Date: 2004-04-08
From: Springer

To: Maine
Miles today: 15.0
Weather: broken clouds

[This is merely a sample of a HUGE running online trail journal hosted at my site: Jigglebox.com!. Please visit there for near-daily updatesas I send text via Palm Pilot from high elevation points along the trail!]Tuesday April 6Mile 176Heavy day. Spooked by that damn dam, I hoofed it hard up the firstfour miles, all ascent, straight up and into the Smokys. I passed theHoneymooners, Mainsail, Mockingbird, everybody it seemed. I was on atear and feeling every bit tore up around mile seven. I start slowmornings, typically feeling like shit for the first few miles. Andtoday was no exception. But for some reason I was driven. All thisjazz about "only" being allowed to sleep in shelters in the Smokyspushed me onward, knowing that I either had to make it ten miles, orsixteen miles, and wanting to achieve the latter. Mainsail is my newbuddy. We gabbed all day about this and that, about women and beer andsome of the places we'd both lived or visited like Humboldt andMissoula. Mainsail's got a girl at home. He misses her of course, butit sounds like they have a good chance of surviving this journey ofhis. Seems she's headed to Africa to do volunteer work for a fewmonths. That oughta work. It's the hikers I meet that have a lonelyspouse or mate at home that I worry about. So today Mainsail remindedme of something I think I oughta explain to those of you who don'treally know or understand what the AT is. Mainsail says evenBackpacker Magazine is sorely mistaken in their assessment of the AT'sdifficulty in reference to the Pacific Crest Trail or the ContinentalDivide. The AT is NOT the easiest of the three trails. Coming fromthe west coast, i can attest that there are long stretches of flat ornear flat ground between mountain ranges, at least in California. While out here, damn! I have done nothing but climb up one mountainand down another for nearly two hundred miles and there's no end of itin sight. To look at a profile of the Appalachians is to see a neverending roller coaster of "balds" or tops, and "gaps" or lower regioinsbetween mountains. It's frikken crazy! And the AT of sixty years agois apparantly not the AT of today. Earl Shaeffer was first to hike thetrail in the 1940s. Fifty years later he did it again to become notonly the first hiker but now the eldest. his report upon hiking thelower regions especially, that is to say the miles I've just completed,was not at all positive. He was downright pissed. According toSchaefer, the trail engineers had added all these unnecessary loops andtrails straight up mountains, making every effort to complicate thetrail he had navigated easily in the Forties. Having looked at a fewtopo maps, I'd have to agree. There are some real bullshit east andwest divergences that allegedly were thrown in there to discouragethruhikers rigth from the start, thereby minimizing impact later up thetrail. I dunno. That sounds kinda hoaky and conspiratorial, but Iwouldn't doubt it. The AT is a monster, no shit. i'm doing it. It'sall mouuuntains, man. And the tttrails go straight up every one ofthem. So, just so you all know, this ain't no sidewalk I'm strollingdown, or up, from Georgia to Maine. This is a beast, and today my feetfelt every bit gnawed upon by that beast. I made my dinner lying down,just too waasted to stand, or sit. sixteen miles today. Probablytwenty tomorrow. Gotta get out of the Smokys quick. Aside from beinghome to apparantly ttwice as many plant species as all of Europe, theSmokys are also the most visited of all America's national parks, witharound 20 million visitors per year. What this means for thruhikers ishike during the week and get out before the weekenders show up and packthe shelters like sardines. Because remember, you are only allowed tocamp in shelters. Oh, and Big Horn just reminded me of the other thingpressing us to roar through here fast: the rainfall. The Smokys getmore annual rainfall than most anywhere in the US, apparently. Thruhikers talk of it incessently. Today it was sunny and clear. Tomorrow we might get lucky again. But then Thursday's another story. And we've still got sixty miles to go. This is Sir Hamburger Feetsigning off from my bunk in an old stone hut shelter in the Smoky's..goodnight. -RSM "Jester"Mile 183April 7, wednesdayHaving a hard time keeping my spirits up. Two guys from Gatlinburg,long like cigarettes and silent, sit chain smoking by the fire. They're cooking steak they hauled up from town. I'm eating granola. Ashort distance from the stone dungeon-like shelter Circuit Rider readsaloud from the Bible to the boys of the so-called Fab Five. They needall the prayer