Date: 2006-10-27
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Miles today: 0.0

I am Ratso. Enrico Salvatore 'Ratso' Rizzo from the film, Midnight Cowboy, that is. Ratso is the Tuberculosis ridden friend to Joe Buck, the cowboy hustler lead character. While both Joe Buck and Ratso are living fantasy lives, banking on the dream of making it big with hustling and gambling in nyc, Ratso¢s fantasy life is made explicit in the film vignettes featuring him running down the warm sandy beaches of Florida and living it up with the retired ladies along side a kidney shaped swimming pool. New York City in the sixties is a harsh place and Ratso, crippled and possessing an annoying whining voice, is barely scraping by. He dreams of Florida, it is his Elysian Fields. And the Appalachian Trail is mine. Ratso and BirdLegs. BirdLegs and Ratso. Now let¢s hope I don¢t piss myself or die on the long bus ride to Georgia this spring, as Ratso did in the film. The author, Annie Dillard, said that, ¢Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded¢¦the mountains are home.¢ She is referring to the Blue Ridge in Virginia through which the Appalachian Trail runs. It's a place where she sought solitude and peace during her creation of a Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (it¢s one of my favorite books and I worship her for writing it¢¦I met Dillard in a small airport in Key West and stammered and blushed when talking to her, behaving the way an adolescent would in front of her favorite pop icon). What makes this book so powerful to me? So appealing that I can revisit it year after year? Of course the book is finely crafted and compelling and possesses nearly every quality a great book should. But I love the sense of complete absorption in the present moment as Dillard spends her days in the valley next to Tinker Creek, exploring, looking, wondering and reveling in the immediacy of the environment around her. There is no longing for future or past, rather a nod towards either with a complete commitment to the present. She is not like Ratso by any stretch of the imagination. There are two versions of the Appalachian Trail. There¢s the physical trail that meanders up the eastern half of the united states then there¢s what I like to refer to as the ¢AT of the mind¢. The secondary AT is a psychological prop, a conversation piece, an object of desire. I have to wonder how many more people hike this version of the trail. There¢s a commuter rail stop right on the AT. On Saturdays and Sundays the commuter train picks up and discharges passengers directly onto the trail. It¢s an oddity of mass transit, a jolt when the train pulls to a stop in the middle of nowhere, a dusty strip of ground intersecting the rails leading into the city to Grand Central. A lot of people from the city get off there wearing fleece and carrying fancy gear. I call it the Granola Express. It never fails to create a fantastic murmur in the cars and reminds commuters of the existence of bears and mountain men and wilder spaces. I was taking the commuter rail home from upstate last weekend when I overheard the conductors talking about the AT. ¢Have you ever been on the Appalachian Trail?¢ asked the one conductor.¢No, but I hear you can hop on it almost anywhere. Think it goes down to Tennessee.¢Both men gaze uncomfortably, longingly up to where the Telephone Pioneers shelter sits nestled in the mountains just a few miles away. Though these men were a little off with their facts, I smiled because it seems like they know everything that needs to be known about the trail.We need these places; mountains, oceans, maybe even vast cities to stand in as a sort of psychological safety release valve. Had a rough day at work? That¢s okay, tomorrow we may be hiking. Looming, totemic, and absolute, people regard these spaces as utopias. In the months before I discovered the trail, I spent a large chunk of time creating mountain ridden visual art accompanied by a conceptual dialog about utopias and frontiers. I was in a frenzy to create these places on paper because I didn¢t think they existed in the concrete world. I had no idea what I was doing. There are times when I stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the city. Something intangible will hold me transfixed; a smell or a sound maybe. The quality of light on the pavement. I never quite know what does it but I raise my eyes above the rooftops and the trees and LaGuardia¢s busy flight pattern. And I find myself filled with a feeling similar to what the conductors must have experience while passing the AT. It gives me breathing space and a feeling of consolation, a sense of not being trapped walking the interminable strip of concrete between my apartment and the bodega down the block. MacKaye¢s giants indeed. There needs to be those moments where a thread is drawn taught between our ideals and our reality, compressing and distorting the two worlds. I hiked with Victoria, a class of 2007 hiker, this past weekend. I hear that she¢s been receiving some criticism over her decision to hike since she¢s not a ¢hiking expert¢. It seems as though the gear, the miles, and the logistics are minor. Many hikers say that a thru-hike is mostly a mental exercise and I have to agree. After all, it¢s just walking. Victoria has what Dillard has; a commitment to the present, a keen awareness and appreciation of the things around her. She hiked very well (and, yes, she did have her gear in good order and kept a good pace). I¢d have to say she¢s got the most difficult part of the thru-hiking business well under way and I think she¢ll have an amazing experience next year. I suppose folks can¢t have faith in her because they don¢t have it in themselves. Or their priorities are awry. Or they¢re still in that frustrated stage where they¢re sitting on the floors of their apartments, frantically drawing mountains on paper, coming up with highly intangible facsimiles of their own freedom.