Date: 2012-04-20
From: Garenflo Gap

To: Tanyard Gap
Miles today: 12.5

April 20, 12.2 miI woke up in the night several times to hear groups of people night hiking into Hot Springs, the next ¢trail town¢ or rare point at which the AT crossed back into civilization. At dawn I took down my tent quickly. The rosy promise of this dawn was more than my failures of yesterday, I felt.With no stove, I'd actually tried to soften up some hard macaroni by letting it sit in water overnight. This was a disaster that I now, the morning after, decided was uneatable. Ideally I wouldn't have ignored the alarm on my cell phone set to one hour after I immersed them in my plastic bowl. Five or so hours after I'd soaked them they were all blended together in a sick paste. I knew I wasn't supposed to leave any trace of my being there, but I couldn't eat them, even with the added granules of cheese seasoning. In the end I decided to hide them in the fire ring underneath some innocent-looking cardboard of the box and about an inch of ash. Very bad hiker karma.The long descent to Hot Springs had just begun. I expected every cluster of buildings I saw from a distance to be the town, but the trail just wound on and on. I had intentions of getting there early in the day, scoping things out, and maybe snagging some food from the hiker box in the hostel. I wouldn't waste money on the famous diner, I decided. But I anticipated it would be nice and comforting to be in town nonetheless. I heard Hot Springs before I saw it. An unearthly humming noise of factory commerce rose up from the valley below me along with white clouds of smoke. As I zig zagged closer down to it I could hear cows lowing ¢ but no people. For some reason I'd expected laughter, yelling. Something. But I now inexplicably dreaded what I'd been looking forward to for the past two days. Materials, industry. Down a too-severe packed earth slope that I figured was probably lining some local doctor's pocket, and I was in town. A forlorn wooden plaque announced it as so, even though I'd just walked through somebody's backyard next to a plastic swing set. I walked down the street disoriented. I saw no other hikers and my general impression was that I'd somehow arrived on the wrong day. This couldn't be it. This was a dump. I sought refuge in the diner and wasted a lot of money on an overpriced glass of milk and two slices of pie, one key lime and one ¢French silk.¢ I was so nervy in the diner that I could barely eat my meal. I spent my time dipping back in and out from the bathroom, wishing I'd sat facing the wall and not the obviously poor locals out for a day with their ugly children.¢I'm a terrible hiker,¢ I thought to myself. ¢I should be over there talking it up. Exploring.¢ The pie crust I was eating was stale, like the pie had been sitting there for two decades. ¢I could at least have smiled or something.¢ But I had nothing to give except my money. I felt so sore about the whole experience I tipped the waitress $5 even though she hadn't really done anything but cursorily bring me my food late at her own convenience. Lugging my pack back on the street I felt like a freak. I saw some twenty year olds leaning up against the old stone railings beside the main road and wanted to talk to them. Maybe they were bored just like me. But I felt so exhausted and full of regret that I couldn't walk ten feet over to where they were congregated. There seemed to be literally nothing I was capable of doing other than spending money. I contented myself with the novel pork-flavored ramen packets I found in a convenience store and some crap at the dollor store that made no sense. Canned asperagus? I had no way of opening it much less carrying it, but I hauled all of it out of there and up a hill. It was all I knew how to do. A smiling man in a leather ¢hiker skirt¢ rounded the bend behind me, came closer, and asked if I needed any help. ¢No, I'm good,¢ I managed. I felt frozen, offset. ¢You sure?¢ He lad a black leather cowboy hat to match his skirt. ¢Yeah!¢ I kept struggling, swinging the plastic ties around my purple puffy fingers. ¢My name's Yukon!¢ he yelled after me. I guess I'd stopped him in his tracks. ¢C.V.¢¢What?¢ But I was tired of introducing myself. Tired of my stupid name. Right when I made it within view of the hostel, my stomach churned and stretched in a very unnerving way. All that bad dairy on an unaccustomed stomach was starting to feel pressingly bad. Like, urgent diarrhea. I didn't want to just barge into the hostel and have my taking an epic, very loud shit be my way of welcome so I dropped my pack and goods on the lawn and tried to run back into the woods. But the stone steps I limped down, moaning in pain, only proffered a triangular shaped section of woods, well within view of the road. I didn't even care. I pulled down my pants and tried to let one rip but I couldn't. There was something seriously wrong with me. Stabbing pains gutted my lower, bloated stomach. I couldn't get it out. ¢Ahhhhck!¢ I cried out, crippled in pain. ¢Uhhhgh-uh-¢ I gave up and collapsed in the dead leaves, my ass hanging out, skimpy shorts around my ankles. ¢Oh God! Oh God save me.