they can get, I figure, staring down at a 25-mile daytomorrow. Already the flies harrass me. I can see insects bringingdown my house of cards "big hike conviction" real easy some day moretired and pained and feeling less purpose than today. Some day soon,perhaps. I sleep fitfully. In the night, one or both of theGatlinburg boys is up for a smoke. I can smell it mingled with thestench of woodfire smoke. I rise to pee once in the night, go outthrough the chainlink fence gate into the bear-infested night. Themoon is near full. There are no bears. I begin to think the wholebear thing is a myth. In the morning a doe trots into camp to sayhello. "Bambi" I say to her just a few feet away, and in an instantshe bounds into the air, pirouttes, comes down and does the wildestjig. All of us are stunned. A small group of other locals, probablytwo fathers and their boys, have been chuckling at my impressions ofGollum and Schmeogal and Bill Murray from Caddyshack. For a while overbreakfast, I think I've lost my signature hat. Sewed myself andresembling that of a jester, it has earned me the trail name Jester. Suddenly I remember that i'd left it in the pocket of my rain jacket. I excitedly yank it out, place it on my head and screach with Schmeogaljoy. After the Bambi incident they look at me strangely, as though Ireally am crazy and have somehow spoken to this animal directly. It isthe sort of moment I enjoy. On the trail again this morning I am asloth. I simply cannot muster yesterday's power or enthusiasm. Mainsail and Mockingbird stay with me, sortof, but are always just outof audio range such that all I hear of their bubbling laugh-filleddialogue is unintelligable sounds. Their "sailing" pace "mocks" me. Our one fine moment comes atop Rocky Top Mountain in Tennessee asMainsail sings an Appalachian song and I laugh and try in vain toremember the verse. This much I get:Corn don't qrow at all on Rocky TopDirts too rocky by farThats why all folks out on Rocky TopGet their corn from a jarIt goes on about moonshine makin' and sweet Appalachian girls and such.It makes the pain in my knees a little more bearable. But now I'velost them, too far ahead in this Hobbit-like ridgeline forest ofstrange grass hummocks and gnarled little trees like fruit trees barein winter. The fields of blonde grass long and lopped over like 70shaircuts are not smooth but consistently bumpy, like a convention of10,000 hedgehogs elbow to elbow basking in the mountaintop sun. Thereare patches of snow everywhere and I eat from them and when it's hot,fill my hat with it and let the icy coolness dribble down my neck. Imust retain my sense of purpose out here, or I am done for. It ishard, hard work and endless, and the candidates for Katahdin aredropping like flies. Yet just what is my purpose for doing this madthing? Already I have forgotten. I have learned that Gatlinburg isnot far off the trail and makes for a nice break in the Smokys with itsVegas-like atmosphere and Dollywood, the interactive homage to DollyParton. I will stop there then and rest and eat a hamburger, drink abeer. Walking without a penny in one's pocket, even here in the freeforest, is difficult. My experience of being denied a motel room inFontana was degrading, however well I paved over the sting with words. To Gatlinburg then, to spend some money on myself and give this achingbody a moment's rest. Then it will be back into the Smokys for onemore night straddling two 15-mile days. Just eight more miles todayand ten tomorrow, then I can rest my lonesome heart and dizzy head inDolly Parton's ample.. bed? Breasts? Whatever. -RSM "Jester" ofAT2004Mile 193Double Spring Shelter(same day)While sitting trailside writing earlier, a guy and girl with matchingorange hats went zooming by me like they were just out for the weekendpulling a thiry mile day or so. I didn't think much of it. Then I metthem both at the next shelter. We got chatting and I learned that Iwas talking to Silver Girl and none other than Flyin Brian, thelegendary hiker who in one ten month stretch hiked the Triple Crown:the AT, the PCT and the Continental Divide.   