Date: 2004-05-06
From: Maine

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Author¢s Note: At last! I have finally caught up to the present, to my current days on the AT. I lost a lot of time when my keyboard failed a month or so ago, and, as Justin informed you, we even lost some posts to the demon dark forces lurking in the sewers of cyberspace. Just yesterday, I sent my last nine posts, more or less covering all material from my notes, minus one great dreamy piece (yet to be edited) telling the tale of a magic night spent sleeping beneath a 300-year old Virginia oak tree during thunderstorms, an electric night full of purple skies and dragon flies and, for those of you who believe in such things, a quick and peripheral visit from a genuine faerie (I kid you not). I will do my best to reconstitute that story as well as the second half of the last chapter herein, also lost yesterday when my Palm Pilot, my bestest little electronic friend, died on me last night. THANK GOD I had just successfully mailed everything below. So, I lost a little. Loss is a good thing, I¢m learning. It forces me to dig deep again, and in all likelihood, the story will better the second time around. Special thanks to Justin, my coolest Cuz, for all his work editing and posting all of my work. -RSMMay 19, 2004Mile 622Time to count our blessings. Okay, blessing #1: Despite our currentdental problems, we DID have the money to pay the dentist to write thescrips to get the drugs to nail the pain and kill the infection,thereby staving off the inevitable root canal a few months. Bottomline, we're still on the trail. Or we're on the trail again, as itwere. Blessing #2: the robins are out, the air fragrant with flowering azaleaand rhododendron, and Virginia is bursting out in green all over theplace. Bottom line, we are a part of all this, a welcome guest and thetrail goes on and on.Blessing #3: we don't have diabetes and swollen feet and the demeaningfate of a four hour wait, unattended, at the local ER, as is the casewith Gatorman. Bottom line, there's always somebody who has it worsethan you, and in this case, in my case, in OUR case, that of allthruhikers here on the AT, we have it very, very good. Okay, enough with the blessings. Today I had to go off trailtemporarily to see a dentist, get some drugs, kill this rip-roaringpain in my mouth. Other hikers here at the Catholic charity hikerhostel in Pearisburg wanna know if I'm gonna go back up into themountains to make up the 10 miles I missed today when Miss Tilley andfriends insisted on driving me into town to get help immediately. Won't I feel guilty for missing that 10 miles? Good question. Andhere's the best answer I can come up with presently, still with a headfulla pain and recovering from the shellshock of a medical pit stop andtwo trips to Wal-Mart. No.I know this about myself: if there's one principle etched into myperson that will overrule any guilt at miles lost to a medicalemergency, it is that I HATE going backwards. "What is behind me isnot important!" I won't do it. I won't go backwards. What I'll tell them when I am done: Yes, I walked from Georgia toMaine. Yes, I took a few shortcuts. Yes, I rode a few miles in carswhen walking wasn't working. No, I am not a purist. Yes, I walked theAppalachian Trail. The original trail was 2000 miles long. It has been expanded toencompass 2,174 miles. I figure that gives me 174 miles to fudge ithere and there and still be a "2000 Miler." Setting out, I said I'd behappy if I made it one-tenth of the way. One week from today, I willhave completed fully one-third of it. Guilt? Fuck guilt. I'm afrikken Olympian.Next morning and I'm groggy as hell from the 1300 mgs of oxycodone ittook to keep me from screaming my head off last night in ToothacheHell. Lying awake last night to a chorus of snores, male and femalefrom the bunks all around me, I decided I'd ask Bill, the attendanthere, to take me back up the otherwise desolate winding dirt roads toWood's Hole so I could make up the miles I sacrificed yesterday todentist. Well, Bill just came by and said sure, he'd take me up. Twenty bucksfor the shuttle.   