Date: 2005-12-11
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

A one-sentence recap: There were eight of us, huddled in Jeffers Brook Shelter, eight headlamps flickering in the darkness, seeking to spotlight a brazen mouse, a mouse which just so happened to scurry across my foot at that exact moment¢¦I did nothing so cliched as fainting, or even echoing the ladylike ¢Eek¢ from a few moments earlier. And, as there was no convenient stool to climb onto, I instead emitted a very unladylike ¢Sh#t!¢ and reflexively jerked my foot. I unfortunately did not get the satisfaction of seeing the offending mouse flung through the air like a drop-kicked football, as it had managed to vacate my foot before my brain was able to communicate to my muscles to ¢get-it-the-hell-off-me¢. Damn Speedy Gonzales. It had vanished once again, back into some crack or crevice in the shelter walls.As for me, I was movin¢ out. This little shelter-experiment, doomed from its conception, was officially over. There was no way I was spending the night w/ a rodent as my sleeping partner. I had suspected that this shelter housed mice; heck, they all did. But now, now I knew. I knew they were out there. And not only were they out there, but they were bold and brazen little buggers, brashly bolting across bare body parts. (Although, as we were to discover, they only got worse in Maine.) Nuh-uh. I ain¢t sleepin¢ in there, w/ them. Rain or no rain, my tent was goin¢ up. Retrieving my tent from my pack, I set it up a whopping 20 feet from the shelter. But, let me tell you, that flimsy nylon wall of my tent, it¢s a huge, nearly impenetrable (tho¢ I have a story ¢bout that too¢¦) psychological barrier, b/t me and those friggin¢ mice. And thus began the mass exodus from Jeffers Brook Shelter. Free¢s tent popped up, 5 feet from mine, Serenity¢s 5 feet beyond that; Poet had a little further to go, perhaps 15 feet, to find flat ground. As for Freedom and Thatch? They (foolishly, in my opinion) opted to rough it w/ the resident rodents.As I departed the shelter for my mouse-free tent, something induced me to grab my food bag from its locale on the mouse-hanger. Maybe I had some eerie portent. Maybe some ghost-of-hiker-past was telling me not to leave my food unattended. Maybe simple logic was saying that these mice weren¢t like any other mice we¢d encountered yet. Maybe they were some new breed, the Uber-mice. Maybe it was that I had sensed them, hungrily eyeing my food bag earlier. For whatever reason, I hefted my food bag from the mouse-hanger and toted it over to my tent.Of course, then I was faced w/ the dilemma of ¢What do I do now?¢ Fortunately, having had six months of food-hanging experience to fall back on, I adopted my fail-safe method of ¢bear-bagging¢ when not at a shelter, which carries the dual-benefit of being extremely convenient as well as surprisingly successful. A technique, beautiful in its simplicity: find the nearest tree that has branches w/in arm¢s reach. Pine trees are optimal, especially where the branches have broken off, and you just have little 6 to 12 inch nubs jutting out from the trunk. You take your food bag, hang it on one of these nubs, and¢¦ Voila! That¢s it. You¢re done. Bear-bag complete. Simple, convenient, and, amazingly, effective. Maybe I¢d just been incredibly lucky, and maybe this is actually a really stupid way to hang your food. (And yes, in bear country, I¢m aware that it is.) But, I¢d made it to New Hampshire, unscathed. I felt that it was at least on par w/ the rock-throwing shenanigans, minus the rock, and the throwing, and, well, the shenanigans. I¢d been doing it for six months, when mouse-hangers and bear-boxes and bear-cables were absent, and I had yet to be disappointed in its efficacy. So, my food bag dangling 5 feet above the ground, and 25 feet from the marauding mice of the shelter, I crawled into my tent for some well-earned sleep.Now, although I am personally partial to the hang-your-bag-in-a-tree and-forget-about-it method of bear-bagging, each Pod-member has their own unique approach to food safety. Free¢s technique was adopted from Cuppa Joe during the early days, down in North Carolina, before the birth of the Pod, back when Go-Lite, Go-Easy was the group moniker. An under-stated, under-appreciated