Date: 2004-09-04
From: Dartmouth Country

To: Mousilauke
Miles today: 0.0

September 4, 2004Franconia Ridge, NH Mile 1840-something   It's a Saturday night and I sit in the dirt staring at the tiny flame of my luxuriously-packed-in blue votive candle drinking a 50/50 mix of hot cocoa and Canadian Black Velvet whiskey and trying not to think about Burning Man. I'm fooling myself, pretending not to care that 3000 miles away in a vast enchanted desert 35,000 soulmates of mine are dancing and cheering ecstatic as the Great Man of neon and fire crashes to his glorious death without me. Without me for the first time in years and years. I try not to think about it. To even talk about it would be impolite. I have guests after all. My cousin and his girl Jessica. This night of the Great Burn of 04 is the occasion of their first backpacking trip. Or maybe just first in some time. Or first together. Whatever. I had intentionally skipped a rather simple 10-mile stretch of the AT just shy of Glencliff, NH, to await the weekend when Justin and his girl would be free to hike. I had chosen well. New Hampshire's White Mountains are stunning: stunningly beautiful and stunningly harsh in degree of ascent and descent, every trail a black diamond. For every ten foot flat stretch, there is 100 feet of hard core, just-shy-of-technical-climbing, vertical slabs and gaping synclines, the stuff of blood sweat and tears. The little 10-mile leader trail I reserved for J&J was just enough for them.   A few days before, I had gained some miles on Jess and Eric, with whom I'd been hiking steadily since Dave's house at the base of Bromley Ski Mtn in Vermont. I wasn't that far ahead of them, a couple of miles maybe, when I reached the road crossing which, upon close map inspection, turned out to be the closest the AT would come to my aunt Mary's house in Franklin. So, even though I'd just been there a week before with the whole Tinker beach gang, I said what the hell, stuck out my thumb and caught a ride east.   I was feeling mischievous, I guess. A little hide and seek with The Happy Couple was in order. Lately, I'd found myself in a constant state of attraction-repulsion with the couple. Attracted to her, repulsed by my own Christian-bred inability to seize a moment alone with her and take her, caveman-like, on a bed of moss or leaves in the magical Christmas Tree-scented forest. If this sounds barbaric or rings of anything but CONSENTUAL, natural instinctual animal behavior, it wouldn't have been. How do I know this? Just a guess, but a good one, I¢d wager. I knew the way you know the heart through the soul through the eyes. Or less profoundly, the language of an embrace. I've always found the embrace to be so telling, so full of unspoken language. There are the awkward hugs of homophobic men. There are the hugs of good friends. There are the hugs of lovers. And there are the hugs of two people desperate to pull one another straight into themselves. These are often, alas, the hugs of two people who should not being hugging at all. Far from barbaric, this was the stuff of romance novels, and my heart would break a little more with every day a-hiking with the Happy Couple from North Carolina.Click here for the continuation of this story on my site, Jigglebox.com!