Date: 2005-12-22
From: ...just a little longer...

To: ...Day 2 in the 100-Mile comes to an end
Miles today: 0.0

As promised...As I was saying, we assed and tree-danced our way down Fourth Mtn. Near its base, we leapfrogged past Bonfire who, although the terrain prohibited conversation, commiserated non-verbally w/ us over the frustrating landscape. Arriving at an area slightly cleared of underlying brush and debris, w/ conveniently positioned logs which practically screamed ¢Sit here!¢, we gratefully jettisoned our packs before collapsing onto the woodsy benches. W/ a watchful eye on the sun and at the request of Free and Poet, I reluctantly w/drew Wingfoot (I was still slightly miffed at him), in order to make an educated guess on our whereabouts. Knowing that we had now definitely completed 4th Mtn, I sought a distinguishing characteristic of our current glade, to provide me a hint. A pathetic trickle of water, which could optimistically have been labeled a ¢stream¢, dribbled disconsolately nearby. Latching onto that clue, meager as it was, I determined that we were still 4 miles shy of Chairback Gap Lean-to, our intended destination for the evening. W/ the sun dishearteningly low on the horizon (What had happened to THX¢s optimistic declarations of ¢easy miles¢ and ¢numerous hours of daylight¢?), we all knew that 4 miles was beyond our capabilities, unless we opted to engage in some night-hiking, an activity that none of us, considering the hazardous terrain, were willing to even contemplate. Additionally, Serenity hadn¢t been seen since Long Pond Stream Lean-to, where the fun really began, so she would undoubtedly not make it to Chairback. The decision to reduce our mileage was so foregone that it wasn¢t even a decision; it was a statement of fact. The only unknown was -- if not Chairback, then where? Although 4 miles was unrealistic, the sun had enough altitude to allow us to knock off at least 1 or 2 more. B/c, as we were all aware, when operating on a scheduled timeline, fewer miles today means more miles tomorrow¢¦ Ducking my head back into Wingfoot¢s pages (much as I peevishly mistrusted him at the moment, his was our only guidebook), I found a potential campsite at a stream, hopefully more substantial than this practically invisible dribble, located just over 2 miles distant. And, if tenting was scarce at the stream itself, there was a nearby pond down a short blue-blaze. Ironic, isn¢t it, that we hemmed and hawed earlier in the day, about a 0.3-mile detour to see Cloud Pond, and now, here we were, complacently accepting the prospect of a 0.2-mile side-trail, to a different pond, to set up camp for the night. Timing is everything¢¦As Poet scrawled out a note to Serenity, detailing our amended plans for the evening, Bonfire appeared. Upon learning the disheartening news of Chairback¢s distance, she nevertheless determinedly avowed her intent to reach the lean-to, and resolutely marched on. I think we were more astonished that she bypassed such a superb opportunity for a break, rather than her declaration to hike another 4 miles of this excruciating terrain. Shortly thereafter, Linus and Traildawg stumbled across us. Literally. Traildawg, an ¢04 GAME alumnus, had been slack-packing a whole cadre of hikers, ever since Gorham, and was now re-hiking the Wilderness w/ Linus. Today was his second day on the trail and, well, we all remembered the early days of Georgia, the blisters, the aches in muscles you didn¢t even know existed. (And let me tell you, hiking w/ 3 massage therapists in the Pod? I learned a lot about musculature and the human body. And forgot, oh, about 99.9% of it, w/in 2 minutes. Honestly, I don¢t know how many times I asked Poet or Serenity to tell me what PNF stood for (it has to do w/ stretching some muscle of the upper leg), but, w/in 30 seconds¢¦ POOF. Gone faster than air in a wind tunnel.) But, unlike our trail-hardened bodies, Traildawg¢s legs and feet were new initiates, struggling to keep pace w/ the calloused, gnarly ones of thru-hikers, who were doing plenty of struggling of our own that day. So, when he came hobbling into our impromptu break-site, leaning heavily on freshly acquired walking sticks, we immediately gasped our concern, a chorus of anxious questions:¢Traildawg!?¢¢What happened?¢¢You okay?