Date: 2012-04-06
From: Brown Fork Gap Shelter

To: N.C. 28
Miles today: 11.6

April 6, 11.6 miThat day I compelled Thin Timber to wait for me a total of about five hours, most of it in the morning. A register entry of his from last night cut my heart to a bloody mess: ¢Ran the last of today's miles with Peach. We made excellent time and did Jacob's Ladder in under 45 minutes! Fontana Dam today with C.V. --Thin Timber¢All I could do after I'd seen it was wallow in the privacy of my tent. Nevermind the blazing sun and the heat. I needed to be alone. ¢What's wrong?¢ he asked, but I refused to answer this. ¢You deserve to have people in your life.¢I don't think so. ¢Whatever has happened in your past, you -¢ I interrupted him here ad said that I wanted to get moving. Our paces staggered once again but 'Timber left me notes weighted down with Slim Jims or sour Jolly Ranchers. ¢C.V.: Meet me at Yellow Creek Gap. --Joe, aka Thin Timber¢ Then later, at the Gap, I found another one: ¢I waited for you for over two hours! --Joe¢ I found his whole business of note leaving very insulting.His exact location was never known to me, and I relished my time alone, especially around the golden, 5 o'clock hour. Around this time, with the ordinary forest around me, I ascended to a heightened sense of awareness. Vividness, poignancy, and unspeakable beauty defined the scene. All I could do was mutter broken phrases in Italian. I had such strong feelings that I had to do something, even if it wasn't perfect or worthy of nature. ¢I'm sorry, I'm sorry,¢ was a current theme throughout my long prayer. I cried for all the sins of my life. In maudlin woe I feared that I was living in sin at that very moment, that there was nothing I could do to get away from my past, from the devil. That I would always in some way be contributing towards unnecessary conflict in the world. Pure golden sun slant lit the forest up to my left. To my right, blue mountain slopes hollowed out a gentle, tree-filled basin. The light and the dark were both there, playing on each other in a visual total, and I got to be a part of it. I was walking through the middle, so carefully, very slowly. ¢Mi dispiace, mi dispiace.¢ Many tears ran the full course of my face and collected at my chin. ¢Mi dispiace, Dio mio! Mi sento come Giulietta degli Spiriti. Sotto gli alberi raggiungio con la gente stranaccia. Che confusione, Dio! Non so, ma sembra che non possa andar via da sola cosi. Perche? Amo, amo. Ma non ne posso piu. Mi dispiace...mi dispiace...¢oI successfully stopped hiking with Thin Timber for all of three miles. I tried my best to impart my desire to be alone to him. I wanted to tell him I was jealous of Peach but my pride wouldn't let me even come close. I was just miserable at the state of everything. If I hadn't camped with the Wolf Pack that night but had instead traveled on as was my wish, I wouldn't have felt any pain.¢I don't want to hike with anyone,¢ I said simply.¢You can go on pretending that no one is in front of you and no one is behind you, but we're still here,¢ he said.Clever. He made me pause. For a full minute I didn't know what to say. Then somehow I made a beginning. It probably sounded just as irrelevant as his remark to me had seemed, but without the strength of his rhetoric my remarks just sounded feeble. I meandered around, awkwardly searching at great length for evidence for my simple truth, and finished by defending my right to ¢hike my own hike.¢ I'd been talking for quite awhile. Ashamed of myself, no conviction about me at all, I looked up to him.¢Well! That's the best conversation we've ever had,¢ he said. His subtle sarcasm wasn't lost on me. But I could think of nothing to say. Mute, all I could do was wait for him to move on. He was faster than me.Usurper.He couldn't walk away from me soon enough.OI didn't know what the Great Smokey Mountains were. I just saw a park boundary in my Data Book and anticipated more of what I'd experienced in Georgia. Perhaps the mountains would be a little higher than Georgia, but the terrain would mostly remain the same.I was wrong. However, an ¢ignorance¢ that is backed by a genuine, devil-may-care abandon isn't something I consider to be a flaw in my character. That night I felt a little cooler than usual so I sliced along the toe seams of a pair of woolen socks with the boxcutter from my last job I'd brought as a ¢lightweight¢ alternative