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 clump of us--Tugboat, Bearbell, Shepherd, Chickadee, 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. You can run up a big bill collecting information.

Campus was abandoned(2)--education stops in summer. So I hopped on its rubbery track, its oval office, 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 loo!), 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?! And, as the idiots of America know: who needs a college education when there’s the Internet?! The Earth is flat, man!

Bill Bryson, author of the Appalachian Trail-esque best seller A Walk in the Woods and 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 as inviting as the settlement itself, taking us through fragrant forest and bucolic farmland. Chickadee and I seemed anxious, perhaps to pierce a new state line, and we dashed through the cultivated country without a second thought or a second glance. We even mixed in some run-walking. Ralking. Wunning. It helped keep my mind off my itchy ass, which now itched all the way up to the back of my neck. New Hampshire can be jumbled into Her New Mishap, but it applies to his too. Mine too.

When nighttime knocked, we five ate twelve large discs at C&A Pizza. Afterward, we waddled our own ways. Because Bearbell and I get along so famously, we stuck together and searched for a place to park ourselves, down by the schoolyard. After a failed foray at the high school--where kids go to get high--my fellow flunky and I camped on a different campus. Our adopted abode? The university’s soccer pitches. (“It’s called fútbol,” Frenchie contended. “Life itself.”) We’re beside some humming electrical transformer boxes, a few feet from the AT. True troglodytes. All night we counted on campus cops to come with tasers a-blazing, but they never did.

This morning, stirred by sprinklers spitting on us, Bearbell and I hastily packed and revisited Hanover’s epicenter. For buttered coffee and goods at the co-op (co-op: Crazy Outlandish Outrageous Prices). And for a last, lasting look-see. The coffee was so hot it bubbled. It was also as strong as death. So a little later the two of us left the Halls of Higher Learning for the tunnel of lower learning. Back to our natural element: Nature itself. As we re-entered the jungle we did what comes natural when on drugs: power walking. 

The task didn’t feel natural. As per the previous day, I was forced to hold my ass cheeks apart while walking. Thankfully by midday the rash retreated. 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. Or superpowers.

The trail was again a muddy mess, since it was now taking on water. (It was taking on water, but 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 terrific to be back in tandem. Although we were not entirely happy (it was another mundane, moisturized Monday, even though we weren’t certain what day of the week it was(3)), he would eventually begin to wield the usual humor--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. We’re now safely situated in Moose Mountain Shelter. Hotel Appalachia. No one else is here. No moose, no meese, no mongoose, no whatever the plural of ‘moose’ is (I wouldn’t know: my parents didn’t pay for me to go to cawlidge). The structure’s tin roof is chintzy and rather unruly due to the downpour, but it’s held in place by serious supporting beams: logs as thick as Bearbell’s quads. Now there’s some irony: 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., AT, PCT, CDT).

"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.