A Limp in the Woods (Day 130)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 130: Thursday, August 1st, 2013
NH 25C Hwy to Kinsman Notch (Hwy 112) = 14-ish miles
Miles to date: 1,797

August. Already. The Sunday of Summer. A month comprised of Sundays, that day of dread. Although the days drag on, somehow summer is flying by. Winter’s rounding the bend, unabated. More rapids. Too rapid. Perpetual pain, these fluctuating seasons. All is flux, said a seeker whose name I can’t spell. (Heraclitoris can’t be it.) “You cannot step twice into the same river.” I love all things that slip by, except the seasons.

~~~~~~~~~~

Although dawn had long since slipped by, upon waking two things dawned on me: one, I have to go number two. And two, I need to eat. After taking care of number two, which was number one, I began to take care of number two. Post scrub. No need to delve into the dirty details about number one (er, number two), but let me to say something about number two…

Milk is an absolute boon. Whole milk, from holy cows. None of that skim stuff from bony bovine. Oh, and also: ravioli makes for a delectable morning dish. 

I’d picked up the liquid (for much-needed protein and to disguise the flagrant foulness of instant coffee) and the can of food in the convenience store in Warren yesterday. Although I hated having to lug the weight of a can, empty or otherwise, I wouldn’t have to schlepp it but for a day. Today. 

By day’s end we’d end up reaching another resupply point, this time a real town (named after a real man--Lincoln) and not just a junction, and so the weight wouldn’t impart the same destructive force it might have had I lugged it for days on end. Cans are a no-go on trail. Heavy bear-attracting lightning magnets with sharp edges.

It all began after the numbers one and two. Bearbell and I were up and walking. Trails have no other grounds; one must travel them to take advantage of their intention.

Full of intent, we raced toward the most renowned stretch of the entire Appalachian Trail, the White Mountain Range. The Whites. For the first time in too long a time we were excited, for there is, as Twain penned, no opiate quite like alpine pedestrianism. The Whites are rugged, dazzling alpine mountains. Topographical hysteria. Bearbell joked that the thought of them made his nipples hard; not an image I cared to envision. And for once, I did not know what to say. Still, I found myself almost giddy for what was to come, smothered within a silver-lined Cloud Nine. 

As mountains go the Whites are not all that tall. Not to a Coloradan or a Frenchman. But they make up for it in their severity and isolation--Cloud Nine in Deep Space Nine--not to mention their grandeur (which I mentioned). People get lost in them every year. People get hurt in them every year. People get dead in them every year. Irrespective of season. Some of Earth’s highest wind speeds have occurred in these peaks: a preposterous two hundred and thirty-one miles per hour. The Whites are proper mountains.

The AT aptitude test continues. Veteran ATers often aggrandize and tell us that this is the test’s true genesis: “The trail begins in New Hampshire.” We’ve walked a long way just to get started.

“Bring ‘zem on!” yawps Frenchie in his usual joie de vivre, rubbing his nipples.

We’d inch our way into the southern fringes of the Whites after leaving our first bump of the day, an appropriately named Mount Mist. Mist came and went, both hillock and the vaporous soup du jour. Ahead of us: Mount Moosilauke. At 4,800 feet tall, it stood nearly four thousand feet higher than where we were. In its typical fearless fashion, the trail doesn’t screw around; it heads straight upward. Each step required resolve. And rest. 

Le Challenge Du Jour

I’d eventually eke ahead of Bearbell. He required more rest. His poor ol’ office-worker lungs weren’t managing the task as he’d hoped. No matter how hard he inhaled, oxygen wasn’t being delivered, or so he blurted. Each time I waited for him I grew cold and began shivering, since the weather was indecisive in its role. One minute it was warm, the next, freezing. Big balloons of cadaverous clouds came and went, and several threatened. My lightweight affordable clothing was not affording much by way of comfort. I told Frenchie I’d meet him at the top. “You won’t miss it,” I assured him, even though I’d never been.

Turns out he would miss it. So would I. Although we attained the summit, we never laid eyes on it. A change of atmosphere barged in. A dark fog followed it and smothered us. The Whites had faded to black. It reminded me of an old story…

~~~~~~~~~~

I’d been hiking in Goat Rocks Wilderness in Central Washington, an area known for splendor and thousand-foot drops. (Moosilauke reminded me of it, in a way.) It was not an area for the timid or the altitudinally-challenged. As its name implies--and the mountain goats can attest--it is a rocky, precarious stretch. And for whatever reason, the region often invites huge dosages of dreadful weather. Fog, rain, clouds and wind are the norm. Anyway, it was mid-afternoon. I was alone and making my way along an exposed ridge when a blanket fog descended. I lost the trail in visibility so bad I was unable to see my hands, and more significantly, my feet.

Within minutes it had become a life and death situation and, to be sure, things were leaning heavily in favor of death. I began prodding my way forward with my trusty hardwood trekking stick, the same one I’d used since childhood. Soon, though, I reached a point where I could no longer feel anything but thin air in front of me. I figured I must’ve missed a bend in the ridge so I turned back to retrace my steps, but then I could feel nothing but thin air behind me. I poked to the right: nothing; poked to the left: nothing. I didn’t dare make a move. I just stood in the same damn spot for five hours until the fog had lifted, and then discovered that my stick had broken.

