Date: 2004-07-22
From: Blackburn ATC Center

To: Harpers Ferry
Miles today: 10.5
Weather: haze

The Misadventures of Whoa & Moxie at the Thousand Mile Mark --- a brief essay by your friendly, neighbourhood Dr. WhoaA day which will certainly go down in history as being one of infamy and pain began under a much more innocent guise as the scent of delicious coffee wafted through the sunlit beams of early morning light that poked through the trees by the front door of the Blackburn ATC Center hostel. What a great day to be alive! And what a great day to be back on the trail. We dawdled through the early morning hours, leisurely eating, packing and sipping at the exquisite coffee (named after some trendy spot close to Philadelphia I believe Patty was saying - but we tossed the original bag to put it in a Ziploc, so I can't refer to that to get you the name oh lord what is its name?) we'd picked up in Washington the day before.And then, with no misgivings at all, we began our hike.What's to say about the day? We'd obviously left the "Roller Coaster" behind and were traipsing along the top of a ridge. The hiking was easy for the most part. There was hardly any up or down - just some occasional rocky bits to navigate through.And as Moxie listened to the musical stylings of Nelly McKay, I thought about the Pennsylvanian rocks to come. Hikers talk about those rocks an awful lot. Legends of them travel up and down the trail - morbid anecdotes are shared by headlamp light at the end of the hiking day when meals have been eaten and the call of bed is strong. "I'm kinda nervous about Pennsylvania," someone will admit."Cuz of the Rocks, right?" someone else will whisper in response (I've capitalized them in that quote because that's how mythical and legendary they are). And everyone will be quiet as they wonder how difficult they will actually be - because, when it comes to trail myths, you soon learn that only the actuality of experience can reveal truth.As we hiked, as Moxie rocked out to the music of the talented Ms. McKay, I got to thinking about rocks, and the strange relationship that we - as hikers - have with them. Every forward motion - every step - is really a kind of controlled fall, afterall. It's just that human beings are rather good at this particular flavour of ambling forward fall.Think, if you will, of fast-forwarding through a videotape of some Hollywood blockbuster to get back to a certain point: the hotties of cinema look like little more than clumsy epileptic apes as they rapidly walk through their scenes.Controlled falling.And if our shimmying human method of forward locomotion is a peculiar enough thing on the semi-safe sidewalks of our Metropolitan centers, then it becomes a phenomenon of absolute amazement out in the hilly, rocky backcountry. Every step we take - every controlled fall - we do so over the sharp teeth of the Appalachian Mountains. And it only takes one fall to allow those hungry mountains to masticate on tender (if lean, and rather spare) hiker flesh.Thinking about this, I started to wonder if one could possibly look at the mountain chain as being a kind of jawline. The Smokies and the rolling gumbo-gnashers of Georgia could be seen as being the mighty molars of the mountains. And maybe the mythopotent Pennsylvanian crop of stony outcroppings could be considered the incisors of this monstrous piece of nature's dental work.And I thought of how amazing it is that we'd come so far without any injury. Here we are, ambling along sinister dentistry, somehow escaping harm.After these thoughts, I'm sure I thought of something more banal, cuz now I can't recall a darn thing as to what went through my mind.Maybe it was "I wonder what we're going to have for lunch?"Lunch was a banal tortilla with some easy cheese squirted into it. Kinda gross, really. So unappetizing, that I made faces at my would-be meal, deciding to have Reese's PB Bites instead.Then we moved on. We only had four miles to go to Harpers Ferry.And that's when Moxie fell.We've both fallen before, and it's usually no big deal, but this time I knew it was different from how she was expressing her pain, and the immediate shocking fact of the blood gushing down her knee.She stayed in place, twisted in an unnatural pose in the brambles at the side of the trail. I have to confess, I was deeply worried for a moment that things were far worse that they were. I sprayed some water over the deep gash over her knee, and that immediately seemed to work to ebb the bloodflow. That, along with some pressure - I found some tissue for her to hold against the wound. A quick look at the data book showed us there'd be no going forward into Harpers Ferry. That was four miles forward, and this girl required stitches. VA Route 9 was only 1.5 miles behind us, so we'd have to turn around.Some old dude who we'd passed before came past us, learned that Moxie had been injured, and then proceeded to go on at length about a rattle snake he'd seen. We kinda half-listened to his rattle prattle. Then he asked if he could help carry any gear, which was nice but we didn't know where we were going to end up.So, we decided to push back to the road. Moxie leaned hard on her hiking poles, and I kept to the slow pace behind her, with my pack on my back, and her pack on my front. The going was very slow, and to add to the drama, a storm was definitely brewing. The sky had grown dark, and those telling pre-storm breezes were moving through the branches of the trees - like hot gossip might communicate through hiker's circles.Thunder was booming and echoing off of the hills. And I was in no mood for us to get rained on, so I shouted up a couple times, "Just wait!"It waited, somehow, for over an hour for us as we snail's-paced it back to the road.And, folks - my thumb was held out at the road for all of thirty seconds before someone pulled over for us."I don't know why I stopped," she later told us. "It's weird! I never picked up a hitch-hiker in my life!"And, even later she told us, "You guys STINK!" with an eruption of laughter.We'd actually already told her that - and had apologized - as is our custom - but she then had to close up the windows on account of the bottom falling out of the sky. And the incontrovertible fact of our heavy funk assaulted her senses.The nice lady with the light-weight nose (we'd showered just the day before yesterday, keep in mind - we have spelunked much much deeper into the Caves of Bodily Funk) sweetly drove us all the way to the hospital in the quiet hamlet of Charles Town.The doctor who sewed up Moxie's knee regaled us with stories of his doctorly apprenticeship in the constantly busy ER ward of a Chicago hospital. One time, a bar fight that had led to deep lacerations in its combatants somehow got started up again in the ER waiting room - leading to the need for ever more stitches in the drunk-and-disorderlies. And yet another time, a wedding party arrived en masse: apparently both sides of the representative families disagreed to that particular union.When he was finished with his stories, Moxie was the proud owner of five new stitches. A Jack Skellington smile peers up from her knee - neatly holding her knee parts together. Or it will, after the gauze and ace bandage come off.Good news is, the doc expects her to be in hiking condition day after tomorrow. So, here we have it - an unanticipated zero day, in Harpers Ferry. From where these words are being written, on the second floor of the Hilltop Hotel.It's cheap, but it ain't got TV.But, the view of the river outside is amazing.Happy night, all.- Jonathon