Date: 2004-05-11
To: Maine
Miles today: 15.0
Weather: broken clouds

Mile 580May 11, 04 Turned the damn ankle again. Always the right. For awhile I waskeeping score: 5 right, 7 left, etc. By now I'm quite sure this isabout the 12th time for the right. Turned it, not doing anythingfoolish, like running, (which I had been doing just moments before) butjust walking, slowly following Trax and Scholar and Krispy and bamm!down I went. Fruck!   Krispy, a retired fireman from Florida, came tomy aide, offered a cold pack, ibuprofen, arnica. I took the arnica,old Indian remedy, under the tongue, then got right back on it. Irefuse to let it stop me.   This whole week of slack-packing was intended to give the ankle, thecalf, the quads, the groin (the entire progression of the pain makingits way up my leg in weeks past) a needed rest without actuallyzeroing. I can't afford zero days, neither financially norspiritually. Town days suck me back into the world of banality andanxiety (if ever the two could have been said to coexist!). So Irefuse to take them, not more than one a week tops. I've been out hereseven weeks and have taken six such days. I'm due one, I suppose.   But should it be tomorrow? CAN it be tomorrow? If it is, they'llwant to take me to the local hospital. The nurses will at most take anX-ray. The doctor will find no broken bones so tell me I've sufferedtissue damage and to stay off of it for six weeks. Fuck you. Fuckthat. "Pardon me, Doc, but I don't think you understand who you aretalking to. I have a threshold for pain you wouldn't believe."   For weeks I hiked on screaming knees and have steadily made progress onfeet driven through with rusty iron spikes and charbroiled on thebackyard barbecue of some queer-ass Appalachian Cannibal Cookout. Andthen the ankles. Twisted again and again until I lost track of howmany time, I seem to have done sufficient damage to one that it nowpains me constantly. I rub the foot, I stretch the muscles, I tenderit. And whammo! It twists again. Or maybe it sprains or resprains. Do these descriptive diagnostic terms really matter? I think not.   I think my plight, as with so many of my brethren hikers, can be easilysummed up in the words of the late Grandma Gatewood, AT thruhiker inher 70s and 80s. She said, "Most people are candyasses."   Tomorrow this Candyass will likely take his candy sitting down. I willvery likely zero. But I ain't going to the doctor. Krispy's wifeJackie does Reiki. I will let her work her Reiki magic and tomorrow Iwill sleep at Tilly's old homestead hostel of chestnut beams andVirginia backwoods hospitality just south of Pearisburg, VA. Thefollowing day if I'm up to it I will hike the last 13 planned miles ofthis grand, group-oriented, pizza and fried chicken and beer-filled"slack pack" adventure week, an idea hatched in Atkins at the DairyQueen and carried forth with all the pomp and circumstance of anycandy-coated clusterfuck for four or five days now. We've made goodmiles, and I have made great new friends.   Krispy Kritter is a man of silliness and admirable qualities in good,clean American balanced proportions. And Jackie, his classy carrot-topbeauty of a wife, has handled well the newly-begotten andnone-too-admirable role of "Trail Widow," trail angel to us all showingup at days' ends with a cooler fulla beers on ice and surprise snacksand lodging arrangements for we, the lightly-packed yetstill-bedraggled hikers dribbling down the trail like Gerber mush fromthe chin of a dissenting, high-chair bound toddler.   Praise be to all trail angels, newly christened angel Jackie not theleast of them. They feed us and sate our thirst and drive us hitherand yon and on and on and on.   Many a time in the past two weeks I have contemplated a speedyhitchhike return to Damascus to rest and heal my ankle. But it wouldhave meant a rest of several days blending into the festival of TrailDays for a total of two weeks off. I have limped and stumbled andgroaned and moaned, but I am now 120 miles further North. "No rain, nopain, no Maine," they say. ¢RSM **For the full story of Rick's journey - visit Jigglebox.com**