A Limp in the Woods (Day 153)

An Appalachian Trail Tale
Day 153: Saturday, August 24th, 2013
Near the Piscataquis River to Leeman Brook Lean-to = 9 miles
Miles to date: 2,074

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have I heard anything more divine’?”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

“I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it.
Always I want to live more intensely and richly.”
~Everett Ruess

“So many lives to live; a lone lifetime.” 

~Funnybone

~~~~~~~~~~ 

Though I can’t be certain, I’m pretty sure that lately I’ve been sleeping solidly, because I wake up wholly stiff each morn. Solid and stiff, stiffy and all.

Few things enrich and cleanse the soul like having the AT kick the living daylights out of you on the regular, but it leaves the body an absolute wreck. Or it leaves my body an absolute wreck. If I were a car, I’d be considered ‘totaled.’ Straight to the salvage yard.

These nubile, agile twenty-somethings just don’t understand how hard this goddamn trail is! (We aged folks are also agile: fr-agile.) I wish upon these spasmodic youngsters the chance to hike the AT again when they’re twice their age. Not strictly to be spiteful, though mostly, but also because I can’t think of a better life. May we older hikers hope they learn to carry this experience and others like it for the rest of their lives.

May they remain at odds with the human world! May their lives be extraordinary! May they be a ruler of life, and not a slave, to quote Whitman. May the forest be with them! May they continue to honor and take ownership of their time, and live like freedom matters.

But no. They’ll likely squander it all, letting go the gumption, succumbing to the pressures of prosperity, submitting themselves to The Establishment. Constricting their lives to the dimensions of The Machine. They’ll turn “responsible,” comfortable (hence slothful; hence laughably fat), economically stable/secure, yet in debt and enslaved, depressed and medicated. Trapped by the trappings and living falsely. Working to assure their future by relinquishing what’s now. (Today is my priority, always.)

They’ll then start buying, to fill a void. Gushing over the glitter. Aiming for “quality of life,” a lone paycheck from ruin. Happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have. They’ll speak of the abstraction of adventure highly, reminiscing nostalgically about the year they seized the day, but it won’t much play into their rote day-after-day lives.

No, they’ll repeat each day ad nauseam, straight to the point of monotony, held captive by bills, belongings and taxes whilst being persuaded to probe for tax “breaks,” so the government can continue to manage and manipulate the way they live. They’ll slouch at their desks or in their cars, obey their lobotomized electronically-addicted children (their screenagers), drink themselves silly, and drop much dough on their cookie-cutter home (then fret over its upkeep and keeping up...with the Jonses).

They’ll then fill that grave of the living, that golden cage, with more costly crap that’ll only gather dust, while straying on their spendthrift spouse, to instill some much-needed stimulation and excitement, to try to dull the pain and tedium of life on the daily. Work up the ladder, earn the corner office. Cornered. Worst of all, perhaps playing the victim. That’s how they’ll live out their years, proletariat prisoners to--and of--possessions. Paycheck to paycheck, living the dream. Such a fate: fatal. Thems the odds. Odd, indeed.

Oh, the façade that is the “American Dream,” that hoary monolith from a bygone era. (And my worst nightmare.)

When I think of a banausic, robotic existence like this (as the video portrays), I’m reminded of the germane line by Robert Wilson: “On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge maximum security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.” Rage against the machine!

Some dope rhymes...

And this is why we start to cry

The minute we are born...

It is but life, so full of strife,

That makes us want to mourn

So the question remains amid such pains

What is it all worth?

The answer is clear: that you are here

A life to give yourself birth

And there it is. What gives our lives meaning isn’t the possessions or the status or the security or the comfort we aim to acquire, but the hardship we overcome, the lessons we gather, the joy we spread, and the memories we accumulate. Life’s better when you follow your heart. We are our choices. Screw comfort! Screw security! Comfort and security do not make for quality of life!

