Date: 2004-10-10
From: somwhere in Maine

To: White Blaze Party
Miles today: 0.0

Story continuation from last entry on Sept 20th..Andover, MaineSeptember 17, 2004Mile 1917So I'm standing in downtown Andover, population 8 or 12, and sipping on my cherry Slush Puppie which when I got it the old man in the store says, "Yep, `bout time to shut that off for the season," and there's a handful of thruhikers across the street in some emptied-out old restaurant where the locals have been putting up hikers, and Arms and Kip and Ryder and D-Bone have been talking up this party wanna go to but now they've all smoked out and seem kindof maudlin and the trail is calling louder than the party and I'm figuring the scene like this: they're stuck, stuck on the dogma of the White Blaze, and their extreme cult like adherence to it will not permit them to take the detour to Caratunk. Caratunk. Another trail town one sizable chunk up the trail across Maine and site of the WhiteBlaze.com party, which they have consequently sold me. Some kinda seriously was laced into that homegrown they were smokin' and poof! Off they go back to the trail and leave me standing there, the lone thruhiker on the corner in Andover, Maine.So I'm on the phone trying to make contact with someone in the outside world, the whyever, perhaps only just to know I exist still (in that world). I call cousins Justin and Stacey and a few friends out West, all to no avail or voice mail. I give up and stick out my thumb on Route 20 toward, no shit, Mexico. Mexico, Maine. Check out the map sometime. Maine musta been in a real worldly state of mind when they named their towns and cities. There's a Rome, a China, a Moscow, you name it. Now it's 3:30 pm and I've got maybe four hours of daylight to hitch a LONG way across Maine. I've got the party itch and am determined not to miss this one, having heard how much fun I missed at the post July 4th gig in Port Clinton, PA called "Billville." Being in no real special hurry except for wanting like hell to catch up with Yazzy, I decide what the hell. Maybe I'll get to see my friend (and yours, and everyone's) seven-time AT thruhiker Baltimore Jack. A thin wiry guy about 45 with thick glasses strung around his head with baling wire and dried blood on his forehead a truck bed fulla odd tools and several changes of underwear is my first and almost instant ride. The blood, he says, came that day from all the thorny thickets surrounding his dope plants growing on some land up in the forest nearby. He's a fascinating guy with a jillion stories and he manages to encapsulate several of them in the short 15 minute ride past Mexico and to the intersection of the next big road going my way and I thank him and he drops me on a corner in the town of Dixfield, Maine. Now I've been rather spoiled hitchhiking-wise out here in the Appalachians. We all have. Folks living within a certain proximity of the AT just "get it" and swerve right to the curve every time without hesitation. Many rides turn out to be past thruhikers. It's great. But now here in Dixfield I'm just far enough away from the trail that I have a modicum of doubt. But out goes the thumb nonetheless, and with it, almost that very instant, a cop. I judiciously lower said thumb and don't raise it again until he's passed out of sight. My modicum of doubt is growing.A few minutes go by and no one stops and I begin to remember what I must look like to the folks of this town. Grizzly, for one. And I surely smell, despite having caught a quick shower back at the Andover free house. (The pack holds the smell of months of sweat.) But they can't smell me from their cars? Or can they? And suddenly, there's the cop again, not approaching from the direction in which I'm looking, but just sitting there, stopped in the middle of the road directly across from me. Houston, we have a problem.Officer Dow, as I soon came to know his name, sits squat in the one lane road blocking all traffic in the westbound lane of Route 2. I recall the Wal-Mart just down the road to the west. Poor Wal-Mart shoppers."Whatchoo doing?" he asks."Uh, just trying to get up the road a bit," I lamely reply, fumbling with my dog-eared and half-shredded Maine state map, looking for a nearby destination town to give him. "Up the road, huh? Where to?" His tone is not one of concern for my well being, not one of service. And the traffic builds behind him. If he even notices, he obviously doesn't care.Is it illegal to hitchhike in Dixfield, Maine? Who would know? Then I pull the only ace I have, the only one I've had this entire trip, though I'm not real confident that Officer Dow and I are playing with the same deck. That is to say, I don't know if he'll have any idea what I'm talking about. "I'm just trying to get back to the Appalachian Trail, sir," I say. "I'm a long-distance hiker," and I lift my Leki trekking poles for emphasis. The traffic is piling up. Officer Dow