technique, it rivals mine in its simplicity: you take your food bag, and plop it down in the vestibule of your tent. Period. Simple. Beautiful. No hassle, no fuss. Being a very open-minded individual, I actually experimented w/ this method, while tenting at Hurricane Mtn Shelter in Virginia; unfortunately, I met w/ decidedly unfavorable results. Not that my food supplies suffered; no, my food remained untouched, untainted by rodent lips. However, I didn¢t exactly sleep very well that night either, mostly b/c I was hyper-conscious of the fact that my food bag, w/ its tantalizing food-ly aromas, was a mere two feet from my head. And so, w/ every rustle of every leaf, every scraping of every stick, I was convinced that it was some little critter, coming to investigate the free meal. Hearing a noise, I¢d jerk into a sitting position, hurriedly grab my headlamp, flick it on, and, shining the beam through the mesh wall of my tent, I¢d peer into the darkness, searching for tell-tale twin reflections of beady eyes or a sudden movement in the brush. I was too hyper-aware of any and every sound, that sleep would have been impossible anyway, but I may have been converted to Cuppa and Free¢s school of bear-bagging, had it not been for what happened next:I had fallen into a pattern, laying there, in the dark, eyes closed but my body tense in anticipation of the noise that I knew would come, in the next few minutes. I mean, I was in the woods, for cryin¢ out loud, of course there were going to be rustles and swishes, the nocturnal noises of the forest. I¢d been listening to them for several weeks now, and they¢d subsided into that white-noise, that you¢re aware of w/o really being conscious of, that your ear and mind have been trained to automatically filter out, as non-significant stimuli. But tonight, hypersensitive w/ the proximity of a giant bag of bait to my head, I heard every pop and every crackle. I¢d shine the light, but even this, after the first half-dozen or so times, even this became routine; I didn¢t expect to see anything, b/c there wasn¢t going to be anything. So, when I half-heartedly swung the beam through the mesh for the seventh time, I nearly dropped my headlamp when I was rewarded w/ two glowing red embers, shining back at me, mere inches away. There may have been a muffled expletive or two at this point, as the fiery coals winked out of existence, engulfed in the blackness. Adrenaline coursing through my veins, I hesitated for only a split-second before instinct took over; yeah, I was glad that I had emptied my bladder immediately before getting into my sleeping bag that night, but nothing, nothing gets b/t a hiker and their food. I wasn¢t going to let those two beady little eyes (even if they were red) snatch my food. And so, unzipping my tent, which sounded stridently loud in the suddenly silent night air, I plunged into the darkness, armed w/ my headlamp and one of my hiking poles, which I had scooped up to be wielded as a weapon in case of emergency. Flashing the light in an ever-widening arc, the beam quickly located the glowing twin embers once again. This time, they remained unblinkingly fixed on me. I bent down, blindly rummaging through the duff, until my fingers grasped a cold, hard, small stone. Tossing it in the direction of the dual embers, they darted, first one way, then another, but never once breaking their fixation on me. I confess, at this point, I was totally freaked out. I had no idea what species of animal this was. Based on the eye-position and height, it couldn¢t have been bigger than a terrier-sized dog; I was pretty darn sure that it wasn¢t a skunk, b/c there were no tell-tale whiffs emanating from it; from the way it had moved, it seemed almost cat-like, but it didn¢t seem inclined to climb a tree. Basically, I had no clue, I couldn¢t see it at all, I couldn¢t see anything, other than two glowing red sparks. And let me tell you, that is disconcerting. Picking up a second rock, I flung it, and the eyes made a second feint at fleeing. Eventually, w/ a third rock and some non-verbal threatening noises from me, the fiery coals vanished into the blackness. They didn¢t return that night. But I didn¢t sleep either. And I kept one hand on my headlamp, the other on my trekking pole, all through the night.That