Date: 2012-04-18
From: Max Patch 

To: Max Patch
Miles today: 0.0

April 18, 0.0 miI'd eaten so many Little Debbie cakes and moved so little that of course I felt terrible. I didn't draw the normal conclusion as to why. ¢The Wolf Pack has poisoned me!¢ I moaned. Or I'd been bewitched by the singular look in Mattress Pad's eyes, though I didn't think of him then. I slowly eliminated things from the equation. ¢If I'm going to try anything new,¢ I thought, ¢it'll be the sloughing off of effects.¢ I let my cigarettes sit exposed in the rain until they were soaked. I perversely ate all the rest of my food, a vast quantity of little else other than sugar and who knows what other chemicals, in order not to have it anymore. I'd run out of water sometime yesterday, but I dreaded going outside for some reason. Eventually though, the salt in the entire jar of Jiffy I'd eaten left me parched and miserable. I'd been fiending for the sugar I tasted in the first lick but of course there were other ingredients. I felt seriously ill. I needed water but had no idea how far I'd have to walk in order to find it. A tear slid down my face, followed by many others, as I thought about the warm house back in Maryland where I'd lived with other people my own age. Some of them I'd gotten close with and we were almost friends. I thought about them now. Making coffee for Bianca in the mornings before we left for work, sitting across the table from Luke and his friend at 3 am just talking and trying to keep it together. Luke's older brother Paul who I missed the most. Suddenly I remembered something he always said: ¢Drink more water.¢ Whether we'd come back from a run or I was just feeling depressed, he always proscribed the same remedy, sometimes along with other positive affirmations that would seem too good to be true coming from any other person but him. But I believed Paul. I unzipped myself from my wet sleeping bag and tent, cursing myself for not bringing camp shoes easier to slip into than my boots, but putting them on anyway. I carried my Camelbak and water bottle with me as I walked the eight yards round the bend back to the Appalachian Trail.I found a stream in under two minutes. It crossed the trail after it fell clear from up the way in a cascade between rocks in a delve of the hills. Relieved, I filled up in order to filter back at the tent. ¢I will leave as soon as possible,¢ I promised myself. But first I'd have a look around Max Patch. The outside world in general looked great to me in its vastness and light. The bare trees pinioned upright everywhere in the gentle gradations of sloping land. I had a desire to walk right through them up the other side of the hill, so I did, after leaving my water system hanging from a branch. I set out up the hill right from where I stood, without bothering to go back to the AT's meandering route. My progress was slow and I breathed heavily but I felt possessed of a new awareness. This was a misty view of nature that I hadn't seen yet, or at least not since I was a little girl visiting her domain at the creek below Dasher Farm on a day after the rains or when it was just about to start. After the uphill slope through the trees, the bare grass fields at the top seemed an ancient heath with long, green grass, where I could barely see a few steps ahead of me for the visible clouds of grey. I imagined that I was in Ireland walking to visit a grave somewhere. Looking back, the lowlands were in mist but I could still see the beautiful fall colors of the full trees from this height. But only in patches. The walls of low clouds would come swiftly, moving horizontally across the hills. I followed the AT back down because the clouds were coming in too thick to see much of anything. At the very crest of the hill I could barely see ten paces ahead of my feet. My loosed hair whipped around my face in the wind and it began to rain again. I followed the solitary wooden posts blazed with our white stripes back down the ridge and into the trees. Glad for my raingear, I put up my hood and zipped everything up. Arm pits, frontline, side pockets. This jacket even had dainty little plastic closures hanging at my temples in order to restrict the small elastic cords framing my face. I discovered a little bill that popped out around my forehead in order to better protect me from falling rain and wind. On the way down I met another Northbound hiker named Float. He walked easily and slowly without a rain jacket on and he had no hiking poles. ¢How are you today?¢ he asked. ¢I'm fine. Just went up the hill to see the view again.¢¢Yeah, it's too cloudy to see anything, kind of wish I'd gotten here on a clear day, but I'm not too worried about it.¢ He said he was headed on to the next shelter. ¢It's not too far, you should try and come too.¢ ¢Maybe I will,¢ I said, though I was thinking of waiting for the rain to clear. In parting, he offered me the bag of candy he'd been holding and eating out of as he walked. Sour rings and sweet things. ¢Thanks!¢ I smiled as I took a few.