Aesop’s famed fable...

Discouraged after an unsuccessful day of hunting, a hungry wolf came upon a well-fed mastiff. The wolf could see that the dog was having a better time of it than he, so he inquired what the dog had to do to stay so well-fed.
“Very little,” said the dog. “Just drive away thieves, guard the house, show fondness to the master, be submissive to the rest of the family and you’re well-fed and warmly lodged.”
The wolf thought this over carefully. He risked his own life almost daily, was forced to stay out in the worst of weather and was never assured of his next meal. He thought he would give the dog’s way of living a crack.
But, as they were walking along together, the wolf noticed the dog’s neck, where his hair had been worn thin. He asked what this was. The dog replied it was nothing, “just where my collar and chain rub.”
The wolf stopped dead in his tracks. “Chain?” he inquired. “You mean you’re not free to roam where you wish?”
“No,” said the dog, “but what does that mean?”
“Much,” replied the wolf, as he trotted away...
“Much.”

As I’d penned way back when, although I may be close to the average AT thru-hiker age, there are but few forty-somethings on trail; I’ve met maybe five. Most my age are nowhere near the trails. They’re chiseling away at work, at career, spending and paying, organizing and reorganizing their stuff and their finances, waiting for their turn at life: retirement, when they’ll be too old and tired and toxic and chubby and injury-prone and senile to do much, or care much. We see the result of it out here. These retirees are hurting, if they’re still(1) on the trail. Most I’ve met…aren’t. Their life’s all-important AT adventure passed them by. And so I wish upon the twenty-somethings that they learn something from these older, unwise farts. Specifically: What. Not. To. Do. Work will not set you free!

(Think hard, kids: “owning” a home in the US means being in debt/enslaved for thirty to forty years, more than half your adult life! Don’t just take advantage of your youth; take advantage of your life. It is nothing short of a gift but one that expires all too soon. You are your life’s primary architect.)

Alexander Supertramp's note to a pal (P. 56-57 Into the Wild)

Perspiring all too soon, I was bumbling along in my usual languid style (stylish, given the nature of this nature trail) when I came upon another moose in a small trailside pond filled with lily pads and decaying plants. Not “came upon” as in ejaculated upon, because that would be altogether sick and somewhat freaky (Le Freak say Chuck…and anyone else who came upon such an act), but rather happened upon. The poor beast was being eaten alive by mosquitoes and ticks, who also happened upon him. I’d never seen so many ticks on an animal and I wondered what her fate would end up. Tick food.

Of course, the ticks deserve a chance at success and had every right to do what they were doing. But as a fellow mammal, I could only empathize with my fury friend. A goofy looker no doubt, but a unique one. I snapped photos, did an immediate and thorough tick-check on myself--it had been some time--and moseyed on, combing imagined ticks from my matted hair.

When they weren’t covered in slimy sphagnum moss, a series of elevated boardwalks allowed for an easy stride and dry feet. No roots, no mud, no problem. But then, when I unwarily stepped upon another row of boards, one of them--a 2” x 6” of about my height--came hurtling toward my face. Instinctively, I lunged to the side to avoid impact, only to land in a waist-deep sphagnum bog. It took five minutes to extricate myself, and to retrieve my remaining hiking pole. The dank mire tried its damndest to suck each of my blue suede shoes off, thus the time suck. No doubt it would be the slowest stretch of the entire AT. Thankfully, no one happened upon me.

Brunch was served near another of the several stream fords (each usually shin to knee-deep, but sometimes crotch deep, which was helpful if only to remedy the offensive effluvium), about a mile and a half shy of Maine State Highway 15, the last highway of the hike, leading to the last town en route. Peanuts, cheese, raisins, fruit roll-up, some scavenged blueberries and some crystallized honey atop it all. Delish!