I hem and haw. A man of decision, conviction,impatience, one or all three, he walks off saying "Well, you haven'tmade up your mind." Now he's gone. Big Bill and his big red truck andhis cat-sized dog. Out here on the trail, on foot, we hikers are at the mercy of peoplewith cars. Many would say I'm wrong here. Okay. It depends on thesituation and your perspective, I guess. But here's one clear casewhere I'm kinda screwed. This hostel is 3.5 miles off the trail. Wood's Hole, where I left off, is 15 miles or so away up-mountain. Ijust blew $120 on medico bullshit yesterday, leaving me $50 in mypocket to last me the next ten days. Twenty bucks suddenly sounds likea lot. Does this sound like a cheap rationalization of a little ATwhite lie? Well, I guess it is. What did I miss? 12 miles? Groovy. 12 is what percentage of 2174? Not much. Whereas $20 is 40% of mycurrent cash assets. Fuckin' guilt. I'm walking North. -RSM[Later that day..]I stand at a crossroads. Right where the AT enters and exitsPearisburg, VA. I was "forced" to cut off 12 miles of trail to comehere on a dental emergency. Now to get back to the remote forestoutpost where I left off is a pain in the ass. I could back-hike it,going southbound, and bank on getting another ride out of the woods. Or I can just say fuck it, and, doing as I decided back at the hostel,not look back. I leave it to the flip of a coin. A nickel, my favorite American coin.If it comes up heads, I'll go with my head, where I believe guilt waslearned and now resides, and go South. If it's tails, I get my tailback on the trail in the RIGHT direction and go North. I flip.It's tails. I heft my bag with a smile and disappear into the denseundergrowth. I have found the coin-flip to be a sure-fire way, whenindecisive, of finding out what I really want, every time. I'm pleasedwith the decision of the Fates. Just a few feet into the trees, I feeltriumphant in my escape from Pearisburg, a queer little town inVirginia where the people are nice but.. I dunno. Weird vibe. Don'task me to be objective about Pearisburg, however. My experience of itwas dental pain and Wal-Mart, a consumer tomb, a repository of deepspiritual angst for me.   All was not bad in Pearisburg. There was Party Girl, after all. PartyGirl from some tiny New Hampshire hamlet near Concord, Conookanook orsome such thing. Party Girl resting her ankle from some injury and dueto be back on the trail in five days, having already missed a week (oh,Jeezus I would go nuts!). Party Girl, early twenties, sleeping outsidethe hostel on the picnic table. One hot number. And the Beastie Boyssay, "Phone is ringing, oh my God." Tall, tanned, talkative, funny, proportioned like some Greek goddess,laid out on a picnic table like a banquet, and at a Catholic charityhostel, no less. Un-believable.Party Girl shares her photos from Trail Daze in Damascus last weekend. Every other one is of her doing a beer bong. Incredible. She looks atthe photos with the same incredulous wonder that I viewed photos ofBurning Man 1999. Photos are about the only memory I have of thatyear's gathering in the Nevada desert. I'm told (and I recall thegeneral sense) that had a LOT of fun. I was drunk the whole time. Party Girl's recollection of Damascus is similar. "I was the guy with the neon green beach sand bucket on my head, rubberduckie slippers, crazy patterned green and purple bathrobe, mop inhand, yeah, the guy pretend-mopping up the streets after all the waterballoons."I watch as delight dances across her face and her eyes light up withlost-memory suddenly recalled. "Oh my gawd! That was you? I remember! That was great!" We laugh and swap stories of New Orleans, realizing we both lived therefor the same brief period in 2001. She's an amazon, a goddess, a lushand a nut. I love it.I was a fool to leave, of course. We got along well. She wasn't goinganywhere. Who knows? But no. I'm a frikken spaz. A hot-footedsketch-case currently with toothache, freaked out by Wal-Mart and thelocation of the hostel (deep in some suburban neighborhood severalmiles from the trail), second day, mid-afternoon, I gotta go.And away I went. But not before she thrust a pen and pad in my handand demanded my email address. I hope I hear from her. We could havea blast when I hit New Hampshire.I say "I" and not we because she's not only five days behind me now,but several hundred miles before that, as well, having hitchhikedforward to Pearisburg for some reason. Whatever. I wish her well, agreat hike. No matter how "complete" or incomplete a thruhike it is,Party Girl, just have yourself a blast. You deserve it! This is YOURgreat adventure.On the outskirts of Pearisburg, the AT passes right by a manufacturerof celenese acetate, whatever that is. The plant is depressing to lookat, dismal really. Right out of "Joe vs. the Volcano." A sign overthe entrance (or was it on the smokestack?) says "Our People Make TheDifference."   