A Limp in the Woods (Day 133)

An Appalachian Trail Tale

Day 133: Sunday, August 4th, 2013
Franconia Notch to Galehead Hut = 13 miles

Miles to date: 1,826

The starting blocks: Franconia Notch. 1,443 feet.

The (main) hurdle: Mount Lafayette. 5,249 feet.

The difference: (please hold while operators rummage around for their tablet calculator thingy)…

      3,806 feet.

A tough way to start the day.

In my non-trail life, mornings begin gently, gingerly, properly. On the AT you’re rarely afforded such luxury. Luxury and AT are antithetical but for one aspect: time is our greatest luxury, particularly time well spent. On the AT, time is always well spent. No quiet desperation for the thru-hiker, thank you. Just desperate measures.

I was desperate to sleep last night, but desperate was sleep last night. The distress wasn’t just due to the anxiousness of looming terrain. It had more to do with the cars rolling over the tops of our tents. Midnight, 2am, 4am…they kept coming. Where are these motorists going? And why at such an unholy hour?

After a date with Joe, we fled for the sanctuary that is the hills. Vile though they might be at times, vile though they would be today (we didn’t know that yet), hills are a hiker’s (semi)safe haven. Where else do hikers hike? 

Soon after starting, we reached a bike path. Quaint, paved and mossy, it sat beside a babbling brook. It was lined with a thick swathe of conifers, so thick the drone of the freeway was almost quieted completely, now just a faint murmur. 

No one could name the trees--elms, maples, birches, pines, pineapple, sequoias. But who cares? Identifying plants by their given names--names humans have imposed on them--doesn’t let the field guide pupil to identify with them, as we were. Readers don’t get to feel or smell or touch these majestic life forms like the ambulist does. They don’t inhale the chlorophyll or feel their emanating humidity. IDing plants can be carried out on a Google safari. Go nuts! But to identify with them you’ve got to step outside and smell the chunky air around them, the habitat they create, the moisture they gather and release, the shade they provide, the depth of their bark, the intricate patterns in their flimsy leaves, the patience they possess, and so on. I’ve known botany and forestry majors who, although having achieved impressive marks in college, rarely toddled among the shrubs or weeds or trees. They could proudly regurgitate information like nobody’s business--though quite not like Google--but they could never really learn or retell the full story.

There were plenty of camping opportunities along the path. All were superior to what we’d settled on last night, at least concerning scenery and silence; no site came with a roof overhead. (Nor one underhead.) The safeguard of the woods isn’t always safe enough.

We continued on and up, unraveling as hikers do in times of hardship. First we unraveled as a group, each settling into our own pace, and then into our own space. Then we unraveled as individuals. The trail wasn’t going to let up; I wondered whether I was. Or when I was. I kept telling myself the AT beats suicide.

It’s said when the going gets tough, the tough get going. No wonder I wasn’t going anywhere. Two steps forward, a tumble back. With each two-step the terrain and gradient remained the same. A giant tree-draped escalator, this pathological path. The escalator comes at you slowly, but it keeps coming. I guess that’s the key. One scrape at a time, even when that scrape is a fraction of the height or distance it would be other times. To think I used to enjoy striding up escalators in the opposite direction of travel!

The strides needed here were more like upward lunges, up ladder-like land. Land tilted on its side. Each lunge demanded muscle mass (glutes, quadriceps, calves, core) and coordination, but also considerable concentration. The brain muscle receives an unvarying workout on varied terrain. Mine could use it. Years of neglect have led to atrophy. Atrophy, not a trophy.

It’d take four hours to scale Mount Lincoln and another half-hour to top out on Lafayette. At 5,089 feet, Lincoln signaled the first time any of us had been over the five-thousand-foot mark since Virginia’s Grayson Highlands, at mile 504. A thousand three hundred miles ago. In my case, too far back to remember. But so is yesterday.

A wall of hard-hitting H2O heading our way

Bearbell had fallen back, while Captain Planet had fallen forward, only without falling. He waited at the summit, near some scrawny, south-leaning, weather-beaten trees. A green tunnel for the short. No one had seen Hangman or the other outcasts. We surmised they were enjoying the company of the many women about on this blustery day. The peakbaggers were out in full force, both those of the female persuasion and that other, less alluring gender.

The elements were vacillating again. Captain Planet and I didn’t wait around to see what they’d choose next. The weather in the Whites is bi-polar, with emphasis on polar. Wishy-washy, with emphasis on washy. We’d met four young women atop Lafayette, each shoehorned into yoga pants and other industrial-strength shapewear (proof God exists and cares about men). But in such atrocious conditions, we couldn’t act out any fantasies. Only in mind could I achieve success, and what’s the point in that?

The lung-rich ladies adored Captain. Why wouldn’t they? He’s good-looking, young, blond, shaven, and has an easy-going way. I encompass none of that, but didn’t mind gazing and being creepy, as men learn later in life (quiet desperation is self-inflicted, after all). We stood up from behind the stone piles where we’d taken cover, bid our adieus, and walked out of one another’s lives. 

This, surely, is the saddest part of thru-hiking.

