Date: 2017-11-26
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

The quick answer is that I don¢t.  I have occasionally met hikers who naturally repel dirt. It doesn¢t matter how long they¢ve been out or if the trail is a river of mud, they magically stay clean, even under their fingernails and their hair. I don¢t think they are really human, perhaps angels doing penance. As for me, I am a dirt magnet, a mud boy. I was still in denial of my mud nature when I started hiking the Appalachian Trail. I carried a large water bladder with a shower attachment that I would fill and hang from a tree (a couple of hundred feet from the water source, of course). Dr. Bronner¢s Peppermint Soap left me feeling astringent if not clean. After drying with a large pack towel (synthetic chamois) I would dress for dinner in my clean camp clothes. I would wash out my hiking clothes in a gallon zip-lock bag with a bit of Dr. Bronner¢s and hope that they would be dry by morning. They never were. Dirt was my enemy, and I did my best to defeat it, even at the cost of pulling on wet clothes in the morning.  That routine lasted for my first Appalachian Trail hike in June 1994. It was warm most days and I was alone a good bit of the time, so privacy was not an issue. The second year, going across the Smokies, was cold, with ice and snow even in late April, and the shelters were crowded. The last thing I wanted to do was to bathe.  I found that I wasn¢t dirtier or smellier than anyone else, angels excepted. After a while, dirt reaches dynamic equilibrium, with new dirt replacing old dirt, but the standing crop remaining roughly constant. My habit now is to take a bandana bath at the end of the hiking day. If there is a stream close to the shelter, I go downstream from where people gather water, sit on a rock and wipe myself down, before changing into light running shorts and a synthetic t-shirt, or for formal occasions, black silk-weight long underwear.  Otherwise, I fill my cook pot with a cup or two of water and at least move the dirt around on my body. If I stop early and the sun is shining, I may rinse out my undershorts and hiking clothes and air my sleeping bag. I have a two-ounce bottle of Dr. Bronner¢s Lavender Soap in my kit now, but it gets very little use and will probably last the entire thru-hike. My pack towel measures 6¢x8¢, and I use it mostly to rub through my hair in the morning, to remove some of the oils. I remain fastidious in my dental care, brushing thoroughly twice a day and flossing at night. If you are wondering what to do with toothpaste, the Leave-No-Trace recommendation is to dilute it with some water in your mouth and spray it around, not on foliage, the magic 200 feet from the shelter. I also carry a nail clipper large enough to deal with the toenails that survive the first month of hiking.  I don¢t use deodorant in the woods; very few hikers do. It¢s said (meaning that I have no idea if it¢s true) that deodorants and soaps attract wildlife and mosquitoes. The permethrin-treated clothing I bought for this thru-hike contains silver nanoparticles claimed to be antimicrobial. Perhaps it will work. I¢ve found that merino wool never gets terribly smelly, even without high technology.  It¢s strange, I really don¢t notice my odor or the odor of most my fellow hikers when I¢m on a long hike. That isn¢t to say that hikers don¢t smell. If I forget to clean my gear for a couple of days after getting home, opening the pack is an intense refresher course in hiker stench. But I don¢t notice it on the trail, that is, until I approach a trailhead and encounter day hikers. First, I notice their clothing, the dazzling whites and brilliant colors. Then I scent their deodorants, colognes, hairspray, and most of all, perfumed soap. It reeks to me. Then I see their noses twitching from my odor, and in that instant, I smell myself. It is a moment of cosmic validation.