Date: 2004-09-09
From: Hurricane Francis

To: The Holy Land
Miles today: 0.0

September 9, 04ThursdayYazzy¢s Cabin by the Canadian border, New Hampshire¢Inside you're ugly, ugly like me, I can see thru you, see your true colors..¢ -StaindI am a nasty little boy. I eat pills and swill lager and kiss the girls thenpull away. I take Yaz & Jess out on the water in the canoe and we talk of tsunamisas the wind-whipped surface of Lake Francis slaps the hull and tosses us hitherand yon. I ask the girls what they would do if they looked back at the dark,storm cloud-shrouded lake and saw a tsunami coming. Yazzy says she'd zip up herlife jacket. Jess sips her beer and smiles, says nothing. We paddle on and theearly-autumn wind sings in our ears and finally I say, "If I looked round andsaw a tsunami coming, I would passionately kiss you both and yell "Yeeee-hah! Bring it on!"Back at the cabin, Sundown and Eric sit reading in silence in the sweltering wood furnace heat. Jessica fancies perhaps Eric has a crush on Sundown. I wonder. Out on the lake I have been lobbying the girls. Who wants to leave now? Wejust got here! and so on..Eric wants to leave in the morning. Says he's antsy. Of course he's antsy. We're all antsy. We're frikken trail junkies. All weknow how to do anymore is walk and walk and walk. But we left the AT andtraveled fully four hours north yesterday to this blissful corner of NewHampshire woodland paradise to escape the residue of Hurricane Francis. Whoa! Francis? Ooh, that's good. Escape Francis on Lake Francis. Now I'm sure this is EXACTLY as things were meant to be. I unplug from my headphones a moment to throw down this comment from mybed-desk in the loft of the beautiful post & beam cabin: "Eric, I was antsy when we were at the beach house in North Carolina. Embrace it and relax." I don't think he's amused. It is Sundown, I imagine, who is the real umph behind the move to leave tomorrow. Sundown fascinates. She never appears to see anything but what she wants tosee, never focuses on anything but what is immediately at her needfulattention. Her eyes do not scan a scene, a room, no, they nullify it. Ignoreit completely. Or so it would seem. She speaks very little, hasn't laughed once in 24 hours, makes no eye contact, and is I suspect wondering why she came along. Maybe she¢s just avoiding MY gaze? She probably sees everything, but her downcast gaze belies nothing. Belies nothing.? Needful attention? What exactly does that mean? I don't know. I just said it. I just say a lot of things. Use what you will and disregard the rest. It is the American way. Don't bother recycling any of my irreverently tossed-off words. They will not work to build Earthship walls nor suffice to mould into ashtrays or astronaut suites. They will not easily melt down into the raw stuff of new material goods. And they are non-refundable. No deposit no return. This is not Vermont, hippies! This is New Hampshire, the land of Freedom or Death, of no sales tax and cheap Canadian whiskey and no seatbelt law and no 5 cent return on bottles and cans. My words then, here or on the trail in the White Mountains are more worthless than anywhere. "Lets take the boat out, wait until darkness, let's take the boat out, waituntil darkness comes." -Peter GabrielYou're in a boat on a lake, it's waters black as coal. You're with two women,both in their early twenties, both doe-eyed, one Italian brown like black, oneblue as Walden ice. Both girls are beautiful, well-endowed, one voluptuous andearthy yet full of giggles and gin, the other lithe and tiny, soft-spoken. She'll melt your heart. They both will. Both are fertile, supple, willing(?),happy, single (as in not married). On this latter note, yes, one has a boyfriend, and after six months together in the woods, he's your friend, too. There's naught to be done about it. You're fucked. After 1700 miles afoot, your endorphins have poisoned your brain into thinking she wants you. They both do. They gotta! You want them, too. And then again you don't. An awkward first encounter with blue-eyes has left you reticent to try again. She wanted to play but insisted on keeping her clothes on. You're too old for that shit. Then comes Miss Italy. No chance of play there. Too much trouble with the boyfriend thing. He will propose to her within the coming month. He has told you as much, wants to pop the question before the magic of the trail ends and Reality crashes back into their