He is the only man tohave ever done them all in one year, and with two months to spare atthat! Needless to say my morning musings of pain and sloath just wentright out the window. Only recently introduced to this whole world ofheavy-duty hiking, I admit I didn't know who Flyin Brian was two monthsago. Bruce at Nomad Adventures in Idyllwild was the first to tell meabout Brian's feat. Bruce knows a lot about his business and helped mea lot getting the right gear together. I think he would have liked tohave been a fly on my hat when Flyin Brian blew by me and I didn't evenknow it. I won't soon forget Brian's look of consternation as heregarded the substance of my light lunch, carrots, carob clusters,dates, stilton cheese and water crackers. The Triple Crown championwas impressed, stuck as he was with the Kraft cheese andchocolate-covered peanuts he'd acquired locally. Funny day. And of course another super-painful day. For some reason, the mileswent by a lot slower today and time went faster. I was humping it fromeight in the morning until six at night, almost non-stop. I decidedthe word for the day was stamina, which fits into the sentence "I haveno stamina." If I do succeed in hiking this whole trail, I gotta dosomething fat to follow such an act, so to speak.   Speaking more toBrian's achievement than talking about myself, I said to him, "Yeah, Iwas thinking if I finished the AT I'd go run with the bulls inPamplona." The idea being what do you do to top an act like his? Brian didn't bite. He just said I should go on and hike the PCT. Later when Mainsail asked him what he did with those two remainingmonths of the year he did the Triple Crown, he replied that he went toAcadia National Park in Maine and did a buncha small day hikes whilereacclimating to society. My uncle David drowned and was never foundoff the coast of Acadia in the late Sixties. Small world. I bet Brianhas seen the plaque made for David and situated on a cliff above wherehe drowned. It's like the only unnatural thing in the park. The views here in the Smokys are incredible, just mountain aftermountain after mountain. So of course my camera batttery died. All iwill have to remember the park by is some very, very sore feet. Andmaybe a postcard from Dollywood. Bunked up in another ancient stoneshelter tonight, this one not so uglified by chain link fences. Theprivy, or shitter, is of the composting type, and sits up in the air. It's like an outhouse in a treehouse. Which sure beats what I saw afew shelters back: a privy area minus the privy. The effect was a minefield of dangerous deposits only occasionally announced by tufts ofwhite tp. Very strange. If there's no privy, why bother making anarea? Why not just post a sign that says "Please go shit far away fromthe shelter. Thank you." Whatever. The boys are amazed at my myfully reclined typing trick. It is pretty cool. But really it is theonly way I can write . In as much pain as I am in, sitting up in bedis out of the question. And when I am not lying down, I'm hiking. That's pretty much it.   Huffing and puffing up hill after hill, orfalling down to cook some gruel, brush my teeth, and collect water fromthe springs. That's all I do. That's all I can do after hiking allday. I guess Ray Jardine was right in his book ... Hitting the traillike I did without any prior training makes for a hike that is nothingbut survival. And so I survive. But hey, I'm telling a story, too. So I guess I've got him beat on that. -RSM "Jester"Mile 196.2April 8, 04High atop Clingman's Dome, the highest elevation on the AppalachianTrail. A freaky spaceship-like tower rises from the top of themountain like some replica of the Enterprise from Star Trek. The airup here on this cloudy day is, in the words of Tom Waits, "colder thana well-digger's ass." Three great old dudes named Badger, Papa Bearand Spoon, all in their late 60s or early 70s, are up here withMaine-sail (as I now I understand it is spelled), Mockingbird and I. They're in this for whole trip, too. Gotta love it. I sang a bit onmy way up here in Tom Waits' gravely voice, something bout "climbingthrough a dead forest on a snow-topped dome, a monk, two mutants, ajester and a gnome." All right, enough silliness. Live from the topof the AT World, Frozen Fingers signing off.Mile 203 - Gatlinburg, TNApril 8, 2004Very strange rhythms here in Rocky Top, Tennessee.. er, um, Gatlinburg,I mean. Very strange. Extreme fear and loathing. Perhaps thepressure of this undertaking is getting to me. One toe nail improperlyclipped can spell terrible pain. And how is a brain to handle the kindof stress wherein every step along a hard and twisted, precipitousforest path could be the ONE, the one step that brings you down hardand spells the end. Every step. Every fast step, for they are nothingif not fast with 2000 miles to go to Maine before Autumn's end, couldbe the one that smashes a femur or wrenches a kneecap beyond use. Perhaps this stress is what has me so nutty, so manic and insane todayin this tiny tourist mecca of Tennessee. Perhaps this stress is whatjust made me insult two women hikers at the local brewery, tellingtheir male companion that I'd meet him "later down the street at thetitty bar to further celebrate (his) birthday." I.. just.. don't..know. Such