Date: 2004-10-01
To: Katahdin
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

October 1100.8 miles to goAwoke just now, 5:30 a.m. absolutely convinced that a downpour has begun. I leap out of our zipped-together combo mummy bag and jump outside the tent to move my pack to the cover of the rain fly. Then I remember the river roaring nearby, the waterfalls.   Not a drop touches me as I stand in the dark. So I pee on a tree. Yazzy ambles out of the tent on all fours wobbling, a sleep-drunk bear cub rousted from hibernation. She pees and we return inside, exclaiming in mumbles our surprise that the rain was not rain but river.This is what happens to you when you sleep in a different place on a differentpiece of ground every night for 193 consecutive nights. You are temporallydisplaced. You are a slave to every bump in the night, and like that poorbastard in TV¢s Quantum Leap, you rarely know where you are, let alone who youare and how you got here. Yazzy, whom I¢ve know just a few weeks now, rollsover to face me in the pale gray death light of pre-dawn and I don¢t recognizeher, not a line, a curve, a bone in her face. My father worries about his memory. His father died of Alzheimer¢s. I am only37 and I have perhaps the worst memory of anyone I know. Mine, however, isdrug related. I drink because I like the taste of beer and for obvious socialreasons. Perhaps if I quit drinking altogether, I wouldn¢t need theProzac-esque anti-depressant I take, though I¢m afraid it isn¢t that simple. Then there¢s the Valium, to cure the anxiety caused by the anti-depressant. I knew an old lady who swallowed a dog to catch a cat to catch a spider to catch a fly...One or all of these drugs wreaks havoc on my short-term memory. Yazzy hasspoken perhaps fifty trail names in her lucid storytelling of days hiking inGeorgia, The Smokys, Virginia. I recall few names and zero faces. Did I meetthem? Probably. When this adventure is over, I will read about it with wideeyes of surprise and wonder, much as you are now.My breakfast grows cold. By the riverside, Yazzy washes her cookpan of lastnight¢s dinner, perhaps the worst burn job I ever did on noodles. It¢s hard tosimmer over hot coals on a campfire. The sun is up and sky clear. I meant tolisten to the presidential debates last night on Maine public radio, but passedout before nine. Oh, well. In the words of our Commander and Chief, Alfred E.Neumann, ¢What? Me worry?¢At the Long Pond Stream Shelter in Maine there is a tattered copy of SWANKmagazine. The shelter log is full of offended hikers bitching about it. Well,why didn¢t they burn it? Or pack it out like trash? I recall the story of theburnt Bible from Robert Rubin¢s book ¢On the Beaten Path.¢ Surely if somehiker could callously roast the word of God to warm himself on a cold night,the Puritans would have felt righteous in burning the SWANK? I¢m pleased toread a register entry by one bawdy female hiker friend who writes thanking theSWANK donor, saying it brought her great relief after a hard day¢s hike.I make a note in my journal to buy the island in Lake Onowa, Map #3, Mainesection, beneath Barren Mtn and Barren Slide. The paper companies own all ofnorthern Maine. What do they need with an island? I want it. And what of thetrain trestle at the far end of the lake? Hmm.1:10 pmI¢m perched atop the wreckage of an old fire tower that no one in their right mind would climb (I never said I was in my right mind). Nothing left up top of the rickety steel oil-derrick-like tower but a few old wooden slats on which I now sit with 360 degrees of clear view of this awesome, empty (of mankind) 100-Mile Wilderness whose Cracker Jack prize at the bottom of the box is Katahdin, the great one, the grandfather. No view of Katahdin today despite crystalvisibility as another mountain hides it. Hard hump up this bitch of a peak for ¢peaked-out¢ me. Barren Mountain. I guess. Thank God for Tool, for Maynard¢s impassioned wailing that never fails to reignite my tired engines. For half the damn climb it was nothing but staticand my usually-faithful WTOS, ¢The Mountain of Pure Rock!¢ failing me when allof a sudden on comes ¢Forty six and two¢ clear as a bell and whoosh! As withso many times previous on this colossal walk halfway round the sun, Tool camethrough and rocketed me to the top. 9:20 pmNow it¢s talk of God or lack thereof and bowtie pasta with garlic fresh choppedand into the powdered alfredo sauce and carrots, too, all this by a river whichtomorrow we must ford. And I want to write of everything, of all the randomthoughts, of the hopes and anxieties of my soon-to-come return ¢home,¢wherever that is anymore. Hotel California. Swami¢s Music House Studio. ButI can¢t. So I eat another of Marie Vlassic¢s homemade post-bummer-Burning Mancookies yum yum and sip the last of Texas Mary¢s Crown Royal, a nip-bottleamount by now, intended for Katahdin, but ahh, fuck it. Cheers Marie & Russ! Cheers Mary! Cheers to you and Sara and Ashley and all you¢ve done to infuse this astronaut¢s mad weightless tumbling through space green and deep with love and a sense of home.Just 84 miles to the End of the AT! Uncroixable. Now I¢ve got young Yazzy towarm me at night and set and strike the MSR tent and talk my ear off when I¢mwilling with tales of everything AT all eager and alive and excited andclueless of the Crashing Ugly Future.My needs of companionship and sex now met, I walk the trail like a businessmanawaiting his fourth commuter flight this week. I am jaded and tired, and atthis point Katahdin is just a matter of course. I wanna board the flight, popa valium, knock back a Cape Codder (vodka/cranberry) and BE THERE. D¢arrive,Monsieur!My feet are sore, my ankles daily bruised in nasty twists that set the lion inme roaring, shaking the quaking aspens, fracturing the rocks, and rippling thewell-ironed sky. When all 200 pounds of my pack and me come down on the side of a crooked foot, every gnome for half a mile around jumps out of his skin. The pain runs its course. There is no option. I get up and walk some more. -RSM