A Limp in the Woods (Day 137)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 137: Thursday, August 8th, 2013
Pinkham Notch to a mile past Imp Shelter/Campsite = 14 miles
Miles to date: 1,881

Appalachian Trail Bites

My temperamental headlamp showed it was 5am when I awoke. Or my wristwatch did, with cooperation from the fickle light. Any which way, not my best time of day. The three ‘nesses reigned: coldness, darkness, stillness(1). The other ‘ness--drowsiness--beat them all. I slipped back to sleep.

It was 8am when I deftly woke for real. Real tired.

Reeling, I left my oneiric state and my dome on the range and moseyed back to the melee of the Pinkham Notch Visitor’s Center. I reconnected with Mr. Planet (he too a champion slugabed) and partook in an AYCE meal (‘All You Can Eat,’ as if you had to ask) at the AMC Lodge. AMCAYCE. My fellow gangrel, the other white meat, had had a smashing night, full of frills and cheap thrills, but was keen to wend.

“That makes one of us. Did you get some nooky?”

“Nah. But I think I could’ve--I was on the cusp--and that’s good enough for me.”

I knew what Captain meant. Sometimes a man needs to know it’s still plausible, that life’s course won’t exclude intercourse. Or even just the touch of a female. Years, and I refuse to capitulate or stop harboring hope. (“What, after all, is masturbation but hope?” asks Hand Solo.)

There’s just one direction from Pinkham Notch: up, Chuck. The path north of it is as cruel as any stretch the AT knows. Crueler, in fact. The lowdown: it heads high. With a vertical gain of two thousand feet in just a mile and a half, the “hiker” could seriously benefit through use of a climbing harness.

Side-note: on the AT the shortest line between two points:

A: Never meanders
B: Heads uphill
3: Is festooned with foliage so thick you can’t see a thing

But you knew all this by now. Rise and climb.

Ranked the SINGLE TOUGHEST EXTENDED CLIMB(2), it is the steepest, most grueling, most sadistic, nastiest, most arduous, most laborious, most backbreaking, most precipitous, most ridiculous, most challenging, most taxing, most strenuous, most demanding, most demoralizing, MOST HARDEST of them all. But forget the superlatives. In shorthand: no piece of cake. An over-baked slicing of humble pie had been shoved down our gullets. Worse yet, we force-fed ourselves, one infinitesimal bite at a time.

The bites took FOREVER. By that I don’t mean an epoch, but for eternity. Infinity. We’re still scaling the climb, in fact. Scaling and turning scaly. Ripened saurians. When (or if) you read this, many years from now, I’ll still be out there on it. (Even if you don’t read this, I’ll still be out there.) My beard will be so long that by the time I near the top I’ll have one more obstacle to step over. Yard by yard, the AT’s hard; inch by inch, it’s still no cinch.

Injustice had been served.

In truth (fractional truth, anyway--scout’s honor), it wasn’t half bad. (‘Twas all bad.) In advanced truth, and despite sucking for air like a landed fish, I was satisfied not to be going DOWN it. Negotiating steep downhills with a bloated pack is far tougher on me than going up them is. Tougher on the knees, the mind, and the nerves. More hazardous too. (To paraphrase a tongue-in-cheek Edward Abbey: walking uphill was horrific, and hiking downhill was even worse.) This direction of the trail was just time-consuming, like any good dessert should be. Who says humble pie can’t be tasty?

Toward the top views began to open up into yet another dreamscape. “I’m constantly overwhelmed up here,” I said to Captain and a few others (Easy E, male, 24, Virginia, ex-military), Hangman (male, 26, Michigan, ex-landscaper) and Jeff (male, 40-ish, California, ex-felon), once the trees gave room for us to unwind side-by-side. The band of brothers from other mothers nodded in accord. Our sense of scale of the place opened up just as the views had. We were backpacking with the gods and their light warmed our backs (despite the backpacks). Heaven may be mythical, but it’s also tangible and as a result, superior than the imagined version--since there’s no possibility of being let down. New Hampshire is it. No sense dreaming about it or dreaming for it. The dream is here now, and it is gift-wrapped. To hell with Old Hampshire.

We’d muster some more mettle and kept climbing, but the topography was not nearly as abrupt as it had been up to the initial peak of Wildcat Mountain--peak E--during the earliest part of the day. Eventually came peak D, peak C and peak A. (Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?! Wildcats!) Interestingly, there was no mention of peak B on Wildcat Mountain. At least not in our guidebooks. The peak must not have made the grade, we joked.

What did make the grade was another ski gondola. Because the lift was in operation the summit was clustered and crowded. These were humanoids in footwear that would’ve never taken them up the slope had they tried to walk. And so we employed our shoes and didn’t loiter long. Summer or winter, it just doesn’t seem to matter: people strive for high points, especially when labor is eliminated. Roads or lifts or gondolas or balloon rides--all symbols of sloth and humanity’s tragic relationship to the natural world. Every one of these folks paid twelve bucks to take the lift up, and were due to ride it back down, sure to neglect that increasingly lost art called walking. We envied them.

After the respite, and after forcing down some Honey Buns (an eating disorder if there ever was one: 100% Grade Z nutrition), we set our sights on the next hurdle: the 4,800-foot Carter Dome. Each of us high-hurdlers settled into our own dawdling lilt, subsequently disbanding and then rejoining en route at the Carter Notch Hut, where further crowding would goad us to get going, but not before Captain Planet entertained all with the hut’s loaner guitar. Like Mountain Goat, another talent. Captain Talent. More proof for my theory that great guitarists or ink-slingers only come from places where winter holds them hostage.

At the top of the giant mound, small, gnarled, wind-twisted trees revealed our good fortune on this unruffled day. Calm. No gondola meant no people, just those of us who earn our peaks. We sat and enjoyed our efforts, and the sprawling views. To the northeast, our next mound: the appropriately-named, albeit misspelled, Mount Hight. Piece of cake.

The remains of the day were made of everyday stuff. Walk-of-the-mill, humdrum variety. Our bare-bones existence goes on: day in, day out, wax on, whack off. Pile the food in, pile it out. Schlep, then sleep.

Captain and I’d sleep under the pulsating stars a mile past the Imp Shelter. Had it been the Gimp Shelter or the Limp Shelter or even the Wimp Shelter, I’d have felt more at home and stayed put, I told my friend. 

“Or had it been the Pimp Shelter,” he offered, though I wasn’t so sure about that. 

I am sure, however, that trail humor isn’t always funny. Yet we laugh and smile.

"Foot"note 1: Loch Ness did not rain, thankfully. Locked-up-ness reigns every morning.

"Foot"note 2: Some would argue that the AT's steepest climb is the staircase leading to the Doyle Hotel's second floor in Duncannon, PA, particularly twenty minutes after last call.