a statement isn't like me. I don't feel myself here at allin Gatlinburg. I feel like a speedfreak, like a man torn from hisnatural habitat of tree and rock and thrust into THIS, this overblownpsuedo-alpine tourist town, thrown here by sheer dying necessity to GETOUT of the woods for a day or two. But once out.. I am out of control.I order the sampler of the local brewery's offerings. I think I am sothirsty I could drink a keg. But when the beer comes I don't like anyof them, not one of the eight. The waitress is kind and pretty andlikes hikers. She is the one good thing I have felt since my arrivalhere. She is tolerant of me when I ask, absurdly i guess, if the barserves any other beer. No they do not. Okay. I order one of the onesI don't like. I devour a 12 oz. Rib-Eye steak, potatoes, a salad andsome buffalo wings. I drink my one beer. I am suddenly overstuffedand mentally wrong. Am I drunk? No, not really. But while leaving Ido manage that very-un-me comment about a titty bar. What then? Whatthe hell is wrong with me? I come to "town" to feast after days ofRamen noodles and packaged oatmeal. I dream.. WE dream, Maine Sail,Mockingbird and I dream out loud as we hike of hamburgers and fries andsteaks and beer. But when I get it, it is too much. A queer aerial tram drops out of the late afternoon sky from "OberGatlingburg" down here to Gatlinburg, Earth. Tourists fat and skinnyalike look exhausted every one of them, towing kids, carrying them intheir bellies, shopping, dizzy, momentarilly stunned by the sight ofthe weird and albeit dirty looking REAL alpine hikers in their midst. Most don't even notice us. But I see them. They are tired, every one.I KNOW I am tired, physically exhausted from day after day of puttingone foot infront of the other from sunup to sundown for nearly threeweeks over mountain after mountain. Why are they tired? Why do theylook more tired than me? I neither look nor feel tired, just nowbloated and, well, drunk I guess on two beers. My face is bronzedfrom constant exposure to high elevation ultra violet light even thoughmany a day is overcast. My beard is thickening. My muscles arechanging overnight. My beer belly of three weeks ago, now nearly gone.These changes in my metabolism frighten me some. I rush back to themotel room and ferret out a klonipin. Too much change, too soon, toomuch. My mind drifts to Benicio del Toro in "Fear and Loathing" as headmonishes Johnny Depp's Thompson. "You took too much, too much. If Iput you in the pool now, you'll sink like a stone." But too much ofwhat? Roaring down the trail at breakneck speed over tangled-anklewrenching roots, down rock slides, over fallen trees and like yesterdaythrough a foot of mud and melted snow much for 8-miles straight, theeffect on the brain is like chewing not on extract of pineal gland, butON YOUR OWN pineal gland. Flying Brian embodied this kind of wound-upteeth-grinding speed-talking fast synapse energy. The Champion trulyis a machine. I imagine he suffers from a kind of impatience with theslowed down world. His metabolism is jet fuel through a fire hose. Ifeel that I myself am well on my way to hyperspace.The boys return from their foray into downtown Gatlinburg. They reporton the weirdness of it all. There is a wedding chapel downtown thatoffers weddings cheaper than the cost of a night's lodging, a mere $25.Two Baskin Robbins and dozens of fudge shops. Oh, and the SpaceNeedle. Nineteeen year old Mockingbird calls the needle, "VerySeventies." And let's not forget the chair lift that goes uphill tonowhere, appearing for a moment to indicate the presence of a skiresort, yet there is none. And the list goes on. Not one, but half adozen Ripley's museums and attractions of one sort or another. Everyone is consuming the pseudo-Alpine product. We, the real thing,appear as actors on a theme stage set, like dueling cowboys in full costume on the streets of Tombstone. Yet we are freaked by it all. Or I am, anyway. Freaky Gatlinburg by 8p.m. has provided a fantastic sort of counterpoint to the "point" ofour trek of the Appalachian Trail. The metabolism of weirdness runshigh. Just hours ago wishing I could stay longer, I am already readyto be back on the trail tomorrow. "What do you think potatos and tunawould taste like?" Maine Sail asks. The boys sort processed fooditems picked up at the same store in which, just an hour ago,fear-addled and freaked, I was able to buy only beer and half a dozenpostcards I didn't want. ¢RSMMile 219.4 (at day's end)It is a beautiful Good Friday here in the Smokys. Stunning day. Warmsun. The slush of yesterday's trails largely melted. The scent ofChristmas in the air with all the pine and fir trees