An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 69: Saturday, June 1st, 2013
Mile 994-ish to 4 miles shy of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia = 21 miles
Miles to date: 1,015
Today marked a number of milestones:
Day 69 (hee hee)
June
National Trails Day
The 1,000-mile mark
Entered West Virginia, which means…
Departed Virginia!
Granted, all these alleged milestones are brainchildren of man--synthetic and incongruent to Nature. As it is with the seas, land knows no borders; time doesn’t know its name (or number); and miles are an arbitrary architecture attempting to give distance meaning. Codswallop, all.
But! Man is part of Nature. And like all else in existence, he does what he does. He manufactures miles and milestones; creates differing deities and rivaling religions--and resultant wars on account of ‘em; invents time and the timing and synchronicity of it, then stamps a date on it (starting a little behind schedule, I fear); devises direction (north, south, east, west, up, down, etc); bestows long scientific names upon lively plants and lifeless planets and much else; contaminates his home; hates; falls prey to ownership and materialism; hunts to extinction; ponders his existence; ponders the existence of intelligent life; theorizes; and eats at Dairy Queen. Best of all, he invents the Miss Universe Pageant. (The universe is comprised of electrons, neutrons, protons, and morons.)
No milestone means much to me--none of much means much to me. I mention them lest I can’t recall where (and when) I was on this day. One should always have an alibi. “Where were you on 11/9?” a European acquaintance once asked. (They say dates in metric, I think.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have any evidence of absence at the time.
Now, onto the day’s news bulletin. Because no news is good news, right?
In theme with the guff above, a number of hikers are attempting the “Four State Challenge,” with designs of motoring from Virginia to Pennsylvania through the flyover states West Virginia and Maryland. Roughly forty-five miles in under twenty-four hours. This flight of passage seems a rite of passage for the type-A types. I’d been asked if I was going to take a crack at the feat, but as more of a type-C-minus type--if that--I’ve responded in the same manner on each occasion, “man made borders hold no interest to me.” This is a long-winded way of saying “no,” which is a pride-protecting way of saying, “I’m incapable.”
One time I broke tradition and responded with, “Four State Challenge? Hah! I’m doing the Five State Challenge!” but the guy didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. Anyway, I’d also been enlightened that Harpers Ferry was where the Appalachian Trail Conservancy was located, and that it was too nice a town to blow through. Reason enough right there.
Shortly after waking, a clean-cut but tangy beardless guy flew by, presumably pulled by this very goal. Somewhat of awalking running contradiction, he’d draped small Tibetan prayer flags around his pack, to at least appear the part. Zen master, but faster. The monk with funk. The hammerhead didn’t even have time to offer a hello or to check out the forest or the trees around us, though he did flash a look of distrust and disgust.
No biggie. I knew I’d never relate to the guy when I watched him check his wristwatch/heart rate monitor/GPS as he passed. He had successfully reduced the AT to an enumerated challenge, a set of numbers. A man on a mathematical mission. Not my kind of man, not my kind of mission. Not any kind of hiking. More like racing. Go north young man. And hurry! Because it might not be there when you arrive!
About the racing: it seems it’s difficult for some to grasp that the idea isn’t to beat the other thru-hikers. Maybe these types will learn--if there’s a competition going on, it is against themselves, and against the voices inside them. I’d venture to guess they can’t outrun, let alone out-hike, them. I know I haven’t been able to. And I was paid to go fast. Demons don’t die. They cannot be ignored or outrun. Deals must be struck.
After another horrifying brekky--split pea soup with bulbous globs of chunky peanut butter thrown in--Backstreet and I pulled away, just ahead of Mountain Goat and Tiny Klutz. We faced, straight-on, the formidable hills of the Roller Coaster. When hiking there is no coasting.
When we drew near to the thousand-mile mark, after the half marathon of moguls, we ran back into Bulldog, the gregarious Georgian. (“I got a dawg in the fight, but this dawg don’t bite.”) A mile later the three of us absconded Virginia and its glorious five hundred and fifty miles, trading it for its western namesake. No more Virginia Blues, which never actually struck.
Day 69: Saturday, June 1st, 2013
Mile 994-ish to 4 miles shy of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia = 21 miles
Miles to date: 1,015
Today marked a number of milestones:
Day 69 (hee hee)
June
National Trails Day
The 1,000-mile mark
Entered West Virginia, which means…
Departed Virginia!