¢ Sideways, it all finally came out in spurts. Wet, long streams of liquid, and lots of very painful gas. I just lay there letting it pass for about ten minutes, my head indenting part of a rotted, web-infested log I'd tried to lean against for support. ¢Oh God. Oh, thank God.¢I know people passed me and saw me like that. I wasn't too far from the stone path over a pile of leaves and behind like three trees. One guy laughed and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. On the other side of the situation I thought it was pretty hilarious. But instead of learning from my (many) mistakes of the day/trip/life, my dumb ass continued to shy away from any help from anyone. Some toilet paper, inquiries on how I'd possibly caught a water-borne illness like the infamous giardia, maybe some fucking weed on 4 fuckin' 20? I didn't consider any of these things. I just picked up where I left off, wound my way back down the road. Found a nice river. There were people lining up all along it with tents, bonfires, booze. Everything. I didn't see it. I was like a zombie. I pitched my tent at the very end of the line, just beyond some stragglers who'd come to the party by the river late like I had. Throw you and yourself in there, wake up, repeat. Wake up, repeat. Wake up. Repeat. 0In the dead of night I was awake again. A dissatisfied spirit wouldn't let me sleep, so without thought to waking the person along the river to my right, I clumsily took my tent down in the dark by aid of my flashlight's beam. I'd just bought new, lithium double A's. Thin Timber had said the lithium batteries were actually worth the money. And then I did do a lot of night hiking, it seemed. Everything away, I walked the foggy, sandy path back to Lover's Leap Rock and found the town deserted in the orange glow of streetlamps. I passed a boating house and saw the vestiges of a good time in cardboard cases and bottles that filled the giant trashcans full. All the people were upstairs asleep in the loft. One of them hadn't made it and was sprawled out on the lawn on his back. It was a steep climb out of Hot Springs but much more beautiful by night and in my solitude. The town wasn't as small as I'd guessed it was, and now I could really see everything that merited a light in the valley below. Like so many orange jewels they burned. From the river I could see where someone had arranged the shape of a pentogram in tiki torches or some other source of fire. I didn't know what it meant and turned my attention back to the task at hand: climbing a cliff face in the dark with one free hand. I was lost for about thirty straight minutes on the giant rocky overlook of the mountain. I couldn't find the trail no matter which way I struggled up. It was all pine trees and brambles. The trail couldn't have possibly went any of the directions I tried. I knew this and believed in them still. I tried each of them multiple times, tired of feeling so exposed on the precipice when what I really wanted to do was jump down and have an end to everything. ¢Does everyone have these thoughts at such junctures ¢ or is it just me?¢ Then, reflecting on the name, Lover's Leap, I reasoned that even if I'd had a lover with me, someone who'd sounded out my soul, it wouldn't be enough. Eventually I found the next white blaze. I don't know how I missed it but I'm sure I put on quite a show of strobe lights from the top. To anyone awake down there ¢ or even on the opposite mountain, hiking in ¢ I would have looked like a fool. Back into the isolation and safety of the woods I went. At last, I took my ground for the night hike. It might not make that much sense to a lot of people, but I loved the tenebrous, intensified world I could pass through unquestioned and unseen. I never tired of it. I had no iPod, no distractions, and needed none. The woods were infinitely variable in their smells, type of tree, footing, and climb. But I will say that they always looked better at night, somehow implying grander scales when I couldn't see them beyond the small scope of my light. I was in survival mode, just me and that light, and it felt so good. The timely spring I ran across when I was just starting to get desperate for water couldn't have offered a better taste. I remember everything about it. I must have drank a whole liter at the source, sitting on a cube of stone. The water ran so cool and pure out of the rocks, welling up in a small indent of the granules of sand. I had to be perfectly smooth and gentle with whatever I put into the pool in order to catch it. I could see my breath the temperature was so cool up in the mountains, but it was the most refreshing feeling. To be truly alive, to go where I pleased. I was a dragon of the dawn. I raced on into the morning. Passed a stone grotto with a great, shallow pond across which the trail ran on top of the dam. Sheer drop to my right, a cascading height of waterfall. Still, inky black water to my left. Before the sun rose over the hills I watched its rosy dawn touch the fields of a grouse farm. A wooden sign commemorated the place as a feral breeding ground for many species of turkey and wild fowl. It was lovely below a sky of pastel hues. Through the fields, across rabble roads of cakey white in the dim, then out open into a glen wet with dew. It had only been four miles or so since I'd left Hot Springs, but I felt a few worlds had passed under my toes.