Man, if ever there was a frightening, banal, meaninglessstatement of corporate pride, that's it.Even up in the trees away from the factory, the air smells bad. Icross a creek with an orange cast to it. Not that I would haveresupplied with water from it, but a sign says, "This stream hasnaturally occurring bacteria and should not be consumed," or some suchhorse shit. Naturally occurring, eh? Just like that factory backthere. And their waste dump upstream that I passed awhile back. Hmm. Yes, very natural. As I ascend the mountain out of town, clouds oftiny flies blur my vision. I almost step right on a giant black snakesunning itself in the trail. Eak! Get me outa here!-RSM[A day or two later..] Franco and Bennie from Indiana. They are shorter and stockier than I. Knowing they both cashed out savings and quit jobs to do this, I askFranko if he doesn't sometimes wish he'd blown his wad on a trip to theBahamas or some tropical vacation rather than trudging in the woods. "No," he replies. "Because I'd be home now and broke." Good point. Bennie, the bigger of the two, seems always to be following Franco. Now I'm ahead, talking to myself in Schmeogal tones and coughing frompollen. The cough forms a word: "Gollum! Gollum!" Franco is Frodoand Bennie Sam. I turn and beckon them forth with a wide swing of myarm. "This way, hobbitses." I cannot but make the connection. Physiologically, and in my case, (alone, auto-conversant)psychologically, we are the last hope for the world of men. I hopeFranco still has the ring. I have the oxycodone. Bennie has bank. Icaught him checking his stock profile online the other day at acybercafe. We make a good trio. I promise not to lead them into thelair of any big spiders.Saying this, I remember today, the REAL today. I feel pangs of guilt. I should have done something to warn them. I was far out ahead butknew they would be next to encounter the monster. I almost stepped onit myself: a mammoth rattler, whatever brand of rattler broods in thegrasses of Virginia. It lay straight across the trail, tail hidden inthe grass on one side, head hidden on the other. It might be a logwith uncommon fractals color & pattern. Step over it and see. Not.It is the second baseball bat-fat snake I've seen in 24 hours. Seenand almost stepped on. Yesterday's was black as night, a giant negrophallus underfoot, another Freudian slip, a cock of a root to trip youup and take you down harder than usual. The rattler doesn't move. Backed away a safe distance, I lob a stickat it. Nothing. Another, nearly hits its tail. Not a flinch. I amIndiana Jones. Don't like snakes, even the ones behind thick plates ofglass. There is no glass between me and it. What can Schmeogal do? How can we warn master and the fat one? Maybeit's dead. Yes, we convince us, it must be dead. No movement. Norattle.   Case closed. Giving it a wide berth, I pass and move on.What was Schmeogal thinking?!! Gollum! A short coughing fit later,and I am myself again. Ahh, peaceful woods. Back in the Shire again. At the next Shelter, I nervously prepare lunch. I await Frodo Francoand Bennie Sam's arrival. "Hobbitses taking too long! Oh, no, no. What has Schmeogal done?"They arrive at last, in tact, with digital photo no less of the snakecoiled and rattling. In the evening, we make camp amidst the ferns. We drink whiskey andsmoke cigarillos far afield of the crowded shelter. Schmeogal takeshis whiskey in tiny sippy sips and tries not to cough. "Don't youthink Bennie looks like Gimley? You know, the dwarf?" Franco asks. "Yes, master!" says us. -RSMMay 22, 2004Mile: Mid-600sI heard cicadas for the first time today. The flies arrived on the20th, on my two month anniversary. It was like one minute there werenone, and then whammo! The big ones were buzzing my ears in thatsuper-annoying round-yer-head 100 times fashion, and there appeared anever-present crowd of