At the highway, I sat beside some empty beer cans, innumerable cigarette butts and a discarded, desiccated condom, when Mountain Goat and TK soon appeared. I thought the young lovers had been ahead of me, but no. Leap-frogging a Mountain Goat is not easy, but it does happen from time to time.

“I thought you guys would be in Monson by now.”

“And we thought you were long gone. Hey, we’re heading into Greenville instead of Monson. It’s a longer hitch, like ten miles or so, but it’s a much cheaper resupply, they say. Wanna join us?”

An easy answer. What is ‘yes’ Alex?

After an easy hitch, we lunched (again, in my case) in town at The Black Frog looking out over another of Maine’s huge bodies of water, Moosehead Lake. Moosehead, in fact, is Maine’s largest body of fresh water. Or so our vacuous server told us, a cheerless, chubby chick with a forged smile plastered to her face (and enough makeup on that face to frighten even the most made-up of clowns). We inhaled our greasy gross meals (fries, fries, and more fries) and then strolled around town for a closer gander. We liked what we saw. There wasn’t much not to like, because there wasn’t much.

After the wander-round, we hit up the neighborhood grocer, who stood ready to relieve of us of our dollars as we readied ourselves for the longest grocery-store-less stretch on the entire trail: The Hundred-Mile Wilderness. The Hundred-Mile Wilderness is the trail’s most remote stretch. Make it through that, and there’d be just sixteen measly miles left. My heart fluttered in anticipation. We ended up buying so much that there was no way it was all going to fit into our packs. (We’d each used a push-cart to shop, a cardinal sin.) I ended up carrying two triple-reinforced bags, one in each hand, as we returned to the highway to thumb our noses at civilization, and to thumb our way from it.

Half my shopping supplies

The Hundred-Mile Wilderness is not true wilderness, per se. It is owned by various logging companies that have granted rights for the trail to pass through, after pressure by government agencies. But it mattered not to us; it still demanded preparation, as a sternly worded sign would soon warn. Our hitch was fruitful, even though I had to sit scrunched in the very back of a microscopic Jeep, with our driver’s beautiful baby girl of about eighteen months. Black babies, I realized right then, are cuter than their white counterparts.

Then she pooped.

As bad as we smelled, this lap-sized munchkin outperformed us. We were impressed. I shook her hand and kept making kooky faces, much to her delight. Delilah’s delight.

We thanked our driver, Delilah’s dad, and returned to the underbrush, but not before some obligatory repacking. And not before Goat and TK offered (er, ordered) that they take a photo of my bag-carrying antics. I managed to squeeze one of the two grocery bags inside my pack, but still, carrying a stick in one hand and a plastic shopping bag in the other, and at least thirty more empty baggies in my backpack’s side pockets, I must’ve looked something special. Something Special Ed. We bid adieu to the highway, the last one we’d witness, and walked into the logged wild.

 

Goat and the estimable Klutz estimated a week to trail’s end. Seven short days. Half a fortnight. I held no notion of estimation, no final countdown(2), just enough food to remain at least twice as long, if necessary. I sought a pleasure cruise, with a nonstop eating orgy right up to the time I reached Baxter State Park. The park was donated in 1931 by Percival Baxter, Maine’s governor from 1921-24. It was to be, in his words, “kept wild forever.” Near there, in a less wild Abol Bridge, I could buy a few snacks or snag a ride back to civilization if need be, before the final push up Katahdin, which sits in the park’s heart. Until then, no hurries, even though it meant we’d soon be going our independent ways.

I started in on my cheddar popcorn, quickly polishing the bag by the time we made it to the Leeman Brook Lean-to, a few miles past the road. Nine hundred and thirty calories into my bloodstream; seven ounces subtracted from my cargo-load. Not a single kernel had hit the ground, though half of them were concealed somewhere deep inside my beard, as I’d discover later, when mice began attacking it. Beards: the original food storage system. The Flavor Saver! The mouse magnet.

"Foot"note 1: Still, as in if they've remained on the trail, not if they are motionless (which many older hikers appear to be).

"Foot"note 2: I'm going to reach Katahdin on time, no matter how long it takes!