¢And, w/ a grin rivaling that of the Cheshire cat, he threw aside his makeshift crutches and strode forward into the glade, w/o hint of limp or lameness.¢Aww, I was just kiddin¢ around¢¦¢Harumpf. He should know better. Being a former thru-hiker, he knows how seriously we take injuries. ¢Kidding¢ indeed.Once we¢d properly chastised him for his heart-stopping antics, discussion turned to our mutual disgust over the hellacious terrain. Traildawg confessed that it hadn¢t seemed nearly as brutal last year, and Linus eagerly seconded our affirmations that this, in fact, sucked.But, sucking or no, we still had a pair of miles to pound out before the sun made its nightly farewell. And so, donning our packs, we resumed our plodding course. Almost immediately, our feet (and calves and knees) detected a upward tilt to the footpath. Of course, the massive mountain in front of us would have given it away anyway. Right then, I felt a distinct sympathy for the caged hamster, mindlessly spinning its wheel and never getting anywhere. I felt as if I had become Sisyphus, toting an unwieldy backpack in place of his unwieldy stone, forever doomed to go up¢¦ and down¢¦ and up¢¦ and down¢¦ w/ never an end in sight. The trail becoming very monotonous, I fell into a sort of trance, a mental stupor, where my eyes remained fixated on the soles of Poet¢s trail runners; in a process that was so ingrained by now as to make my brain unnecessary, my eyes communicated directly to the nerves in my feet, directing them where to place themselves. It was if an unbroken string existed, running from Poet¢s shoe, to my eye, to my sandaled foot. As if I had become nothing more than a puppet, a marionette, and one yank on that string would bring me tumbling down. My world had narrowed down to two points, the mud-encrusted soles of Poet¢s shoes. MONTRAIL¢¦ MONTRAIL¢¦ MONTRAIL... It would have been an amazingly effective advertising technique, had my brain not been doing a remarkable impersonation of a vacuum at that moment. For my thoughts had fled, abandoning me, my mind uncharacteristically quiescent. It was extremely unnerving. (Well, had I been capable of thought, I¢m sure I would have thought it extremely unnerving.) But, at that moment, I didn¢t think, I didn¢t feel; I just¢¦ walked. A rhythmic, metered pattern of movement. Left foot¢¦ Right foot¢¦ Left foot¢¦ Right foot¢¦ The world no longer existed. I no longer existed; I was just two disembodied feet, going up and down, up and down, controlled by the skillful tugs of the puppeteer.I couldn¢t tell you one thing about that stretch of trail. Not about rocks or trees or views or streams or climbs. Nothing. (Although I suspect that there were no extremely treacherous descents, otherwise I probably wouldn¢t be writing this today.) I couldn¢t tell you if it was 100 yards, or a mile. Fifty seconds or fifty minutes. (I can however, describe in precise detail every facet of Poet¢s footwear. I think they were branded on my brain.) Looking back on it, it was unnerving, relinquishing thought so completely. But, at the same time, it was exhilarating, to simply be, to simply exist. Nothing more, nothing less.(I feel as if I should insert some really profound quote right here... But, as nothing is coming to mind¢¦ Think of your favorite philosopher and one of their pithy pearls of wisdom, and pretend that it¢s displayed right here: ¢_____________________________________¢)And then, like the classic hypnotist snapping his fingers, the trance was broken. I fell out of my stupor almost literally, as if my invisible puppeteer had gotten his finger tangled in the strings, my feet tripping as I stumbled out onto an exposed rocky outcrop. A magnificent vista lay afore me, the sun beaming its glorious last hurrah before dipping below the horizon. Completely disoriented, my brain feverishly tried to assimilate¢¦ everything. One minute, I was grumbling under my breath, ¢Stupid incessant climbs¢¦ southern Maine¢¦ Wilderness¢¦¢flat¢¢¦¢, having recently left Linus and Traildawg at the break-site. And the next moment, I¢m perched on a cliff at the edge of the world. Sensory information is flooding into my brain, w/ a rapidity that can¢t be stemmed, my mind brimming, overflowing w/ input, I feel that it must be visibly pouring from my head. But my mind, my entire body, greedily absorbed¢¦ everything, as if it had been starved. I