tiny ones just in my field of vision. Madness. I feel like an Ethiopian child or a water buffalo just covered in themand doing nothing to shoo them away.Audioslave sings, "take it out on me" as I take it out on myself,straight up a hellish incline, 2000 feet in one mile. The trail iscrowded now. I remember many days when I would walk all day and see noone. Now we are bunched up. Puca & Eagle Eye, Franko & Bennie, Pilotand Puja and Krispy Kritter and Little Chicken and Beat Box and PitaMan and Palm Tree and on and on. Beat Box earns his name as I hike with him. For awhile when we run outof water he is quiet. We find a stream and resupply. Now he is goingagain, doing raps, singing songs from Alladin at the top of his lungs,telling tales of his time spent working at Disneyworld. When nottalking, he walks and makes sounds like a beat box, all percussivesounds from his mouth. He's a trip.Hikers are so intent on the trail they never look sideways. You pulloff a bit and disappear. You and your lover could be buck nakedbanging back to nature just 30 or 40 feet from the trail in plain viewand, so long as you remained quiet as the next thruhiker passed by, goentirely unseen.Flowers. Okay, we have flies but we have flowers now, too! Tons! Orange fire azaleas burn against the green forest backdrop. I learnthe names of some of the other flowers: pipsissawa, wintergreen,pyrola, toothwort, chickweed and stonecrop. Naming things of natureusually means little to me, but lately I crave their names as I marvelat their beauty.I pull 20 feet off the trail and set up my keyboard on a flat highrock. There are not many desks in the forest but here is one. Myblotter is dense green moss.   My feather pen popping from an inkwell,a cluster of grass growing out of the moss. Puca and Eagle Eye passme, totally unaware of me, absorbed in the trail and each other. Noteven Puca's dog Zack sees me. Astounding.You can always be alone out here, if you want to be. A little to theright or the left of the trail and you vanish amidst oak, hickory,hemlock and maple.I pop another oxycodone. I don't like taking them during the day,while hiking, but the pressure, the intense strain on all the musclesin my body as I pull up a mountain, perhaps this set my tooth to achingagain.I immerse either full-body or as much as I can in every stream, everycreek, and the occasional bonus deep river. Eric & Jess are close onmy tail. Even after taking ten days off the trail for a wedding, theyare catching up to me. I can feel them gaining on me. They are veryclose now.We finish a heinous ascent to find that a trail angel has left twolarge coolers full of sodas for thruhikers. Yes! I drink one, turnand see cars on a road nearby. To my half dozen fellow thruhikers Iproclaim with indignant surprise, "What? You can drive here?" It'shard to describe the feeling you get when you scale a mountain by foot,only to find cars at the top.The profile map lays it out for us every day. The topo shows thebird's eye view of the lines nicely dancing northward through theAppalachians. But the profile gives the heavy news, tells it to youstraight. "Son, you gonna CLIMB today, straight up, and then straightdown again. Ooh! And look, another 2000 foot climb before dinner!" I begin to see a pattern to all this trail shit. It is this: the onlywilderness left anymore is in the high country, mountains too high andsteep for lazy-ass humans to build upon and develop. Aha. How aboutthat. Big mystery, right? So "doing the trail" means daily goingwhere no man has.. any desire to go. Up. Straight up. And straightdown again. Whippeee!The other day in dense jungle-like forest, I saw a stone wall aboutknee-high going straight up a 45 degree grade on a mountainside. Hmm. Not every human was lazy, I guess. Just stupid. -RSMMay 23Mile: mid-600sI feel utterly tapped this morning, an empty keg, and somebody stolethe pump, to boot. The thrill is gone. Not a shred of yesterday'szoom in me. But the usual parade of early-risers had already made upthe five miles I gained on them last night and was passing me by as Istood contemplating making coffee. "It's not a race," I hear my gentle self saying. But it pisses me off.Their movement makes my non-movement look bad. There's just no wayaround it. It's not a race, but we fall into these social