Granted, all these alleged milestones are brainchildren of man--synthetic and incongruent to Nature. As it is with the seas, land knows no borders; time doesn’t know its name (or number); and miles are an arbitrary architecture attempting to give distance meaning. Codswallop, all.
“A journey of a thousand miles gets you almost halfway there.”
~Funnybone
“The thousand-mile mark knows what mile one never expected.”
~Same guy
But! Man is part of Nature. And like all else in existence, he does what he does. He manufactures miles and milestones; creates differing deities and rivaling religions--and resultant wars on account of ‘em; invents time and the timing and synchronicity of it, then stamps a date on it (starting a little behind schedule, I fear); devises direction (north, south, east, west, up, down, etc); bestows long scientific names upon lively plants and lifeless planets and much else; contaminates his home; hates; falls prey to ownership and materialism; hunts to extinction; ponders his existence; ponders the existence of intelligent life; theorizes; and eats at Dairy Queen. Best of all, he invents the Miss Universe Pageant. (The universe is comprised of electrons, neutrons, protons, and morons.)
No milestone means much to me--none of much means much to me. I mention them lest I can’t recall where (and when) I was on this day. One should always have an alibi. “Where were you on 11/9?” a European acquaintance once asked. (They say dates in metric, I think.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have any evidence of absence at the time.
Now, onto the day’s news bulletin. Because no news is good news, right?
In theme with the guff above, a number of hikers are attempting the “Four State Challenge,” with designs of motoring from Virginia to Pennsylvania through the flyover states West Virginia and Maryland. Roughly forty-five miles in under twenty-four hours. This flight of passage seems a rite of passage for the type-A types. I’d been asked if I was going to take a crack at the feat, but as more of a type-C-minus type--if that--I’ve responded in the same manner on each occasion, “man made borders hold no interest to me.” This is a long-winded way of saying “no,” which is a pride-protecting way of saying, “I’m incapable.”
One time I broke tradition and responded with, “Four State Challenge? Hah! I’m doing the Five State Challenge!” but the guy didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. Anyway, I’d also been enlightened that Harpers Ferry was where the Appalachian Trail Conservancy was located, and that it was too nice a town to blow through. Reason enough right there.
Shortly after waking, a clean-cut but tangy beardless guy flew by, presumably pulled by this very goal. Somewhat of a
No biggie. I knew I’d never relate to the guy when I watched him check his wristwatch/heart rate monitor/GPS as he passed. He had successfully reduced the AT to an enumerated challenge, a set of numbers. A man on a mathematical mission. Not my kind of man, not my kind of mission. Not any kind of hiking. More like racing. Go north young man. And hurry! Because it might not be there when you arrive!
About the racing: it seems it’s difficult for some to grasp that the idea isn’t to beat the other thru-hikers. Maybe these types will learn--if there’s a competition going on, it is against themselves, and against the voices inside them. I’d venture to guess they can’t outrun, let alone out-hike, them. I know I haven’t been able to. And I was paid to go fast. Demons don’t die. They cannot be ignored or outrun. Deals must be struck.
After another horrifying brekky--split pea soup with bulbous globs of chunky peanut butter thrown in--Backstreet and I pulled away, just ahead of Mountain Goat and Tiny Klutz. We faced, straight-on, the formidable hills of the Roller Coaster. When hiking there is no coasting.
When we drew near to the thousand-mile mark, after the half marathon of moguls, we ran back into Bulldog, the gregarious Georgian. (“I got a dawg in the fight, but this dawg don’t bite.”) A mile later the three of us absconded Virginia and its glorious five hundred and fifty miles, trading it for its western namesake. No more Virginia Blues, which never actually struck.
‘Twas now onto the West Virginia Blues, which would last, in all, four whopping miles(1). More of a fleeting sad thought than the blues. Expectedly, the woods were the same: deep, dark, lush and lovely.
West Virginia is the Mountain State. Its motto is Montani Semper Liberi, Pig Latin for Mountaineers are Always Free. Their university mascot is the Mountaineer. And it’s been said if the state were pulled taut, all its now-flattened topography would outstretch even big ol’ Texas.* But the trail through West Virginia is benign at best, especially to northbounders like us, who head, for the most part, downhill throughout. Almost heaven, West Virginia.
(*West Virginians tend to overlook just how big Texas’s mangled landscape would be if pulled taut. Nor do they delve into who, exactly, would be capable of such a colossal operation. Chuck Norris would be ripe for it, but he’s Texan, ergo partial to Texas. In any event, as it stands now [or lays now], the Mountain State is just nine percent the size of the Lone Star State.)