was the first (and last) time I applied Cuppa Joe¢s bear-bagging methodology. I was fully cognizant that I had merely had an atypical experience, that it was an effective approach, under normal circumstances; however, I was also fully cognizant that, due to being a pin-drop light sleeper, this technique simply wasn¢t for me, not if I ever wanted to sleep again. And, my disillusionment was fully shattered, when another tale trickled through the Trail Gossip-Mill. It was just north of Pearisburg and, through a serendipitous sequence of coincidences, I found myself slack-packing south. A rainy, cold, thoroughly bleh day, the ideal day to be returning to a warm bed, rather than a damp tent. I encountered Cuppa and Free, flabbergasting them by, once again, showing up in the most unlikely place, hiking in the wrong direction. But, Free supplanted me w/ the more-improbable tale: She had awoken last night, she had been awoken last night, by a mouse, gnawing on her finger. Yes, a mouse. In her tent. Chewing complacently. On her finger. As usual, her food bag had stood sentry in her vestibule. But, for whatever reason, she had left her tent partially unzipped. Anyway, the mouse, apparently deciding that the Oatmeal Cr me Pie it had nibbled on was an inadequate meal, maybe seeking a balanced diet and tempted by the leftover dinner residue on Free¢s finger; well, the mouse took advantage of the open, inviting door, crawled in to the tent, and¢¦ CHOMP. There were definitely some expletives expleted, and the offending mouse was flung into the far corners of Free¢s tent. Some frantic shuffling ensued, as she scrambled for her headlamp, wanting nothing more than to evict her unwanted visitor.By this time, Cuppa had been rousted from sleep, offering a tentative, ¢Free? Are you okay?¢¢There¢s a friggin¢ mouse in my tent! Bit my friggin¢ finger!¢ (As I was not personally witness to these events, this conversation entails some conjecture. I suspect that the language would have been slightly more forceful ¢ How would you react, waking up to a mouse chewing on you? But, I believe the essence of the exchange is conveyed. And, I don¢t think Cuppa and Free will mind a little poetic license¢¦)Now fully awake, Cuppa concernedly asked, ¢Are you hurt? Is it still there?¢Following a thorough investigation of her tent, and all of its contents, Free ascertained that her unwanted house-guest has, apparently, made its escape. Zipping her tent securely, she then examined her assaulted finger. While blood had been drawn (she proudly displayed the fresh scab to me that morning), the injury was not life-threatening. Just another battle-scar from the Appalachian Trail. However, the incident had left Free rather skittish and, as Cuppa chucklingly related to me, ¢Every 15 minutes, I¢d hear a ¢zzzzippp, zzzzippp¢ from Free¢s tent,¢ as she obsessively searched for the mouse, convinced that every rustle indicated its return. Hey, after my glowing-eye incident, I whole-heartedly sympathized. But, having steelier nerves than I, Free determinedly continued to utilize Cuppa¢s bear-bagging, food-in-the-vestibule technique. Though she did make sure to close her tent properly every night¢¦Not satisfied w/ either my or Free¢s approach, Serenity adopted yet another method of bear-bagging: taking food safety to another level, Serenity hauled her food bag into her tent. Now, if I was jittery w/ the idea of leaving my food in my vestibule, providing an AYCE buffet to the rodent population in the portico of my woodsy abode ¢¦ then the concept of sleeping w/ a giant bag of bait? Why not just send out personalized invitations to every 4-legged critter in the neighborhood? B/c, while the nylon wall of my tent provided a reassuring psychological barrier b/t me and the mice, when it comes down to it, nylon really isn¢t all that thick, and mice have really sharp teeth¢¦ But, that¢s a story for another day¢¦I¢ve rambled and meandered down Memory Lane, taking so many twists and turns, that I¢ve gotten lost in the alleys of my mind. I¢m not even sure where I started this entry, where I intended to go w/ it. Someplace in the 100-Mile Wilderness. It all started, w/ me retrieving my food bag, at Big Wilson Lean-to. So, when I resume my tale (hopefully tomorrow?), that¢s where I¢ll pick up¢¦