is staring me down. No one dares beep. I finish my thought in a mumble, "..all the way from Georgia."Dixfield, MaineSeptember 17, 2004From the look on Officer Dow's mug, I'd say he didn't "get it." But somehow something I'd said or how I'd said it or perhaps the mystifying aspect of the hi-tech-looking ski pole thingies I was carrying got through to him. And despite his "I'm a cop and I'll block traffic anytime I like, thank you" middle-of-the-road stance, he shifted his focus forward and drove off. He didn't even say goodbye! Translation: he'd probably be back.Then Miracle #327 on this long journey began to unfold, and I watched as a big black Chevy Cheyenne pickup truck (that had been in line behind the cop) "flip a bitch" up the road and come round back in my direction, pull over and stop. A burly Steve Donahue said, "Get in."Just inside the truck, I had to ask. I mean, I'd seen him turn around. I knew he wasn't going my way, so.. what was up? "Where you headed?" he asked, ignoring my look of confusion. "Uh, well, Caratunk actually, but that's and awful long way so any way along the way would be good. But hey, you're not even going my way, are you?"Then I got the story. The truth. One of those small town truths that's stranger than fiction and the kind of grit that will always be my favorite fodder for this tap-tap-tap dance of fingers on keys I do for you, my Reader."I saw Joe Dow hassling you," he said, surprising me with his knowledge of the cop's name. "I'm a town selectman (aka city council member) here in Dixfield. Where can I take you?" I'd like to think he also said something about how it irked him, but I wouldn't quote him on that.Thus began one of the coolest hitches in the history of hitching, I figure. A local politician (who makes peanuts for his public service and has to work FT at the local pulp mill to make a living) drives a stinky hiker TWO HOURS out of his way (four hours round trip for him) for no good reason at all. Or to vindicate the actions of a punk local cop. Or because he was in the middle of a divorce and needed someone to talk to. Whatever. It was a pleasure. Kudos to you, Steve Donahue. If I may borrow on a line from "Fight Club," Dixfield Selectman Steve was by far one of my most interesting single-serving friends, in the hitchhiking sense of the term.We talked of many things, Steve and me. Good stuff about family (he'd raised a good many kids) and dreams and adventure and life and the road. Hell if I remember the details now. Because Steve was, after all, driving me to a party. And party I have now for about 48 hours straight. Steve spoke with a certain sadness about his soon-to-be x-wife. Things had gone south and stayed south for a long time. It was either leave her or go bat F-ing crazy. He was a big teddy bear of a man, a tad sad but too fulla life and (obviously) good giving nature to stay sad for long. He was working hard to start anew. I assured him that he would, that everything would be just fine. He told me all about his teenage kids with great fatherly pride, and I replied with "Right on!" and "Excellent!" and meant every word.I wanted to buy the man dinner or a beer or something for his effort. But he wouldn't have it. It was scary when we got to Caratunk, me having never been there and suddenly realizing that I was there based on no more than a rumor heard just hours ago and Caratunk turning out to be some old historic town off the main road empty and dead as some old museum exhibit of a town, not a soul stirring at 6 pm. And I begin thinking, "Oh, shit. This is Kip's doing!" Kip with dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and none of them coming after all. "There really is no party! I've been duped!" But then I pull out the Wingnut trail guide book and reference the town and it says something about a rafting center with cabins a mile up the road and so up we go and voila! There it is! A circus tent with a bonfire going and a handful of early-comers hanging around, scraggly thruhikers every one.I'm kinda sad that Selectman Steve didn't stop for a beer or a burger from the grill. That woulda been nice.For the very next day, as the WhiteBlaze party really got rolling, up drives a semi, a full-blown 18-wheeler with a load and slows sudden to a stop there on the road between the Kennebec River and The Ferryman's place and WOW! Out of the semi cab sprout not one, not two, but five stinky smiling hikers fresh off the trail and hitchin' and arriving in STYLE! The arrival of Big Stick and Gordy and Gaia and Sunshine and Tripod was truly a command performance that'll go down in the memories of all present as a high moment of the weekend. Better than and so-n-so celebrity rolling up to the Shrine Auditorium in a LA in a limousine any day! Wow! Sunshine flagged down a semi! And what to you know but truck driver Gordon parks the rig and comes down to join the party. Wow. What a day. What a weekend!-RSM