Anyway.
Bulldog, we’d long since surmised, was well-to-do. Every time we’d see his lived-in face in town, as we had for more than five hundred miles now, he’d be inhaling a pricey meal. Or he’d have his own five-star hotel room. (Most hikers pile in together to save dough, and usually into a one-star hotel; I tend to remain out in the five-billion-star hotel, since, among other reasons, its cost is more to my liking.) And he simply didn’t look the sort! He looked destitute.
With a deep, raspy southern drawl to match the appearance, he even sounded impoverished. I was sure he was a two-pack-a-day smoker and drank his way through life, in hopes of recovering from a broken heart or a shattered childhood. We joked that he must’ve worked for the CIA or FBI, and was pretending to be hiking the AT to help find Scott Lilly’s killer. We couldn’t think how he had the funding he did.
Judging one another is what humans do best, but Bulldog was a tough nut to crack. He wore heavy, old cotton tee shirts but carried a $500 tent in a $300 backpack. His footwear was in the $150 range, yet he liked his denim and his stainless steel utensils.
Judging one another is what humans do best, but Bulldog was a tough nut to crack. He wore heavy, old cotton tee shirts but carried a $500 tent in a $300 backpack. His footwear was in the $150 range, yet he liked his denim and his stainless steel utensils.
What threw us off the most was the fact he was as friendly as they came. Friendlier, no doubt, but not too friendly or suspicious. He’s as quick-witted at anyone we’d met yet. Based on the exterior, I had been fooled into thinking he was nothing more than a country bumpkin, bumming his way up the trail. But the witticisms were lightning-like and perfectly timed, like a Yogi Berra type. Funny people are intelligent people. We liked being around him, naturally. He raised our collective IQ. Eventually Goat and TK caught up to us and so I asked Bulldog what he did for a living.
“I do stand-up.”
“No joking?” we asked.
“Lots of jokin’,” he answered. “Else I’d’ve never gotten any gigs.” We laughed.
“I’m just shittin.’ I write children’s books.”
“Yeah?!”
“Yeah, but publishers always reject my work; they say it’s too childish.” More laughter.
“I do stand-up.”
“No joking?” we asked.
“Lots of jokin’,” he answered. “Else I’d’ve never gotten any gigs.” We laughed.
“I’m just shittin.’ I write children’s books.”
“Yeah?!”
“Yeah, but publishers always reject my work; they say it’s too childish.” More laughter.
“Nah, in reality, I work for the Amish as an electrician.”
THIS is why we love the dude.
It turns out the fair-skinned guy really is an electrician. It’s a high-demand skill; he rakes in $75-$100 an hour. But best of all, he is his own boss. (“I hate my boss,” he says.) The second he’d made the decision to attempt the AT, he started saving. Funds accrued quickly. So he decided beforehand to enjoy the trip without compromising or scrimping. “I knew it was gonna be one hell-ovva tough trip, and that I’d need ta rejuvenate every chance I got.” I envied him.
THIS is why we love the dude.
It turns out the fair-skinned guy really is an electrician. It’s a high-demand skill; he rakes in $75-$100 an hour. But best of all, he is his own boss. (“I hate my boss,” he says.) The second he’d made the decision to attempt the AT, he started saving. Funds accrued quickly. So he decided beforehand to enjoy the trip without compromising or scrimping. “I knew it was gonna be one hell-ovva tough trip, and that I’d need ta rejuvenate every chance I got.” I envied him.
Hiking with the two animals, Goat and Bulldog, had my cheeks hurting. More, even, than my feet. All we did was laugh. And walk.
Doing the latter, we’d separate into our own paces and places. Such severance sometimes happens with a goodbye, but usually it happens wordlessly. It always occurs. The strangest thing about this parting is that one never knows when, or if, he’ll again see those he’s hiked with. You’ll sign off with a “see ya later” or “see ya down the trail,” but you don’t always. The way of the traveler can be sad. Happy Trails is a more genuine goodbye, because the words happy and trails are synonymous. And hikers never stop hiking.
By mid-afternoon Backstreet and I were on our own once more. The terrain was easy, the footing was tricky. Bulldog had muscled ahead. Klutz and Goat had dropped back. An outcropping of rocks welcomed us not far from Blackburn Appalachian Trail Center, where we’d sit under an unhindered sun, demolishing lunch and soft drinks.