young 20-something lives. In truth, you love them both. Hell, why not love `em all? The girls and the boyfriend. You've watched the couple succeed in their partnership and love under the harsh conditions of the trail for half a year and you know what that means: it means they should be married, immediately. They have proven in 2000 miles that they possess what most people only dream of in a relationship. Endurance. Compatibility. Love. They belong together. You, however, are a peregrine, a wanderer, a lost boy. You belong to no one and nothing, and unless something radical crashes into your life soon to change that, you always will be. Peregrine. Wanderer. Lost boy. Peter Pan, not the syndrome, the reality. Not some closet case in green tights like the guy you saw on some freak-showcase TV show, but the real item. You've got a Wendy in every port, but you would trade them all for the sky, for the freedom tofly. For you OWN this freedom, as so few ever will. And you know what thatmeans: it owns you. When you own something as magical and grand and rare as freedom,you become its caretaker and its poster child. You are duty bound to keep onflying, wandering, loving, leaving. You're in a boat on a lake, it's watersblack as coal. You're with two women, both in their early twenties, bothdoe-eyed, one Italian brown like black, one blue as Walden ice. It is nice. It is now. And you know what that means: there's no need to try and grab holdof it, or of them. The moment is yours now, forever.Tomorrow the residue of Hurricane Francis will pass and the exposed high rockridges of New Hampshire¢s Presidential Range will be, if not sunny, at leastsafe to traverse again. You will be back on the trail. Blue eyes will take to the trail at the Maine state line, well ahead of you. You and the couple will cross into Maine a few days later, together perhaps. Or perhaps not. Your heart aches for a love of your own, and being in their company pains you. Miss Italy consoles you, says to keep the faith, that maybe the girl of your dreams will finally appear in these last 300 miles to Katahdin. You doubt it, but you'll smile and say thank you, and heft your pack for the 400th time this year and walk North.Our last sunset at the Lake Francis cabin is like nothing I¢ve ever seen. Thesun sets to my far left, but the real action is straight across the water infront of me. It is as though the rain, in leaving, has ignited a wild fire inthe hills to the north. A band of bright red and orange light rests atop thehills, undulating in flame-like waves. To complete the illusion, theburning clouds stop a few degrees above the horizon and give way to a dark,churning smoke-gray cloud layer, which perhaps due to it being farther off,remains outside the sun¢s reach. Living in the mountains of southern California, I have seen wildfires. I haveseen them close enough to fear them, helping friends pack caged pets andprecious books and photographs into escape vehicles as ash fell on us likesnowflakes from the sky around a Black Hole Sun. I have seen wildfiresdevouring forest acreage beneath towering clouds of ash, and this sunset lookedevery bit the part. The sunset over Lake Francis that night hailed the end of Hurricane Francis¢visit to New England with a most dramatic flair. That night for the five ATthruhikers holed up near the Canadian border, red skies at night spelled¢hiker¢s delight.¢ It meant we could hike again. Fair weather over Mt.Washington and his presidential buddies was almost a given.Why then the somber mood that prevailed that night and all the next morn? Because the return to the trail meant separation. Sundown was taking(intentionally-subjective word choice) Yazzy with her to some point furthernorth, Gorham I think. While The Happy Couple and me, we were still back atNawford¢s Crotch.. er, whatever. That night while Sundown, Eric & Jess made arun to the store, Yazzy and I ¢connected¢ in a way that would, eventually,spell the end of my time with Jess & Eric. The next morning we five would separate, but it wouldn¢t be long before mystraight-outa-the-Ten-Commandments, wrong-headed desire for Jessica and mylonging for companionship would combine like bleach and ammonia to create asickening, if not deadly toxin-to-this-writer¢s heart and ruin our intention to summit together, on the same day, as we had by happenstance begun from Springer Mountain in Georgia ¢together¢ on the first day of Spring, March 20th, 2004. -RSM