Date: 2004-03-26
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

High atop some mountain in Georgia, I contemplate the last four days ofsome kinda weird ecstatic granola-junkie dirty-sock boot camp. AtWalasi-Yi hostel at Neel's Gap, we are all equal in stink. "What willyou do with your shoes when you're done hiking, The Volcano Goddessasks. "I'll sell mine on eBay. `The shoes that made the whole trailfrom Georgia to Maine. Two thousand miler shoes.'" Casey the bordercolley with the doggie food backpack comes over and nuzzles my face,attempts to get the cashews from my closed hand. All around us,Goddess, Flowershorts, Underground Radio and me, there spans outseemingly to forever the blue of the bluest sky, and below it layerafter layer receding into the distance of blue-shaded mountains,mountains that to see them up close must be brown and gray like theforests we walk through, but in the distance and perhaps in thereflection of the sky, they lay like sleeping dreams of distant oceans.I've been trying to find time to write for days. But I've become apart of a tight little family of friends, all thru hikers, all travelingat roughly the same speed. And they're pushing it, pushing me. Not inany zealous speed hiker sense, but enough, and more than what I wouldhave done myself.So much to tell after so few days. I'm seated now beneath thisfantastic old oak tree, all gnarled and scraggly and full ofpersonality. From my place here on the ground it rises jack in thebeanstalk high and crazy like varicose veins on the blue skin of thesky. And I type. Finally using my laptop lay down method after days ofbeing so busy or so tired I couldn't hack it. I met Elly (psuedo-namedfor her likeness to Jodie foster and love of the film Contact) on mysecond day out. I wanted her the moment l spotted her. After spendingan hour writing on Sunday morning, I'd made a shorter than expected dayof seven miles to Gooch gap shelter. On day one I'd done 9. On daythree, I did 12. Day four was just 4 miles into Neel's Gap where werested and "desupplied." John dubbed our new friend Nathan"Underground Radio" for the fact that he buried his radio the first dayof the hike in an effort to reduce his pack weight. His comment aboutthis odd and colorful act, "The earth worms are groovin!" Apparently heleft the radio on. I'd like to think the hypocritical dope-fiend RushLimbaugh was the last to go squawking into the dirt. The shelter on Day Two at mile marker 14.6 was great and I quicklyclaimed a spot in its loft. That night I sewed my loco fleece hat thathas since become something of a trademark and is most certainly acolorful eye catcher. Hand sewed it with temperatures dropping rapidlyas the sun went down. When Elly arrived I was up in the sheltersloft, the shelter kinda like a minibarn with an open front and a picnictable beneath its overhanging roof the first thing I noticed was shehair. A real wild mane, very lion like, very reminiscent of my collegegirlfriend Melissa Moore back in 1989. Glasses, kinda fiftieslibrarian type, sexy, muscular and slim, Elly comes from a commune inVirginia.   At the right angle, she's a dead ringer for Jodie Fosterbut with a wild and uncombed mane. It was almost like fate droppedthis girl in my lap. Fate was close and dropped her right beside me. She got to the shelter when there was but one space left for someone tothrow down their bag (the space right beside me) and join thestinky-feet slumber party that would, by morning, see the temperaturedrop to 20 F and have me snapping awake from dreams of clambering intothis girl's sleeping bag for warmth. Perhaps those dreams were justpremonition, for just one night later, after a brutal 12-miles and acold and late arrival to the next shelter, I threw shyness to the windand asked if she'd like to share a tent with me. She said yes. Nowshe shares my tent with me nightly and as a result I am not restingmuch. Little sleep. A lot more power-hiking than I'd counted on withdays up to 12 miles so far. All this on knees not at all happy withme. Last night's camp of some three dozen tents has completely clearedout. Mine is the last tent standing (again, like Day 1). I feelbadly, holding Elly back from her potentially much faster pace. Butfor now we tread some middle ground compromise. Underground andFlowerpants have gone, essentially busting up our little family of fourfor today anyway. There is a shelter much closer today, seven miles. Perhaps I will have time to write then tonight, given this morereasonable goal. Yesterday's 12 miles wiped me out, and then there wasthe tent to pitch, water to pump and treat, and so on. Elly madedelicious black bean burritos for she and I, kind of in trade for mypitching the tent. Overall I couldn't be happier, but I feel like afat middle-aged man thrown into boot camp, and kept there, not by anymandate so much as a sweet cherry pie steaming hot in wait on thewindowsill every night.-RSMAfter repeatedly joking with south-facing hikers, asking them, "so howwas Maine?" today it really happened. There on the path appearedFuman, who to the same question answered that yes, he had come fromKathadin. Wha-what? We couldn't believe it.   Fuman fiery red hair,beard and snow white legs couldn't match the fiery spirit that musthave driven this man to thru hike the AT not only in the opposite andthus less-social direction as us, but in the dead of winter, one of theharshest winters on the east coast in years, says Elly. What were aretrail names? he inquired. I said that we hadn't quite landed them yet.Fuman, without hesitation, looked at me and said, "Malcovich." Almostdone, he said. Just one more day. We all looked at one another inamazement.   One day? It had taken us five. We shook his hand,congratulated him and not long after parting ways, wished we'd gotten apicture of the one called Fuman, who'd hacked thru winter with an iceax, lost his partner and his Chu.For the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com