Your future wife walks into your life--or, more likely, you creep into hers--and then, almost instantaneously, the two of you divorce, before the marriage ever comes to fruition. A departing dream.

I roam the world searching for love--a significant (or insignificant) other--all the while clinging to the hope love will come to me, so I don’t have to search. But history shows that once I’ve found it, or think I’ve found it, the relationship’s repetitiveness bores one of the parties involved (e.g., me), impelling me back to the pursuit. Trouble, this.

Then comes the real problem--the acceptance and justification of my lonely search. I convince myself it’s it I love. The hunt. Especially when it takes place where I love. The mountains, the desert, the wilderness. Erstwhile, meanwhile, all the while, the Earth runs its laps. 

Perhaps I need to learn to love myself. Not just in the matter of masturbation--unrequited self-love--which, God knows, I manage enough of (I can hold my own) (trailname idea: Splooge, or maybe a little less graphic: Dances with Self, specializing in singlehanded massage therapy), but in terms of acceptance, patience, respect, understanding and all the usual malarkey.

I think I like me, but I know the baggage and innumerable self-defeating mechanisms I can’t seem to shake (chronic melancholia; heartbroken since birth; carnal addictions; various other vices; awaiting fate; hating fate; paralysis by analysis; etc), and they lead me straight to hate. What, exactly, is it that is haunting me? And who, exactly, cares to add that to her life? 

     Anyway.

Who cares indeed?! I’m not sure even I do. Indifference over hate. There’s enough to fret over in life, even when on vacation, as I’ve been on during most of it. No doubt though, I’m imprisoned in a concentration camp of my own making. When all you’ve ever known is being on your own it’s hard to change.

I have to remind myself that for now, the trail is my significant other. My backpack is my significant other. Quit thinking! Love does not solve--or dissolve--problems!

After carefully descending Lafayette, with hands and feet and grippy butt cheeks, we strode over Mount Garfield. Strode over...yeah, right! With a vertical gain of almost a thousand feet in a smidge over a half-mile, no one “strides over” the peak. It is, in fact, one of the AT’s top three or four steepest climbs. And it made for three mountains in one day. All bona fide, big-ass ones. “We’re making great strides,” Captain joked at one point. “Backwards.” 

I had snapped one of my hiking poles when I tossed them down a steep ledge soon after leaving Lafayette’s loft, but they weren’t of use anyhow. They only added to the danger. And anyway, I only require half of the pair to keep my tarp upright at night. Even then, a stick would do and there’s no shortage of sticks along the AT.

In addition to the workout, Garfield provided scenery; the skies weren’t as agitated as they’d been on previous peaks. But we didn’t linger. Cold air pushed us downward and eventually into the solar-and-wind-powered, off-grid Galehead Hut. We were lucky enough to secure a work-for-stay, along with one other thru-hiker, who’s name I forgot, which is surprising given that she’s a she and I’m normally on Full Alert Mode in such instances. First come, first serve(1), and we aced it. Other thru-hikers came and went(2), as obliged. We waited a while before being put to work, sharing stories, stench, and snacks.

“This is tasty,” I said to Captain, gnawing on one of the treats he’d given me. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I found it at the bottom of my food bag.”

Tonight’s task? I’m to address What it Means to Hike The Appalachian Trail. Or something of the sort. Address-less guy addressing. A half-hour blabberfest during which paying patrons fill their faces. The girl’s role? Waiting tables. Captain Planet’s job? Grunt work. Dishes, mopping. Silly rabbit; the AT is enough grunt.

As I was about to start in on the babble-on I glanced out the windows; it was now flurrying. I then looked over at the poor sap mopping the kitchen and noticed his glare. He was stealthily slinging half a peace sign my way. The non-index finger.

“Hello important people! I’m Funnybone and I’m an AT thru-hiker…” (Mild acceptance.)

“Wow, there are so many good-looking people here! It’s nice to finally fit in somewhere!” (Everyone laughed, for some reason.)

“It’s great to be here, instead of married with children! Or instead of being out in THAT!” (Gentle laughter.)

I pointed out the windows, in case anyone didn’t know where I meant. I then broke into the meaty matter of my biopic.

"Foot"note 1: FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED is not true with AMC huts. Thru-hikers arriving too early, hoping for a work-for-stay, are asked to continue to the next hut, regardless of weather. Else a backlog occurs. There’s an art to it, but it seems the best time to arrive and solicit work is 3pm, just as a hut’s young crew (‘croo,’ they call themselves) starts dinner prep. It’s their call whether you move in or move on. Galehead’s croo leader, a bossypants named Toben, initially sent us on our way, banishing us to the blizzard, before a change of heart.

"Foot"note 2: By late evening, as the temperature began to plummet to a nadir nearing the teens, there were seven of us thru-hikers staying, a mix of NOBOs and SOBOs: Barking Spider, Stretch, Fancy Pants, Wheels, the unnamed girl, me, and Captain Planet. We'd lay down our bedrolls on the wooden floor in the dining area after everyone left for their beds. Molar Man was also staying the night, but the retired dentist plunked for a bunk.