in sight--but we worshiped her all the same. She’d hiked out with a cumbrous cooler in hand--presumably in both hands--leaving anonymous ATers with a banana bonanza. Also in attendance were strawberries, infant carrots, sodas, ice, and a notepad to sign. It was a torrefying 90 degrees; the ice was particularly welcomed. We were the first to the treasure trove and each wrote a protracted thank-you missive.

After trailing for the umpteenth time, I laid down in the dirt. Fetal position, thumb in mouth. Beside me sat a praying mantis, doing what it does. A soothsayer, they say! (Mantis comes from the Greek mantikos, for prophet.) I say pleeease. And why would a prophet pray? Because she can see what the future holds, and prays it won’t go that way? (Who can fault her?)

I studied the insect at length, with unalloyed fascination. I’m no entomologist (nor an entymologist), but I know this much: praying mantises don’t pray. Like every other bless-id animal, they know no god worthy of praise, and no god worth praying to. They simply exist in a day-to-day survival mode, swiveling their drop-dead heads in any desirable direction, with no thought squandered on an afterlife. They don’t even give much thought to the life they live now! No wasted thought on the past or the future or even the present. They live momentarily in time and space, like all God’s creatures. I admired the insect.

Its identity is just another lame name, another silly humanistic characteristic, handed down by Homo sapiens with nothing better to do and no real understanding. Still, its appellation (not to be confused with Appalachian) is as good as any. “Through naming comes knowing,” a sophic philosopher once put it. And through knowing comes power, which is what humans ultimately desire. Power over the natural world, power over one another, power over ourselves, power over the gods. I pulled my thumb out of my mouth and prayed with my fellow Earth-bound inhabitant--best wishes for the lot of us---and got up and carried on, into the unknown.

Somehow I’d toil eighteen miles by the sun’s last act on this, Walt Whitman’s birthday. I’d settle down with the others just beyond the start of the legendary ‘Roller Coaster.’ The Roller Coaster is a thirteen-plus-mile succession of short but extraordinarily steep hills resembling its namesake or the profile of a giant saw blade--one that will assuredly cut into us. To me it looks like punishment drawn up by a pissed off PE teacher. 

I attributed the higher mileage to an overall loss of elevation, but more so to the longer daylight hours, since I’m sure I never topped a mile an hour. We’re just three weeks from the Northern Hemisphere’s lengthiest day of the year, or that with the longest lasting sunlight hours, and the lingering light let me start early and finish late, without blindly stumbling in the dark. Stumbling in the light, however...

The Roller Coaster

As I slouch lifelessly inside my tomb tent, writing and chewing under-cooked ramen (al dente, we gastronomes say; you know you’ve hiked far when ramen sounds good), I’ve found a deer tick embedded in my left knee, which I’ve noticed is inflamed. Inflamed as in swollen, not angered--that’s reserved for my mind. I carry no tick tool or tweezers, and I sent my pocket knife packing back in Daleville, but my fingernails, although grimy, are ripe for the task. And the tick is ripe for the pickin’. A big fatty, full of juicy hemoglobin. I hope mine and no one else’s. Pinch, twist, pull. Done. Excised. I examined the perpetrator and worried I might now contract Lyme disease or Ebola, only to ponder if I already had them. No wonder I’m wiped.

Al dente dinner done, the roller coaster continued: Why it is I behave so badly when feeling badly? The truest form--maybe the only true form--of positivity is the type that occurs within negative circumstances or within a negative environment; anyone can be positive when everything is going his or her way. Why do I cave in so quickly? Why do I seek to affect and infect others with my problems? Misery may love company, I suppose, but only a fool enjoys its company. In spite of their youth, Goat, Klutz and Backstreet are far from fools. They’re not, however, far enough from this fool.