feasted on the moment. On the sunlight playfully glinting off the reflective waters of the lake in the valley below. On the gentle breeze wafting through my hair, its chill breath raising goosebumps on my skin, whispering its secrets as it glides past my ears. On the almost-tangible blue of the sky. On the musical rustle of tree branches, dancing imperceptibly in the wind. I noticed things that my brain normally discarded as irrelevant ¢ the pattern of the lichen on the rock, the shadows of the pine needles, the keening cry of the bird flying home to nest (or perhaps in search of dinner; my brother¢s the birder of the family). The very hardness of the rock, the warmth it had absorbed from the beneficent sun, I could feel it, seeping into my feet, even through the soles of my sandals. The blue of the sky, I found that I could touch it, could hold it in my hand. In that moment, there was a clarity, of sight, of sound, of touch, of being. I insatiably drank it all in, devoured it, and thus became it, if only for a moment. But what a moment that was¢¦Remedying my previous lack, here¢s a quote for your consumption:¢¢¦I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell¢¦¢ ¢ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.I could feel the very hills echoing back my resonance.And then, w/ an abruptness that was fast becoming routine, the moment was eclipsed. Reality crash-landed. I crash-landed. And when I regained my footing, my senses had returned to their normal functioning, the connectivity to my surroundings severed. But the memory of that moment¢¦ the memory I kept.Free was asking me if I knew where we were, Poet, Traildawg, and Linus looking inquiringly on. Of course, w/ all of the yankings and jerkings of my consciousness, I hadn¢t a bloody clue where we were. Resorting to the failsafe method, I brandished Wingfoot. (After what I had just experienced, my petty squabbles over his inaccuracies seemed petty indeed.) Studying his strings of data, I attempted to get my bearings, which were rolling about like marbles on a Tilt-o-World. Not having any idea of how far we¢d come, or how long we¢d come, I chose the most likely candidate:¢This must be Third Mtn. Wingfoot calls it ¢Monument Cliff.¢¢ (The mountain-namers could have done worse.)In response to their question of how far we¢d come, I performed the requisite arithmetic and replied: ¢3/4-mile.¢And was treated to four gasps of horror and four, comically identical, looks of incredulity.¢3/4 of a mile?!¢¢Impossible!¢Well, that¢s what Wingfoot said, anyway. After an intense round of discussion, involving suspicious glances at the sun and a thorough examination of Poet¢s watch, it was determined that Wingfoot was, once again, in error. That we had, in fact, come 1.75 miles, and not just a scant 0.75. And just as he was beginning to get back into my good graces too¢¦Buoyed by the knowledge that we had a mere 12-mile ¢til the stream, which meant camp, which meant dinner (a subject which typically begins intruding on a thru-hiker¢s thought process sometime around 10am), we disembarked 3rd Mtn w/ renewed vigor. Unfortunately, we immediately began plummeting in a tortuous repeat of Barren and 4th mountains. (According to the grumbling and griping coming from Free and Poet, the terrain during my puppeted trance hadn¢t been nearly so perilous.) Progress once again ground to a bone-jarring crawl, as we were forced to employ our Mahoosuc manuevers. Poet and I somehow got slightly ahead of Free and, at one particularly gnarly spot, which involved a tricky combination of a half-ass segueing into a tree-dance, I found myself twenty feet or so behind (and ten feet above) Poet. Hearing some rustling noises coming from further down the trail (literally, ¢down¢, another 20 feet below Poet), I initially froze, wildly hoping to spot a moose. Instead, I glimpsed a brief flash of color¢¦ which morphed into a backpack¢¦ and then I located Bonfire. Ah well. Maybe there¢d be meese at the pond tonight. I prepared to call out a hello to Bonfire, and then I noticed that Poet was acting very oddly, gesturing at me and giving me the universal ¢Shush¢ sign. Half-assing and tree-dancing my way down to her, I whispered, ¢What?¢Pointing below us, eyes wide, she whispered back, ¢Meese¢¦¢Oh. In a normal volume, I said, ¢No meese. It¢s Bonfire.