A Limp in the Woods (Day 131)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 131: Friday, August 2nd, 2013
Kinsman Notch/Hwy 112 to Eliza Brook Shelter = 7-ish miles
Miles to date: 1,804

The AT. The Trail that Keeps You on Your Toes!

It’s hard to believe fewer than four hundred miles remain. It’s time to scale back.

History demonstrates I do this when nearing a long trail’s checkered flag. I start slowly before a gradual deceleration commences (usually led by conscious choice, though not always). The end of the line is no ally of mine. And as weighty a struggle that the AT has been--physically, emotionally, and every other ~ally--it beats day-to-day non-trail life. At least it beats my day-to-day non-trail life, which comprises mostly Internet, indolence and ennui. Lethargy, Masturbation, Napping, Overeating, Pooping, and Quick Reads: L-M-N-O-P-QR(1). Indeed, the trail has been an endearing endeavor, and they say the best is still to come. It feels as if this journey is starting anew. So far I’m smitten with New Hampshire. Total smit.

Today dished up additional rationale. The weather was inert and strikingly grand (lightning had gone on strike and wasn’t striking), the trail inviting, and the late afternoon company just right. My stomach--little more than a waste basket during thru-hikes--was supplied and distended, with calories and coffee both. A fresh furnishing of food-like stuff reclines atop my spine, awaiting its daily disappearing act. 

It all began after rising from the usual malaise phase when I caught a ride back to the hinterland with a perky fifteen or sixteen year-old girl. Yes, fifteen or sixteen--one or the other (likely not both). By herself. I couldn’t but notice this. Not just because of the big difference in our ages, but in our genders.

A thesis: young, attractive females generally do not pick up their antithesis.

Unlike so many others her age, she was thin and had some serious muscle tone. Perhaps a volleyball player, maybe soccer. And again quite eye-catching, with a face not yet touched by time. She was also absolutely naïve to the risks. Endearingly innocent, with that elusive inner light that shines outward. I wanted to hit on her, but hitting on a fifteen year-old is next-level perversity. Instead, I hoped she’d hit on me. Which didn’t work out.

Her vehicle, a hatchback presumably bought by her parents, was an elderly import. It worked, but with a noisy limp. Its license plate was sparklingly new, replete with the embossed state motto: Live Free or Die! A fatalistic mantra, perhaps, but the only way she seemed to know how to live.

Clinging too much on the whole affair, I remained astonished such a hatchling would offer a lift to a stranger, a bedraggled middle-aged male at that. I didn’t dare frighten her by audibly marinating on the matter. When I alluded to it in a surreptitious, roundabout approach, she told me, in typical teenager rapid-fire fashion, she “like literally knows all about trail culture” and was looking to the day she could hike the trail herself. “For now I can only live, like, vicariously and, like, give rides! You’re my first!”

“I am?” I asked, voice cracking.

“Literally, yeah.”

“Aren’t I lucky!” I joked, tugging tighter on my seatbelt.

“Do you, like, have a driver’s license?” she asked, with that most annoying high-pitched vocal fry that so many American women learn early. (Let it be known I am not largely desirous of American women, particularly largely ones, but it is this habit, this very voice, I tolerate least.) You’re asking me?!

“Do you?” I answered.

“Yeah, like, literally, I just got it yesterday!” she burbled, flicking her shoulder-length blond hair back.

“No but really,” she tried once more, “do you?”

“Yeah, of course. Why? Do you want me to drive?”

“No. I just mean, like, I’m really only supposed to be driving if I’m, like, with an licensed adult. ‘Course, it hasn’t stopped me.”

That mattered not, I thought. I just wanted to give her a stern paternal lecture about picking up strangers. Males, particularly. Especially dirty degenerates like me, the scum de la scum, those plagued by lurid, carnal thoughts and intrusive immoral fantasies. I figured it was better to corrupt her than to one day read about her. Just the same though, it was equally important I got back to my roving reality without freaking her out. Or being booted out. Thankfully, she was a fairly skilled motorist, keeping her hands on the steering wheel--at ten and two--and her eyes upon the road, unlike the crack addict who’d driven me and Bearbell into Warren a couple days ago.

I bit down on my twitching tongue and put it on lock-down, keeping the conversation light and trivial. Chitchat of would-be kidnappers, rapists and homicidal maniacs--or worse--probably isn’t the most comforting of introductions. I managed too not to school her on the annoying use of the word like. Like, what a terrible habit.

When we reached the trailhead, six or seven miles outside of Lincoln, she told me her name, inquired of mine and my trailname, leaned over to give me a hug, and told me to be careful.

Me be careful?!

