A Limp in the Woods (Day 127)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 127: Monday, July 29th, 2013
Hanover, NH to Moose Mountain Shelter = 11 miles
Miles to date: 1,755

Camped on Campus

Yesterday, a small cluster of us--Tugboat, Shepherd, Bearbell, Chickadee and Chuckadee--met up in charming ol’ Hanover. We exploited Dartmouth’s delightful faculties during a much-appreciated pit-stop. Students (make that: their parents) spend forty-five thousand--yes, $45,000--to attend the Poison Ivy League preschool each year, a figure that doesn’t include books or living costs. We paid zilch(1). Sadly, someday soon, $45,000 will appear cheap.

Campus was abandoned(2)--education stops in summer. So I hopped on its rubbery track and timed myself in a mile. (Four laps plus nine meters.) Not to brag or nothing, but I was only nine minutes and six seconds from a sub-four-minute mile. After puking and recovering, I used the computers at the Dartmouth Outing Club, then showered, shat (in a flushable toilet!), and sightseed*. (*I may have sightsaw, but I know not the past-tense of sightsee, since my parents didn’t pay for me to attend cawlidge. Or preskool. Still, I know my parents would have loved me had I not been their child.) All this for no cost. Our guidebooks said there were “no hiker accommodations on campus.” Ha! We skilled swindlers recognize that almost everywhere has accommodations, so long as you known how to stroll under the radar while skimming from the top. Scam-artists, skim-artists. Stealthy, wealthy. Who needs money?!

Bill Bryson, author of the Appalachian Trail-esque best seller A Walk in the Woods and many other engaging reads, once called Hanover home. Or it called him home. It was easy to see why. The place was welcoming, even to fetid foot travelers. As alluded to, university hadn’t started yet, still being July and all, but one gets the feeling the students would be just as welcoming, if not envious. (I’d already met five thru-hikers from Hanover, all preppy Dartmouth students on sabbatical, each unaware of and unacquainted with one another. My guess is that there’ll be loads more in coming years. The trail attracts authors and students and every other type, including Sunday hikers, who we’d recognized by deodorant and potent perfume, even on a Monday.)

By the way, cawlidge students especially love Hanover since it’s just one letter from being Hangover. Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ thang.

Our trek into town was equally as inviting as the settlement itself, taking us through fragrant forest and bucolic farmland both. Chickadee and I seemed anxious though, perhaps to pierce a new state line, and we dashed through most the cultivated country without second thought or a second glance. We even mixed in some run-walking. Ralking. Wunning. In my case, it kept my mind off my itchy ass, which now itched all the way up to the back of my neck. New Hampshire can be rearranged into ‘Her New Mishap,’ but it applies to his too. Mine too.

When nighttime knocked, the five of us ate multiple pizza pies at C & A Pizza before going our separate ways. Since we get along so famously, Bearbell and I stuck together and searched for a free place to park for the evening. After a failed foray around the neighboring high school--where kids go to get high--my fellow flunky and I would end up camping on campus. A different campus. Our adopted abode? The university’s soccer pitches. We’re next to some humming electrical transformer boxes, a few paces from the AT. True troglodytes. All night we counted on campus cops to come, tasers a-blazing, but they never did.

This morning, stirred by sprinklers spitting atop our tents, Bearbell and I hastily packed up and revisited town. For buttered coffee and supplies at the local co-op (co-op: Crazy Outlandish Outrageous Prices). And for a last, lasting look around. The coffee was so hot it bubbled. It was also as strong as death. So a short while later the two of us re-entered the jungle, doing what comes natural when on drugs: power walking. 

As per the previous day, I was forced to spread and hold my ass cheeks apart while doing so, so the task didn’t feel so natural. Luckily, by midday, the rash retreated and I could use my arms for other tasks, like picking my nose or swinging wildly at the black flies enveloping us. If only I was armed with spray. Or a taser tennis racket.

The trail was once again a muddy mess, since it was now taking on water. (Peculiarly, it was taking on water and we were the ones sinking.) Pushing draping foliage aside as we went, the two of us walked in silence. Or we would have walked in silence, had it not been for the mosquitoes, who seemed not to notice the rain. We cursed, cussed and swore. Then we cursed, cussed and swore some more. Meanwhile, the mozzies screeched nonstop. Bearbell noted that we hadn’t incurred or endured such a bad onslaught since Great Barrington. I wryly noted that the French caveman brings bad luck.

But it was great to be back with him. Although we were not entirely happy (it was another mundane, moisture-filled Monday, even though we weren’t certain what day of the week it was(3)), he would eventually begin to wield the usual laughter--like a sharp, shiny shiv--as we continued north atop a raised, rickety boardwalk near an unnamed pond...

Bearbell: “How many AT hikerz duz zit take tu screw in ze light bulb?”

Me, perhaps a bit too literally: “None, there are no sockets out here.”

Bearbell: “ATerz don’t screw in light bulbz; zay screw in dirty old sleeping bagz.” 

Terrible though the jokes were, I was glad for the amusement. I enjoyed being around Tugboat and Chickadee, but the pair often seemed reluctant to laugh. “Ah, well, I suppose they’re both just shy,” I said.

“No,” Bearbell replied bluntly. “Around you, zay are scared.”

Precipitation prevailing, my confrère and I put paid to the day and are now safely situated in Moose Mountain Shelter. Hotel Appalachia. No one else is here. Not even any moose or meese or mongoose or whatever the plural of ‘moose’ is (I wouldn’t know: my parents didn’t pay for me to go to cawlidge). Although the structure’s tin roof is chintzy and rather unruly due to the downpour, it is held in place by some serious supporting beams: logs as thick as Bearbell’s quads. Now there’s some irony for you: the trees were felled lest a tree were to fall atop them.

PS: Notable Dartmouth alumni includes Dr. Seuss, Mr. Rogers, and Robert Frost. By the way, confrère Frost, the road less traveled remains a road; for a quieter means try a trail, or no trail at all. The road less traveled is the road not built. In today’s world there are no roads less traveled.

"Pound"note 1: But then they get more popular initials after their names once they’re done with their goal (e.g., B.A., M.A., M.S., Ph.D), compared to the lowly thru-hiker (e.g., A.T., P.C.T., C.D.T.).

"Fund"note 2: Probably because no one could afford it. 

"Freedom"note 3: Freedom is not knowing--or caring--what day of the week it is.