groups, andwhether you like the crowd you're in or hate 'em, you feel compelled tomove at a similar pace. People often ask me about Tinkerbell and Uncle Duke, my two steadfast,never-annoying companions on this walk in the woods. The figurine of Uncle Duke from Doonsebury and little Tinkerbell in her tiny red lampboth hang from the chest cinch straps on my pack, so right out front. Speaking of my gentle self made me think of what I told some woman theother day about the two. "They're like the little devil and the littleangel on my shoulders. Tink speaks good sense and gentleness andunderstanding. Duke is there to maintain obstinate forward propulsion,at any cost. He is the enforcer, the bully." She looked at me like Iwas nuts.Walking along the crest of some major bump on the profile map, the onethat tormented my listless body this morning, I turn to look over myshoulders and have the queer sensation that I'm seeing the forestthrough one of those helmet cams. You know what I mean? That kind offloaty, sometimes bumpy disembodied camera work used by climbers,explorers, whatever. Looking through my eyes this morning is a trip. Things are just a wee bit strange.A local station called "The Bear" plays a long "Tool set," as it were. It helps my energy level immensely. I walk and sing to the trees andpiled stones, "I am just a worthless liar, I am just an imbecile, Iwill only complicate you.. trust me, trust me!" Of course, I reallywail out the "Why can't we.." chorus parts.The piles of stone are increasing in number here atop Braisers Knobjust south of Catawba. Flat stones all, they are piled sometimeshiggilty-piggilty, sometimes as to make a fireplace or a wall.   Theyare everywhere, and as I walk amidst them shaking my head in wonder,wondering how they got there, up on a mountaintop in lush jungle-likeovergrowth. Very strange. And Tool sings to solve the puzzle. "Iknow the pieces fit!" Suddenly in the forest today I smelled Band-aide smell, that specialsmell that only comes from Band-aides. You know the one.Up ahead I meet Polar and Hot Rock and their golden retriever Jake. Bear Trax backtracks to warn us of a snake on the trail. Sure enough,there it is. Another rattler. The third I've seen in four days. Itaunt it a bit to make it rattle for me. It looks at me with boredomin its snake eyes and only flickers its tongue.Speaking of taunting, I have been taunting, or testing, the bear myth. Last night, too tired to bother, I simply hung my food at eye level ona broken tree branch. Fuck it, I thought. There are no bears. Notten hours later, Krispy Kritter walks by and tells of his morning bearsighting. Oh, well.Arriving at Niday Shelter, I heard feminine laughter coming from thecreak below, dropped my pack and headed down for water and whatever funwas going on down there. I rounded a corner to find Pilot,20-something, pretty, currently bathing in the stream in the nude. "I'mtotally naked, just so you know." I told her that was fine with me,and she seemed much relieved at that. I'm the same way. I could givea rip about stripping down and hopping in. My only source of concernis the potential discomfort of others. Pilot definitely moved up a fewnotches in my estimation after that. Might also have had something todo with her, well, her ample, um.. her body. Very nice. Just lastnight I was musing at just where my sex drive had gone. That littlevisual treat awoke something in me. And the boys sure enjoyed hearingabout it later, around the fire. There wasn't much to report. Justthe fact that I'd been witness and that she'd skinny dipped was enough.We are camped beside a sweet little stream tonight. Our sight is likea little sandy beach. Bear Trax and I are both tree-dwellers now, ourtents suspended hammocks between sets of trees. Bennie and Frankoarrived shortly after Trax and pitched their tents nearby. KrispyKritter was due, and we wondered what had become of him. Turns outhe'd gone too far and camped well beyond us. After some time hangingat our camp, he went and with the help of Franko moved his stuff here. We are fairly near a road. We all wish we had beer. The idea ofhitchhiking to the nearest hamlet was discussed but no one moved inthat direction. It is Sunday, besides, and after so many dry countiesand beer-scarce towns, it doesn't seem worth the effort. -RSM