Date: 2004-10-19
To: Lost Journal Entry from Mile 290
Miles today: 0.0

Mile 290April 18, 04This place is a Greek ruin.  This is not a forest!  We hike of-lateover chunks and slabs and mountains of marble-white rock, much of itappearing to have been carved, built into something, then ruined, asthough the Cherokee or early white settlers had time to build anddestroy their own Troy, with history recording none of it.  Jessica,Eric and I struggle over it together.  Dead and downed trees hold these chunks of white stone in their roots,like gnarled old fists refusing to let go the prizes won in theirtowering days of their lives.Largo tells a story of the shelter we're at this morning.  Says hikingthe trail last year he rounded the corner coming out of the thick ofthe woods and in view of the shelter.  And there, he says, bent overright beside the fire circle was a women, shorts and underpants downaround her ankle, (and here I wish I could recall the exact verb heused, but it was something like..) "servicing" her peach.  Largo saidhe had the next 1000 miles to think about that one.Rael is this wirey, feisty guy from South Boston.  I didn't like himright off, found him gruff, unfriendly.  I figured maybe he didn't likemy hat, thought I was a fag.  But I was dead wrong.  As far back as theNantahala Outdoor Center, I think it was, he expressed great admirationupon seeing a postcard of my art car Duke.  I believe he said, "That'sthe most beautiful thing I have ever seen."  I was floored.  Manyhikers, upon being offerred a card, for free, wouldn't even take one. Lark actually attributed her "no thanks" to the weight it would add toher pack.  Rael points at Tinkerbell, suspended from the straps on my chest andasks, "'Who's the little yellow broad in the cage?"  Later we discovera mutual affinity for Monty Python.  He finds my word-for-word deliveryof several scenes (complete with accent of course) fascinating.  Hesays he's never heard anyone do Python so good.  On the contrary, Raelcan improv in Python-ease like no one I've ever heard.  That I cannotdo.  I can only repeat from rote memory.  Maine Sail and I are discussing his recent trip to Disneyland with hisgirlfriend Krista.  And always we are talking movies.  Maine Sail saysa lot of the rides were closed when they went.  I ask him if Pirates ofthe Carribean was open.  Nineteen year old Mockingbird chimes in, "Theyhave a ride called Pirates of the Carribean?" I am sick of this shit. This isn't hiking, this is bouldering.  Exceptyou don't boulder with a 35 lb. pack on!  This is not my beautifullife! That is not my beautiful wife!  That girl running close behind metoday, tailing me almost as though she's got something to say butcan't, that Italian beauty & southern bell all rolled into one, that'sanother man's woman.  And the rumored trail magic at the top of thatbrutal last climb, wasn't.  Worse than no trail magic at all, therehung from a tree branch a bag of empties, the rumored cooler fullaCokes below it cleaned out.  I wanna go to American Samoa.  I wanna go to my twentieth high schoolreunion back in Del Mar, California and meet again the high schoolsweet heart of mine who never knew she was.  I wanna find out she'sdivorced or still single like me, no kids, doesn't smoke, doesn't turninto Godzilla after five whiskeys, believes in an afterlife and hasalways wanted to marry a half-mad social miscreant & writer.  The Beach Boys comes on the radio blowing Aruba-Jamaica in my ears. Eat me, Beach Boys.  And you slack-packers that drank all the fuckingCoke, may you contract intestinal bugs that gnaw at your guts for days.In amidst my zillion trail names that flashed in the pan and vanishedwas one I made up myself and rather liked: SPIR.  It's an acronym forSylvia Plath In Remission.  It's heady, I know.  But it says a lot.  Itcalls depression by its proper name: a disease.  And a few otherthings.  Plath and I share a birthday, and I, by this hike and by Godif it kills me, am gonna beat this disease.  SPIR.  I liked it.  Butthe few times I said it to other hikers, it just didn't sound right. And the explanation woulda been a bitch.  So I let this great crazy oldcoot thruhiker named Sarge name me based on my hand-made hat: Jester.Maine Sail figgers we oughta be famous by now.  I agree.  Maine Sailsays the word "Fuck" a lot.  He's pissed off about not being famous. Me, too.  And the radio, though God Bless it and WIMZ Knoxville fortheir Skynard Fest Weekend (I'm loving it).. the radio as I was sayingis a constant reminder that I am not famous.  I hear Maynard, Paz,Martin Sheen, David Horowitz, you name it, I know em.  They're famousand Maine Sail and I are fucking nuts, walking in the woods.  And TV? Forget it.  I'd slit my wrists twenty times a day with all the peopleI'd see whom I've met in my life yet in the meeting gained nothing, notoe-hold on the big fame thing.  Aside from all that, the sky is an orgasm, and the trees bottle-rocketsof joy.  -RSM