~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, rain and hail arrived. We hurried down the other side, throwing on what clothing we could. The wind, not wanting to be bested by the hail, was now in the act and prevented us from pulling out more clothing; it would have blown away. We guessed gusts at sixty miles per hour and had to scream at one another to do so. A decaying wooden sign warned us of danger, if the boulder-splashed trail was wet, like it was now. SLIPPERY WHEN WET, or DEADLY WHEN DRENCHED or some such. ALTERNATE ROUTES ADVISED! (Now that’s funny!) We collapsed our hiking poles and utilized our hands and asses (one each) as much as our feet (two each), crab-walking much of the way. The path was atrocious, a precipitous riverbed, a waterfall. A throat-punch sort of day.

We had two objectives:

1: live

2: don’t die

Beyond these aims, all we wanted was to get back beneath the treetops. (It was pure postulation we weren’t in the trees, since we couldn’t see beyond the end of our dripping noses, although in my case, that’s still a long ways.) Each step--or ass-scooch, as it were--took us to lower elevation and the temperature returned to normal. Or what we thought of as normal. In the Whites, normal is less than normal. Maybe that’s why they’re called the Whites: snow, hail, the color you turn when exposed for too long.

As Operation Don’t Die continued, we dropped down to Kinsman Notch. (Mountain clefts are called notches in Notch-Hampshire, and with each one survived, another notch in one’s hip-belt.) In transit we were caught by a scraggly single-celled organism from Steamboat Springs, trailnamed Puddle. He had a huge smile, as though he knew something the rest of us didn’t. The Coloradan’s dirty blond mop-top--Samson hair, through and through--was tangled and matted and helped conceal his ugly mug, a ploy I should employ. We’d end up attempting to hitchhike with both him and the freckled Hufflepuff.

Hitching as a foursome made it mightily improbable we’d catch a ride, never mind the conditions. It was pissing down again and we were sopping, muddy and malodorous. But the very first motorist to come our way didn’t bat an eye, probably because we had a female with us. The plump, cheerful middle-aged man skidded to a stop and piled us all in. Even if I knew all about trail culture, I’m not sure I’d’ve done the same. His BMW was mint.

     Was.

We headed toward nearby Lincoln. Mike, our driver, told us it was his lifelong dream to hike the AT. Naturally, we all encouraged him, despite the trials of the trail. “Life is short and ze AT is long,” said Bearbell. “The sooner, the better,” said Puddle, having seen so many older, injury-riddled folks drop by the wayside. DNFs. “Fortune favors the bold; misfortune favors the old. And the AT ain’t much of an old fogies home.”

Mike wasn’t old, but he knew the affliction hits quickly when you get to be his age; one must poop or get off the pot...strive to fill the bucket list. Like a toilet paper roll rapidly unraveling, each portion, each year, becomes more important than the last.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “I’ve got to earn money.”

“Work will always be there,” said Hufflepuff. “Your knees may not be. And the money, well, it comes and goes. Time only goes. The future comes like a freight train. You gotta emancipate yourself!”

If it sounded like we were proselytizing, it’s because we were. Mike was one of the good guys, with the heart of a dog. We wanted him to get a taste of what we’ve tasted--the good life. His passengers all knew: it’s easy to delay lifelong dreams; after all, they’ll always be there. The problem is, we won’t. But just as it is with so many folks, responsibilities stood in his way. The knot of obligations was tight…

“My boy needs to leave home first,” he sighed.

“You could alwayz forze ‘im tu leave, Bearbell teased. “Or freeze ‘im for later use.”

“I’ve thought of that first suggestion,” Mike replied. “But he’s three. Might be hard for him to fend for himself…”

A muted spell passed before he joked: “One plus one equals three…when you don’t wear a condom…”

“…and kids are hazardous to your health. I wouldn’t wish one on my worst enemy. It’s like being under house-arrest for two decades,” he sighed. “And it’s expensive! ‘Course the costliest part is all the booze I now drink.”

As we drove on, Bearbell shared that he was the designer of the dash panel in this BMW model, an X3 1/3. It was a handsome dashboard, complete with ersatz wood and tree rings and elaborate contour lines. There were computerized gauges and, for all I could tell, remote controls and retina scanners. There was even a cigarette lighter jack, but no cigarettes and no plug. We applauded the Frenchman’s work, grateful he hadn’t neglected heater vents. We were almost thawed.

In town the urgency was scalding fluid, then a place to stay, a place with heating and roofing. We didn’t sip our coffees like high-class yuppies. We guzzled them and the rows of refills that tagged along. It was as though we had a thirst to quench. (“Is anywun truly thirsty for coffee?” Bearbell wondered aloud.) Chugging could only commence after we’d cooled them with our frigid fingers and enough half-n-half (half preservatives, half additives). Pizza followed. Smiles followed. (Till our tab tracked us down.)

Heated up and happy, we meandered around the mini-metropolis, what Frenchie called a dérive. A drift. Wailing sirens filled the air. Cop cars, ambulances, fire engines, air raid horns, and tsunami warnings. Persuadable dogs bowed to their primal urges and yelped and howled in unison after each sound wave. It is easy to hoodwink the domesticated. Nowadays, the call of the wild is a siren.

After an excursion to Chet’s Place, a trail angel’s refashioned garage wherein we opted not to stay--it was chocked with hiker scum--we settled on sharing a room at the Econo Lodge. The joint is econo-ish all right, but it’s got a heater and a roof, so we feel like we’re living large tonight. It even has a flat-screen TV the size of a football field. The problem is none of us know how to operate its remote control. Not even Bearbell.