responding to thewarmth of the sun. The parking lot at Newfound Gap 12 miles abovegarish Gatlinburg looks like a day at Disneyland. It's like it'sFamily Day on the AT today. A short while back, I had a family stopand ask me where I was going. When they heard Maine, the little girllit up with joy. "You see, honey, there you go. You wanted to see athruhiker and now you've seen one!" Of course I was pleased and playedit up accordingly. The restroom at the Gap was like a reunion of manyof my thruhiker friends, scattered over the past days here and therealong the trail and trailside towns. Eric and Jessica, Reyall, Sunset,Sanguine, Navigator, all were there. I always enjoy running into theyoung couple Eric and Jessica. Jessica bedazzles me. She is anastounding creature to behold and I hope Eric will not hold me in illregard for saying so. He should be flattered, that and proud to haveher. It is a day of ridge running, of skipping almost, the pain in my kneesmiraculously absent today, skipping along narrow ridges with giant,sweeping drops on both sides. The mountains, blue in this light, layeroutward to forever. To the south, I look at them and say proudly, "Ihave walked them all." I reach a point on on one ridge where the viewis too incredible not to howl in triumphant gratitude to the Earth. Far ahead, thruhiker ''Sunset' howls in response. We continue this forsome time. Sunset hails from Mississippi and speaks an almost entirelyunintelligible tongue. In the words of my language professor inGermany years ago, he "spricht mit Kartofeln in Mund," he speaks with apotato in his mouth. My teacher was refering to me, to all Americansand our poor pronunciation. Sunset's potato is particularly large.The day astounds me with its beauty and the varying environments i passthrough. The first 40 miles or so of the Smokys kinda sucked. Butthis ridgeline dance in flawless weather, wow. I have it mind to makeit 16 miles today, but I didn't get started until nearly one o'clockthanks to morning supply shopping in Gatlinburg and an hour spenthitchhiking back to the trailhead. I round a corner and suddenly i am in Big Sur, so like it in color, inthe grasses and trees and sky. A short time later I am transportedagain by the changing environment, this time to California's LostCoast, to the steep trail Emelia and I once walked to reach the SmithCabin from midway up the coast in the mountains, the very same road Ionce drove Duke on late at night reckless and high on codeine withRadioman and Hippie Streudel aboard. Those were the daze.I stop and eat lunch. I feast for a change. I have deduced that mysluggish pace of late is due to insufficient carbo and protein intake. In Gatlinburg I have stocked up big time, almost all of it free fromthe hiker box at the local gear supply store. Bagged tuna is a greatinvention. I have tuna on Stoned Wheat Thins with cream cheese. LaterI whoof down a few Snickers and move through the forest like a wolf.I reach the shelter at the 10-mile mark at 6 p.m. but am determined Ican make it to Tri-Corner Knob Shelter by sundown, putting me exactlyhalfway today to tomorrow's finish of the Smokys. I race on. I am inunchartered waters now. I may have to hike with my headlamp before Iget there. With no knee pain today and all the nervous manic energythat made Gatlinburg difficult to bear, I burn up the trail and arrivejust in time to watch the sun disappear in the west, hike another 500yards and step into the old stone shelter to a warm welcome from allinside. I lay out my bag on the bunk, warm my hands at the fire in thehearth, then go outside and cook up Ramen with my addition of garlic,carrots, potato flakes and miso. I devour it, turn off my headlamp andsip hot chocolate with peppermint schnappes whilst staring skywardcommuning with Orion and friends. I did it. I made 16 miles today injust 7.5 hours, a record for me. Even the boys inside are impressedwhen they learn how far i've come in so little time. I climbed a fewsteep grades, the worst at the end of course, when my feet werescreaming the loudest. They're alright when I'm moving, but the momentI stop it's as though I've tripped on a bed of nails and sunk straightthrough, my feet impaled by dozens of nails. This is how I imaginethat would feel. Ten o'clock, a late night for me. Time to go insideand endure the snoring. The word for today: zeal. I had it today, andso did the sun. We danced together from ridgeline to ridgeline, thesun and I. With the exception of hooting across canyons with aninvisible Sunset (the person) who I knew was ahead as he was the loneman to pass me all day, I hiked my own hike today. ¢RSM**For the full story of Rick's journey - visit Jigglebox.com**