to a knife. In other words, I didn't even own a knife. These spliced articles of clothing I slid over my arms. My rain jacket clung hot and sweaty over my simple polyester tank, so I didn't use it.I minced down a steep grade, crossed NC 28, signed myself up as a party of 1 to enter the free park, and tucked the carbon copy of the registration safe into my Data Book.I climbed away from the parking lot along 28, vacant except for a white patrol car. I kept imagining that I was going to be stopped. But then again, who could catch me, in a car or on foot?I tried to restrain myself from smoking a cigarette within view of that truck, nonetheless. Paranoid, I felt I were being tracked. I sucked on a Jolly Rancher instead.Once I made it up the initial climb the path mellowed out. I walked calmly past moonlit boulders and small fir trees, the first evergreens I remember seeing on the trail. A bird call that was completely foreign to me sounded to my left. It struck me as odd in the middle of the night. A nocturnal songbird?Later I hit a major road and the trail went along its shoulder until everything opened up into what would have been a great view by day. I couldn't see these Smokey Mountains but I could see a large, placid, dark glass lake. I stepped up on the walkway beside the plaque explaining...something...and lit a cigarette, wishing it were a joint. As soon as I mentally made that wish, a powerboat crossed the lake right in front of me, headlights swirling. I assumed it was a police boat and so felt nervous and vaguely guilty. I stubbed out my light behind the rock wall and tried to locate the trail. This was more difficult than usual because it had made a break onto this lookout. Who knew where it redirected itself. Through the lookout ledge to the left and into the trees? And where was the camping area? Finally I saw grills, rusting trash cans, and tents spaced every 50 feet or so on the level surfaces as I walked down the cement road with which the trail joined. The Wolf Pack had taken over the Fontana Dam Shelter. I fit right in, crouching by the fire, talking to Damn Yankee about The Merry Pranksters and some Stephen King novel, trying to avoid Thin Timber. One of the guys got me a beer and we all tried to unwind, watching ¢hiker TV¢ in the fire.Sunshine showed up really drunk. She couldn't even sit up on the bench she sat on. I watched her quietly, my legs crossed in the dirt, not knowing how she was feeling but watching very intently because something told me that I would understand one day. Despite my trying to act casual and at ease, a beer in my hand, her cries were eerie to me and I thought she spied me out of the corner of her upturned face. She howled, screamed, and then cooed long sobs. The guys on either side of her seemed ill at ease and scanned the present company for sympathy, validation. ¢Isn't she nuts?¢ they seemed to say with their curled lips. Thin Timber had set up his hammock on the railing encircling the tenting area. Several wolves were asleep inside the shelter. Once again, I'd had no idea it was so late; the only time keeping device I owned was my phone, which I always kept off. Despite a few Natty Bo's I still felt a little paranoid about going through this park alone. The guys around the fire were talking about new rules specific to this park and I didn't want to get fined. Apparently tenting wasn't allowed at all, you had to stay in the shelters. And there were rangers patrolling to enforce this due to severe weather conditions.I went up to Thin Timber and audaciously asked him to hike with me again ¢ not a few hours after I'd made such a strong stance. He said yes and brushed off the events of that afternoon as if they couldn't possibly count for more than the present moment.That night he actually slept with me in my tent, at my request. I felt very uneasy and wanted to be comforted.¢Seevee,¢ he whispered into my ear, coddling upper thighs with his fingers. ¢What is it?¢¢Well, nevermind.¢¢No, what? Tell me.¢ He was silent for quite some time.¢Do you wanna have sex?¢ It wasn't what I was expecting him to say. With that sort of hesitation I was actually expecting him to say ¢I love you.¢ But the way we did it, it was more like fighting. And I lost. He had me pinned from the beginning. On my back, I strained my hips upwards, begging to be stabbed, but he tortured me instead. ¢Ohhhhh, I hate you!¢ is what he really said.