¢From Poet¢s position, Bonfire had been masked by the trees, which my earlier vantage had allowed me to see over. Slightly shame-facedly, Poet led the way down, to where we exchanged greetings w/ our fellow hiker. She reiterated her intent to make it to Chairback that evening. Mildly dubious as to the sanity of such an undertaking, but fully cognizant that we had performed some less-than-intelligent acts on the trail (tying our canoes together on the Aqua-Blaze comes to mind), we merely wished her well on her endeavor and continued on.The chattering flow of the stream was a siren¢s voice that drew us on, and the sign indicating the blue-blaze to West Chairback Pond was a welcome beacon in the fast-approaching dusk. As there were, naturally, no viable tentsites at the stream itself, I volunteered to explore the side-trail out to the pond. Jogging down the 0.2-mile path -- having ditched my pack, I felt weightless enough that I did, indeed, jog ¢ I found a plethora of potential sites, some on the shores of the pond itself (which, I noted, sported several canoes), and some tucked away in the shelter of the trees. Trotting back to the AT, I found that Free had joined us, and Poet had scrawled another note to Serenity. And so, shouldering our packs, we headed off to settle in for the night. As the shadows deepened, we quickly erected our small tent village in the secluded, forested sites. (The possibility of catching the sunrise over the pond tomorrow morning wasn¢t worth suffering the mosquitoes tonight, nor the buffeting winds all night long.) Dinner was a hastily concocted affair, my second consecutive night of dining in the dark. I cooked up some sort of Lipton meal (at this point, they were all interchangeable), and found myself inexplicably envious of Free¢s mashed potatoes, which is especially odd, since I had given them to her. Stranger still was the fact that I had my own mashed potatoes, in their very own mouse-chewed Ziploc, in my food bag; I just refused to cook them, b/c they were my lightest dinner, and the Law of Diminishing Pack-Weight and all. There¢s no accounting for cravings, or logic, on the trail.As dinner ended and darkness fully descended on our secluded campsite, we wrestled w/ concerns over our food bags. Last night¢s assault on my GORP was fresh in everyone¢s mind. Poet declared her intent to take Serenity¢s lead, and tote hers inside her tent, to serve as a pillow. Free seconded that notion. And I was left w/ a stomach-clenching dilemma ¢ Do I risk another rodent-led attack on my food, leaving the stuff-sack twisting in the wind, or do I (GULP) sleep w/ it? I confess that I nearly opted for the latter. And then came to my senses, experiencing a vivid waking-dream of a mouse, terrified, scampering wildly around my tent, w/ me, equally terrified, frantically trying to escort it out. Or, worse, finding a freshly-chewed hole in the side of my tent, w/ absolutely no indication of whether the culprit was still in residence. No, the food bag was definitely relegated to the tree tonight. Free¢s soon joined mine ¢ I guess she was having vivid dreams too, her mouse-inflicted scar throbbing, perhaps. And, as we found out the next morning, Poet had evicted her food bag as well.And thus ended our second day in the 100-Mile Wilderness. It had been an extraordinarily tiring day. Somedays, the miles fly past, melting like ice cream on a summer day. And somedays, it feels like you have to gnaw away at every inch of every mile. My teeth were definitely aching after today. And so, exhausted from the events of the day, I fell quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep.Yeah. Right. I might have snatched 2, maybe 3 hours of shut-eye. My ever-active brain whirred and churned away ¢ Day 2 had ended. Which meant that Day 3 was tomorrow. Which meant Summit Day was one day closer. And thoughts of Summit Day shot a surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins, which eliminated any possibility of sleep. But, thinking back over everything that had happened that day, it was pretty awesome. Thinking back over everything that had happened over the last 6 months, that was pretty awesome too.¢¢¦if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days¢¦¢ ¢ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek(One guess as to what book I¢m reading right now¢¦)