By mid-afternoon Backstreet and I were on our own once more. The terrain was easy, the footing was tricky. Bulldog had muscled ahead. Klutz and Goat had dropped back. An outcropping of rocks welcomed us not far from Blackburn Appalachian Trail Center, where we’d sit under an unhindered sun, demolishing lunch and soft drinks.
Bulldog was situated as if it were home, enjoying a surprise visit from his dad. The guy looked more like his brother. The younger of the two purchased a room for the remainder of the day. I’d call him a lucky bastard, but he is a hard-working bastard and good things should come to those like him. I tried the work thing once, but it didn’t work for me.
Though I tried, I couldn’t tell what Backstreet was eating. I informed him it didn’t look safe for human consumption. “There are mice that would turn down that meal.” He kept grinding away. After I made another comment about it, he replied, “You know, ever since stepping on this trail, I’ve tried thinking of a food that’s disgusting and completely inedible, but I just can’t do it.”
 |
| Blackburn Appalachian Center |
I started laughing up a lung at what may end up my favorite line of the trip, right alongside “I wouldn’t wish the AT upon my worst enemies,” which I’d overheard at one of Tennessee’s shelters.
As I was wiping away the tears and the food I’d dribbled, Goat and TK pulled in, grinning as per normal. They laughed at me laughing, a normal response. Even though Tiny Klutz looked to be having a difficult day, she never stopped smiling. She rarely did. The lot of us left the center and carried on as a group.
Two hours later, at Keys Gap, we faced a decision: head east to the Sweet Springs Country Store, a third of a mile away, or head west to the Mountaineer Mini-Mart and its neighboring Torlone’s Pizza joint, also a third of a mile away. The promise of pizza won out. What a choice we’d made! The Mountaineer was run by a nonstop smoker with a voice like a screeching train wheel. Barefooted, obese, possibly pregnant, tattooed and toothless, she immediately caught our attention. Anyone outside of West Virginia, even those who’ve never been, would think of her as a true West Virginian. The store was devoid of supplies, save for some expired Pop Tarts and some candy cigarettes, which I hadn’t smoked since I was a child. They’re now illegal in California, in fact.
As I was wiping away the tears and the food I’d dribbled, Goat and TK pulled in, grinning as per normal. They laughed at me laughing, a normal response. Even though Tiny Klutz looked to be having a difficult day, she never stopped smiling. She rarely did. The lot of us left the center and carried on as a group.
Two hours later, at Keys Gap, we faced a decision: head east to the Sweet Springs Country Store, a third of a mile away, or head west to the Mountaineer Mini-Mart and its neighboring Torlone’s Pizza joint, also a third of a mile away. The promise of pizza won out. What a choice we’d made! The Mountaineer was run by a nonstop smoker with a voice like a screeching train wheel. Barefooted, obese, possibly pregnant, tattooed and toothless, she immediately caught our attention. Anyone outside of West Virginia, even those who’ve never been, would think of her as a true West Virginian. The store was devoid of supplies, save for some expired Pop Tarts and some candy cigarettes, which I hadn’t smoked since I was a child. They’re now illegal in California, in fact.
The gang moseyed over to the adjacent pizza place and took a seat. I sat curbside outside, catching up on writing and people watching. The spectating was pure entertainment. Had I been forced to either:
1) Make love to any of the women that entered the store or...
2) Slit my wrists...
...I’d have chosen the latter, no suicide epistle needed. West Virginia has a reputation throughout the rest of the US, thanks in part to some pretty stupid TV shows, but it’s well deserved.
The guys exited the pizzeria/bar empty-handed but highly amused. They were never helped, but they didn’t seem to give a damn one way or the other, telling me all about the locals inside and the topics overheard. “You should go in, Funnybone. Ya might find yerself a wife.” But no. It was time, we decided, to head back to the trail, lest we become infected. Lyme disease seemed far less unnerving.
Another couple miles and we reached a sensible enough camp spot, a few miles shy of Harpers Ferry. It had no water and no views entitled to preservation, but it was sensible because it was there and we were there, and it was time to stop walking.
"Foot"note 1: Even a snail can’t fall vic-dumb to the West Virginia Blues. Although the AT obediently parallels the Virginia/West Virginia border for twenty miles (a hiker frequently has his left foot in WV and his right in VA), the thru-hiker is fully in the state for fewer than five miles.
No comments:
Post a Comment