“Do me a favor,” I responded. “You too.”

“I always do,” she answered before driving off.

Her name was Amie and her rusted Nissan Stanza crawled away before slowing to an audible stop twenty yards later.

“Funnybones, you, like, forgot your hiking poles!”

“I like did, or I actually did?” I muttered to myself, wondering why I’m always so damn pedantic.

I had forgotten the poles. My inner eye was lingering elsewhere.

I’d hang out at the trailhead for the next hour, absorbing life. Just as I began to see and experience the HERE NOW (the only time that matters), my thoughts drifted back to her. Not because I’m a dirty old man--I’m not that old--but because I worried that someday she might pick up the wrong guy. That fidgety fucker Camo Man and his asinine arsenal sprung to mind. Just because a dude’s hiking the Appalachian Trail doesn’t mean he’s a good egg or entirely safe. Or even remotely safe. I hoped I’d never read about her in the news, or on the AT forums.

The path from Kinsman Notch came as projected: uphill. Sharply uphill. Sharply enervating. Oftentimes I was forced to walk either laterigrade or on my toes, as the slope was too treacherous for a straight-line plantigrade, flat-footed stance. The Achilles tendons were simply not designed to elongate as such, as much. The AT--the trail that keeps you on your toes!

Although I’m somewhat hardened to the task, it still helped to grab hold of tree limbs or tree trunks lining the route, to pull myself up by them, with them. It’s apparent, just as it’s been with the exposed roots on the trail, that so many of the trees lining the AT’s steeper stretches have been smoothed-down to a slick surface because of it. On the AT, handholds are as critical as footholds, and often as slippery. The hold part of each word--handhold, foothold--is a misnomer, a misstep if I may.

I wouldn’t miss any steps. And thankfully, the polished trees held their ground.

I’d walk single handedly double handedly alone (and double footedly) for the bulk of the day. In terms of percentage, I’d venture to guess that so far during this thru-hike I’ve strode alone eighty percent of the time. The primary exception was during that first week back in March (oh so long ago!), when Ruth joined me. Although I’ve written lots about my interaction with others, most of what’s occurred is, well, a rhythmic nothing. Nada, nil, nichts, nihilum. Nic, neniom, niks, niemendal. Lots of time to think thoughts. Lots of time to not think thoughts.

One of my recurrent thought bubbles

Doing a little of both, so very little, I worked my way to higher elevations, topping out somewhere near the 3,500-foot range, before dropping back down to the Eliza Brook Shelter. The path was a mixture of mud, exposed roots and mossy boulders, all vertically placed, all unsuitably spaced. It had grown cold again, but the skies remained lucent and crystalline. Sweet and spotless. The wind whipped. A true alpine feel; a good day for orology. 

It was hard to believe, but a flotilla of fertile clouds were forecasted, so I decided to lie low in the shelter. Its aluminum roof seemed robust enough and there were other misfits already there, making the place that much more inviting. In attendance: Bearbell (who’d gotten an earlier start from Lincoln), a young approachable guy of modest means named Captain Planet, Easy E (who I hadn’t seen for months), and a buddy of Easy’s (who was joining him for a week of slogging). The mirth was already plentiful when I arrived and it’d roll on well into the evening, just as the rain began to roll in. So long fingernail moon. A faithful forecast.

Most of what we openly-heterosexual types spoke of was “trail tail,” as Easy’s pal called it. “The other kind of hiker box,” Easy joked. Females. Most men’s favorite gender. The safe sex. Women, mothers, daughters, wives. Broads, babes, sisters, madams. Ladies, gals, girls, grandmas.

She.

Sex drives stuck in overdrive, our despicable fraternity jawed of who we’d “do” and who we wouldn’t. (Never mind the stark, harsh reality that no sane woman would opt to do any of us stooges. “Fat chance, even wiz ze fat onez,” Bearbell joked. “Believez moi,” he sighed, “I’ve tried.”) Nature, an ineffable aphrodisiac.

“Deep down, we’re shallow,” someone sighed. I had to chew on that one a while.

I told the gang of my nubile driver. We’d proceed to rank the women hikers we’d met, based entirely on looks and looks alone. Shallow entertainment for shallow guys--guys never to be mistaken as men. It was true, we agreed, that there were relatively few smoking-hot specimens on the trail, if any. But none of us could think of a single sole woman we didn’t deem serviceable.

Savages. Chronically horny savages. (The savages aren’t the ones living in the forest; the savages are the ones destroying it.)

"Foot"note 1: With the notable exception of lethargy, I manage to accomplish all of the above (M-N-O-P-QR) on a daily basis when atop these long trails.