Date: 2004-06-09
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 17.0
Weather: broken clouds

Mile 785Later that day..I made it! I can't believe it, but I did it again! Another big mileday, this one 19 miles, and most of it in the afternoon and earlyevening. After not getting going this a.m. until 10:30, then stoppingand shooting the shit a half an hour with Sarge when I ran into himdown by the James River, then typing for another hour at some othershelter, I hiked till dusk! I was inspired by a rumor of trail magichere. And good thing I was the last man on the trail at 8:30 p.m., cuzI rolled in here just in time for a coupla cheese sandwiches and twoNestea's! So what if i missed dinner of sausages and beans and bellpeppers and stuff. I made it!Breakfast this morning courteously of Renegade and Tomboy. From theirlittle outdoor kitchen setup came the biggest meal I've had in days:two eggs over medium (my favorite w/o even asking), two sausage links,two sausage patties, two strips bacon, two cups of coffee and a juicyjuice. Yum! Yeah, so Kerouac and Snyder had yabyum, and I couldcertainly use some of that nowadays, but yum yum works, too!And so I expected to come out of the gate this morning like a rocket roaring down the trail with a full tank. Strangely, however, this wasnot the case. I have lagged inexplicably all morning, barely putting'one foot in front of the other for hours. Came upon a beautifulswimmin' hole just before noon. Man, I can't pass up a swimmin' hole,no matter what kinda make-believe schedule or haste I got myself hookedinto. So in I went, into a churning liquid pool beneath a waterfall,and not in a minute I'm giggling silly, dancing a jig as a hundredlittle fishes nibble on me, probably snacking on the salt of my sweat,all four pounds of it that I carried into their pool with me. Thenalong comes Fred, 19-years old with a 19-pound food bag and (speakingof four pounds) the gigantic 900 page Cervantes classic "Don Quixote,"just about the only two things in his otherwise thin pack.Most times we carry about ten pounds of food at a time, tops. Thisboys a big eater. "Don't you carry a change of clothes, a tent,anything else?" I ask him. "Just a fleece sleeping bag," he says. Hegoes from shelter to shelter. Okay. Fair enough. The way I'm feelingabout my frikken spider's-wrap hammock tent, I just may start doing thesame. Fred heads for the pool, and as I make my way on up the trail, Ihear him giggling.A mile or two later, and I'm just dying. Thermometer says it's 90, butit's got to be 80 percent humidity to boot. A goddamn fly buzzes myhead incessantly, one of those low-frequency dumbass buzzers thatcircle your head for a full minute or two, then vanish, only to returnto do it again a minute later. Seems like it's the same damn fly timeand again, but if so he's been with me for seventy miles and four days.Today in the dead zone center of the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is butone choice on the radio: country. At least in days past I was gettingR&B and hiphop stations, too. Ridge walking Virginia, I begin toimagine a whole society of Crackers and Afreak-ans living together insome kinda weird harmony down in the cities below. Crackers arecrackers, white people, you know. Afreak-ans, I imagine, are bothblack and white people, all gettin' their freak on to Dr. Dre andShante and Eminem and them. Afreak-ans. Yeah. Whatever. Near the intersection of U.S. Route 60 and the Blue Ridge Parkway, Icome across Moose Killer. Here is one funny old dude, older than dirtand plagued by bad knees, heart attacks, and, yeah, you guessed it,Moose¢s. And still he hikes on. I knew I was talking to a characterwhen I saw his hand-carved walking stick with the names of all thestates on the AT, the I.A.T (or International AT) and some other branchof the AT to the south into Florida and Alabama the initials of whichI've already forgotten. Beside every state he's finished there sitsthe head of a flathead screw he's driven in the stick. How did Moose Killer get his name, I inquire? "I got attacked by amoose! Twice! I'll never hike in Maine in September again," he says,and my mind immediately does the calculation. Yes, on my presentcourse I will be in Maine in September. "That's when they in rut. They got poor eyesight, so a male moose, he'll charge anything thatmoves if it gets in between him and his woman." Unknowingly, he did. And the moose charged. "You got an 1800 pound freight train coming atyou, and it'll scare the shit out of you." What did you do? "I sprayed him with pepper spray, and man, he laiddown skid marks THIS long!" Was that it, I wondered? "No, he backedaway, shook it off and came at me again. This time I hid behind atree, and thus ensued about a fifteen minute standoff. The only thingI had in my favor was that his antlers were so big he couldn't getaround the tree at me. I told my friends later, I got home and didn'thave to shit for three days!" -RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com